Temple-entry movement is a fraud on our people. For, there was neither a demand by anybody for temple entry nor a denial of the same to anybody. The whole thing is a hoax. Every village has its own presiding deity – Amma (mother) – known by different names in different localities. Villagers in the main village have an Amma complex. The Untouchable Malas and Madigas of Andhra Pradesh have their own separate Amma complexes. Even sections of the savarnas have separate temple complexes. This means different sections of the given village community worship the same deity but at different temple complexes.
As such, there can be no occasion for any group either to seek or to be denied entry to the other temple complexes. The report that “some sections of the people were denied entry to certain temple complexes” is a deliberate fraud played by upper castes to destroy the religion and culture of Untouchables and impose their false religion and thereby colonise them.
It is also a bid to gain recognition and legality for saivism and vaishnavism, the official religions of the Savarnas, though the truth is far from it.
Into this simple village tribal order, the Brahminical forces brought their own temple, gods and worshipping patterns – both Saiva and Vaishnava. This added one or more temple complexes to the village set-up, here and there. But the tradition continued. Each group worshipped its own deity in its own temple, in its own way, in its own language. The language of the people in AP is Telugu and that of the Brahmin is Sanskrit. The question of any group seeking entry into any other temple complex and any group being denied entry to another temple complex does not therefore arise.
The Brahmin temples (saiva or vaishnava), though had no popular base, secured the patronage of the local kings and princes and flourished. They soon began to attract the attention of the villagers. Music, dance and dramatics in such temples attracted our people. These Brahminical temples with official patronage became a sort of cultural centres rather than a worshipping place. The Untouchables appreciated the shows, applauded the performances and approved the arrangements. However, their interest was only on the cultural side. They had their own temples and went there for religious and ceremonial purposes. They had their own deities whom they worshipped and propitiated.
- Gradually the people began taking interest in the Brahmin temples, their gods and their goddesses. They began to accept prasadam at the new temples for courtesy sake. And in course of time began to worship the deities occasionally as a formality. What began as a gesture of goodwill and courtesy gradually developed into a reality. The people began worshipping the new deities but they did not accept the new religion. They worshipped their own deities but being innocent, they developed the habit of worshipping the new deities also. This is the first stage in the temple-entry fraud committed on our people.
- But the people were not interested in entering the Brahmin temples. The sanctum sanctorum was inaccessible. Even their kings and princes were not allowed into the temples. They had to stand outside the temple at the door and worship the deities. The Brahmin priest officiated as intermediary. The language of communication was Sanskrit. Only the Brahmins were entitled to enter the temple. Despite such insults the kings and princes built huge prakarams (outer walls) to these temples and our people began to feel that they were inside the temple, though in reality they were well outside the temple and only inside the courtyard. This is the second stage in the temple-entry fraud.
- That they were not allowed into the sanctum sanctorum never worried the people because they never bargained for it. Nor would they ever fight for it. They had their own places of worship, their own deities, their own mode of worship patterns and rituals to observe. The Brahmin never recognized the people’s deities. He called them kshudra devatas. He never even approached their temple complexes and sedulously avoided the people’s places of worship, and kept himself away from their functions and festivities. This is the third stage of the temple entry fraud.
- That the Brahmin did not visit their temples, that he did not worship their deities, that he kept away from their functions and festivities did not worry the people. For, they did not ask for it. neither did they expect it. The Brahmin was persona-non-grata, one who was residing among them by sufferance. Being an Aryan, he was a foreigner. He was a stranger with strange deities, customs and rituals. He was allowed to practice his strange cults but was not welcome at their ceremonies as they feared he might cause pollution. In fact, the Brahmin was treated as an. untouchable. Thus, the Brahmins were the real untouchables in the rural Telugu Nadu. This is the fourth stage of the temple entry fraud. Brahmins were Untouchables: The Malas and Madigas remained untouched by the developments taking place in the Aryan part of the village. Their contacts with the Brahmin, the stranger in their land, were minimal in day-to-day life and absolutely nil on the social, religious and cultural plane. They had their own deities and temples to attend to, and had no time or desire to pry into the strangers* gimmicks. While the people in the main village were oscillating between the loyalty to their own deities and their new love for the strangers’ religion-cultural complexes, and were unaware of being weaned away from their own deities toward the new deities, new ceremonies and new rituals – the Malas and Madigas were content with their own faiths, formulas and fashions. Consequently, they were less corrupted than the Savarna Hindus. Perhaps, the term untouchable was originally used to mean those that were untouched by the varna system – avarna.
- Living in different villages as it were, they had little need to enter the Brahmin part. At the most they might peep into the Brahmin temple prakarams and watched the proceedings there and the non-Brahmin untouchable waiting there inside the courtyard but outside the temple all the while believing that they were actually in the temple. This could have been interpreted that the Untouchables were “denied admission” into the temples – carefully omitting to say whose temples they were. This is the fifth stage in the temple entry fraud.
Manas Tribe: The social intercourse between the Untouchables and the Hindus were very little. But in real life, it was extensive and enormous. All the communities worked together in the fields from morning till evening and late into the night, and produced the country’s wealth. The people were busy. They had no time to waste on such trivials like untouchability, caste and varna system.
