Explained: Muslims and Christians should be free and Hindus should be free…After the Tirupati laddu controversy, the voice of temple liberation was not raised without reason.

Why treat Muslims and Christians differently?

Muslim and Christian communities in India manage their religious places and institutions through community boards or trusts. But there is considerable government interference in the management of major religious places of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. Many states have enacted special laws that empower them to interfere in or control the administration of Hindu temples, their income and expenditure. This control is exercised through boards and trusts that include government representatives or are headed by a government official himself.

Tamil Nadu government is at the forefront in capturing temples

An analysis published on the Indian Express website said that Tamil Nadu probably has the highest number of Hindu temples under government control. There is a separate department named 'Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department' for the management of these temples. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the governing body of the Tirupati temple, is under the Government of Andhra Pradesh. The TTD chief is appointed by the state government.

Most states controlling temples take a share of the income received in the form of offerings and donations. It is used for administration and maintenance of temples, maintenance of small temples and welfare activities. The great thing is that these welfare activities are not necessarily related to the temple. The government uses temple money to do welfare work outside the temple and also for non-Hindus. These welfare activities may include running hospitals, orphanages or schools and running educational institutions where secular education is imparted.

Temple management laws in these states

According to the 2011 census, there are approximately 30 lakh places of worship in India, the majority of which are Hindu temples. Some of the states that have laws governing the management of temples are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Many states also have laws on specific institutions, such as the Vaishno Devi Mata Temple in Katra, Jammu. The temple is governed by the provisions of the 'Jammu and Kashmir Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act' of 1988. All these laws derive their legislative power from Article 25 of the Constitution which deals with 'freedom of conscience and the free exercise, practice and propagation'. Of religion'. The power to make laws on religious institutions is part of the Concurrent List, over which both the Center and the states have common jurisdiction.

Always kept an eye on temple property

Kings often donated land and wealth to temples, which were centers of both culture and economy at the time. Cities developed around the temples which led to the development of the area. Professor G., Center of Public Policy, IIM, Bangalore. According to a research paper written by Ramesh on temple management, historical evidence suggests that the involvement of temples in promoting agriculture, farming and irrigation was at a level comparable to that of the state.

An analysis by The Indian Express states that the British viewed temples not only as gateways to socio-political influence but also as repositories of vast wealth and hence felt the need for official inspection. From 1810 to 1817 he enacted several laws in Bengal, Madras and Bombay Presidencies, giving him the right to interfere in temple administration.

Professor Ramesh writes, 'These rules allowed the British Government to assert its sovereign authority through the Board of Revenue of the East India Company. It was claimed that the charity's income was being misused and abused by those in charge. Thus active supervision had to be legally confirmed.'

Laws started being made since the British era

There was opposition to the running of Hindu temples by the Christian government, after which the Religious Endowments Act of 1863 was enacted and the control of the temples was handed over to committees appointed under the Act. However, with the expansion of the Code of Civil Procedure, the Official Trustees Act for Temples, the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act of 1920, etc., the influence of rules and regulations on temple administration increased and the authority of the government increased. The first specific legislation on Hindu temples came through the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act in 1925.

It gained strength from the Government of India Act of 1919, which enabled provincial governments to legislate on endowment matters. “This law (the 1925 law) and its subsequent amendments provided for the supervision of the management of temples through a board of commissioners with wide powers and in some cases giving complete powers to the board,” the IIM research paper said. Was kind of empowered.” Any one of them could take over the management of the temple.

Independent India retained most of the legislative control exercised by the British over temples. Various states passed new acts based on the 1925 law. The first such example was the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of 1951. At that time a similar law was passed in Bihar also. The Madras law was challenged in the courts which repealed it and eventually a new Act came out in 1959 with some amendments.

Most southern states follow a similar legal framework to regulate temples. Many states argued the need for government intervention in the management of temples to ensure entry of all sections and castes of the society into Hindu places of worship.

RSS started demanding temple liberation

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) passed its first resolution in 1959 demanding handing over the control of temples back to the community. The Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, the top decision-making meeting of the RSS, said in a resolution on the Kashi Vishwanath temple, 'The Sabha urges the Uttar Pradesh government to take steps to return this temple to Hindus. The tendency of the government to establish its control and monopoly directly or indirectly on various spheres of life has been increasing in the last few years.

The All India Executive Board of the union raised the issue again in 1988. These proposals were preceded by protests in South India against the control of religious leaders over temples. VHP has been raising this issue since the 1970s. It passed a resolution in 2021 demanding a central law to free temples from government control.

BJP is also raising its voice

BJP has also been repeating this demand for the last 10 years. Last year, at an election rally in Telangana, PM Narendra Modi had accused the Tamil Nadu government of taking over Hindu temples, a charge strongly refuted by Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin. In 2017 and 2019, the then BJP MP Satyapal Singh had introduced a private member bill on this issue.

The Uttarakhand government of BJP leader Trivendra Singh Rawat enacted the Uttarakhand Char Dham Devasthanams Management Act in December 2019 to set up a board to manage the Char Dham temples and 49 other temples. However, in 2021, due to opposition from priests, local people and political parties, the BJP government of Pushkar Singh Dhami withdrew the Act and abolished the board.

Similarly, Shivraj Singh Chouhan's Madhya Pradesh government eased state control on temples in 2023, while the Basavaraj Bommai government in Karnataka announced similar measures but resigned before their implementation. However, no central law has yet come into force on this.

Legal arguments have been made in favor of freeing temples from government control. Senior lawyers Fali Nariman and Rajiv Dhavan once criticized government control over temples by calling it 'nationalization of a religious endowment'. He had said that the courts have been largely reluctant to intervene in this matter.

Petitions and decisions in the Supreme Court

The then BJP spokesperson and lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court to free the temples from government control in 2022. However, the court argued in favor of the status quo. He said that under the present system the temples have not only fulfilled their temples but also the larger needs of the society. The court said that by reversing this, those days would go back when all these temples… had become centers of religion, places of wealth. On this comment of the Supreme Court, Upadhyay had withdrawn his petition.

However, the Supreme Court had held in the Shirur Math case of 1954 that a law which completely takes away the authority of administration of a religious sect and vests it in some other authority would violate the rights under Article 26(d). Will violate. Is a violation of. However, it was held that the State has a general right to regulate the administration of any religious or charitable institution or endowment.

Then the Supreme Court in Ratilal Panachand Gandhi vs. State of Bombay and others said that the right of management given to a religious institution is a guaranteed fundamental right which cannot be taken away by any law. On the other hand, it said that a religious sect has the right to manage its property in accordance with the law. This meant that the state could regulate the administration of trust properties through validly enacted laws.

In the 1996 case of Pannalal Bansi Lal Pitti and Others v. State of Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a law under which the Andhra Pradesh government had sought to abolish hereditary rights in the post of Chairman of a Hindu religious institution or trust management. Had demanded. An endowment. Enacted. It also rejected the argument that the law should apply equally to all religions and argued that the government had brought the law following the recommendations of a committee that had found mismanagement and corruption in the existing system.