In the beginning all Telugu people – both Untouchables and savarnas – belonged to one tribe called the Manas. Then they split into two on ideological grounds and settled into two villages. There was not much love lost between these two settlements. They struggled and fought for supremacy for centuries. Gradually the original settlements went down and became the Scheduled Caste settlements. The others stayed on in the main village. After centuries, as they forgot the original cause of their separation and remembered only the ill will and hatred, people tried to explain the separation and the thought that the Scheduled Castes were a kind of undesirables, ex- communicated exiles and later on Untouchables.
- However, the concept of untouchability is the creation of the Brahmin and his varna philosophy. He practiced this bnoxious untouchability’ or Antu very meticulously and helped establish through the medium of literature that other groups too practiced it against one another. Consequently, every caste among the Telugu people appears as an untouchable to the other caste, every Telugu man apears as an untouchable to the other caste, every Telugu man appears as an untouchable to every other person belonging to another caste. Untouchability appears to be the protocol exchanged between the savarnas among themselves and with the Scheduled Castes. However, the untouchability between the Scheduled Castes and savarnas is specifically referred to as ‘Untouchability’. This is the Sixth stage in the temple-entry fraud.
Role of M.K. Gandhi: The temple-entry denial is a myth created during the days of the so-called freedom movement. Gandhi, who took charge of the movement in the 1920s, was given the false information that the SCs were the only sections denied entry to temples. Not that he was not aware of the caste and untouchability institutions in the country. He was a good sanatanist and Savarna. But like many others he was not aware of the extent and intensity of these institutions.
Gandhi never bothered to verify as to which temples denied entry to which communities and where, how and why the problem had originated. He was posted with false information and he had no desire to understand the problem. Since he knew that temple entry would bring him enormous publicity, he exploited the situation to his advantage.
Dr. Ambedkar’s demand: Already Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was pressing the claims of the Scheduled Castes to be recognized as a separate people, a separate ethnic and national group from others and was demanding separate electorates and other statutory guarantees. Dr. Ambedkar was basing his claims on the exclusion of the SCs from public offices and places like offices, hotels, shops and streets, public tanks, public wells, public places of burial and similar public amenities and services. Into this list, the exclusion of SCs from public temples could have been inadvertently included.
- For, at that time there were no “public temples” in the Telugu land. All the then existing temples were community or private possessions. Separate communities had separate temples. SC/STs had their own temples. So too the Brahmins. Thus, somebody being denied entry to a “public temple” was a mere fiction and a figment of imagination, a diabolic plot. This is the seventh stage in the temple-entry fraud myth.
The cunning Bania in Gandhi found that the temple entry stunt could be used effectively to whip up an otherwise staid rural people into activity. He felt that the rural masses who were not much moved by the slogans of freedom could be roused by a slogan dealing with a closer-to-heart problem. He gave the official call for “Harijan temple entry”.
- Gandhi’s stunts worked. The countryside exploded into activity. The people began to take sides – for and against. Much dust was raised and much heat was produced. Agitations and counter-agitations, demonstrations and counter-demonstrations proliferated. The whole activity, however, was confined to the savarnas/Hindus who were trying to vie with one another to make the temple-entry movement a success. For they knew that it was all a farce, that nobody wanted it, that there was nothing to be done except raising of slogans and taking demonstrations. This is the eighth stage in the temple-entry fraud.
- But the Untouchables took no interest in all these Hindu stunts. They knew it was all a farce. They never asked for it, never wanted it, and never relished it. They never wanted to enter other people’s temples, nor would they allow others into their temples lest they defiled their deities. They could not understand what all the fuss was about. Here and there, some Scheduled Castes might have been herded to join these stunts. This is the ninth stage in the temple- entry fraud.
10.The temple entry stunts did not achieve anything except raising lot of dust. The savarnas/upper castes/ Aryans/Hindus were staging temple entry stunts on one side and their brothers and cousins were opposing it. So, the entire temple-entry stunt was a Hindu stage-managed affair with the entire mass of Untouchables remaining indifferent if not suspicious about the stunt. In social, religious field it might contribute nothing, but its contribution on the
political plane was something to secure “freedom” for India meaning “freedom” for the upper castes to enslaves burying the interests of the Schedule Castes fathoms deep. This is the 10th stage of the temple fraud.
The Harijan temple entry was only an offshoot of the upper caste freedom movement. Nobody had any illusions about that. Nobody had expected miracles from it. Those who allowed the entry of Harijans into temples knew that it was only a make-believe affair, purely temporary, and would stop, the moment they got freedom. The few SCs that entered the temples also knew that they were entering the temples only for political considerations. Gandhi too was not sincere in his call. Whole thing was hypocritical. That is why when once the country achieved “independence”, the issue had been put into cold storage. Thus ended the much-publicized “Harijan temple-entry movement”.
11.Perhaps a major achievement of the movement was that the Brahmin temples in the country was officially recognized as temples of all the peoples, of the nation and of the country, and were given a new dimension – “Hindu temples”. This is where Gandhi’s immense services to Hinduism comes. Brahmins temples became public temples on paper though in practice they continued to be private or pure Brahmin temples. This is the 11th stage in the temple entry fraud.
- The temple-entry movement helped to some extent to rub the Brahmin religion – saivism and vaishnavism – on the Telugu people in a sort of label conversion. This is the 12th stage in the temple-entry fraud. It had put a cloud on the people’s deities, temples and worship patterns and rituals. This is part of the diabolical Aryan plot.
