My Experiences of Indian Temples

My experiences of Indian temples

I am not at all a temple-goer and neither do I have an aversion nor particular attraction for temples. Nevertheless as all Indians do, I have also visited many famous temples of India from my childhood till now.

I just feel that when millions of people, through ages, have visited them there must be some presence in these temples. There is thus a desire to visit them and feel the presence. However till today I have never felt it in any temple though in one I did get an uneasy feeling.

Going to temple is a subjective matter. The readers may or may not agree with my observations. Yet here they are for whatever they are worth.

Most of the temples I have visited have been dirty and noisy and in few of them I was harassed by resident pandas.

The first harassment I faced was when I visited the famous Krishna temple in Mathura in January 1973.

I was going to Vadodara by train and was passing through Mathura where there was a 4-5 hours train halt. I therefore decided to visit the famous Krishna temple in the heart of Mathura. I still remember it was freezing cold in January and I hired a rickshawallah to show me around. The moment I entered the temple, some 10 pandas surrounded me and each one of them wanted to show me the temple. I was warned by the rickshawallah not to take any one of them since I was more interested in seeing the architecture of the temple rather than doing darshan.

©Anil K Rajvanshi. February 2019 2

When I did not heed their call to be shown around, the pandas became aggressive and started shoving me around and abusing me. I got so disgusted that I left the mandir and spent rest of the cold morning loitering on the railway station till my train to Vadodara arrived.

Similarly in 1981 I visited the Jagannath temple in Puri, Odisha. Again the pandas gheraoed me and since I sported a full beard they felt that I was a Muslim. I would have been lynched had not one of the pandas recognized the fact that my brother and his wife had just done an expensive aarti! My brother had gone to Puri for his honeymoon and we had accompanied him. Nevertheless the harassment by pandas was too much and I left the mandir immediately without seeing much.

Next time when I visited Puri in 2013, I was taken as a VIP in the inner sanctum of the temple during the aarti. I found the whole scene and atmosphere very claustrophobic and suffocating with too much noise and dirty and slippery floor. I just stayed for a minute and then came out for fresh air though the pujari kept on insisting that I should do parikrama of the deity.

I have never been able to understand how and why people stand in line for hours waiting for their turn to get the darshan. May be they have more faith in these temples than I have.

In 2004 I had a hilarious episode in the Meenakashi temple in Madurai. The temple was clean, less noisy and we were able to have the darshan of goddess Meenakashi quite easily. After the visit we thought of also paying homage to her consort - Lord Shiva or Sundareshwar. His small temple was in the same complex and was quite empty.

From a distance I suddenly saw that a bearded man with bare chest was wildly gesticulating for me to come to him. I could not understand why he

©Anil K Rajvanshi. February 2019 3 was calling me. Anyway I went to him. He was the head pujari (main priest) of the Shiva temple.

He immediately garlanded me with a mala, gave me a coconut and few flowers and started doing my aarti without asking me. After that he stood expectantly with the aarti thaal so that I could give him dakshina. I gave him a 50 paisa coin ! He got very mad and said loudly no chillar ! When I refused to give him any more money he immediately took out the mala from my neck, snatched the coconut from my hand and told me to get lost.

I told him that by taking the mala and coconut the deed will not be undone. He has to also do the aarti anticlockwise 7 times ! He got even madder and started abusing me in Tamil.

Only in one temple I had a strange and unpleasant feeling. This was in Kamakhya temple in Guwahati where they sacrifice animals. I had gone to give invited lectures at IIT Guwahati in 2002 and IIT authorities had organized to show me the temple. When I entered the inner sanctum I just got an unpleasant and strange feeling. This is the only time I have felt the presence in any temple.

One of the most pleasant experiences I had was when we visited Kedarnath in 1997. We had gone on char dham yatra of visiting Gangotri, Jamnotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath.

We climbed to Kedarnath in one day (from Gaurikund which is ~ 6500 ft above sea level (ASL) to Kedarnath which is ~ 12,000 ft ASL). It is a strenuous climb of about 16 km but we did it in about 7.5 hours. Our younger daughter went on a horse but my wife, my elder daughter and I went on foot. After reaching Kedarnath around 4:30 p.m. we went to the temple since the aarti was about to start.

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During the evening aarti time the scene inside the temple was chaotic. Though we stood in line yet were shoved and pushed by devotees who were in a hurry to get darshan. There was about half meter snow on the ground and it was bitingly cold. With the floor wet and extremely cold, walking inside the temple barefoot was very uncomfortable and painful. With devotees shouting at the top of the voice the whole experience was quite horrible and worth forgetting.

I came out of the temple quite fast. But I still felt that it is one of the oldest temples of India and so may have a presence which could only be felt if the atmosphere was quiet.

So I went looking for the head priest. Since the setting up of this temple by Adi Shankaracharya in the 6th century, there has been a tradition that all the head priests are Namboodripads from Kerala. I met the fat priest who was fair with light green eyes. I asked him if it would be possible for me to come and sit in the temple around 2-3 a.m. He said god sleeps ! I told him that I will not wake him up and will be very quiet, but still he did not budge and in fact told me that I can get a special aarti done for Rs. 7,001/- ! I have never believed in aartis so did not want to do it.

I felt dejected by his refusal and so we went to our guest house and slept after dinner. Around 2:30 a.m. I woke up by chance and came out of the guest house. It was full moon, the sky was absolutely clear and the snow- covered mountains all around us were shining very brightly in the moonlight. The sight gave me goose bumps and was a spiritual experience. I felt that this sight and the beauty of the place would have attracted Adi Shankaracharya to set up this temple. I could not feel the presence in the temple, but the surroundings provided that experience.

I never had a similar experience in any of my temple visits including Badrinath. In fact all around the Badrinath temple there was litter of beer

©Anil K Rajvanshi. February 2019 5 bottles and plastic trash. We seem to have made a habit of littering the temple sites with trash.

In 2008 I had an occasion to visit Dakshineswar temple where Shri Ramakrishna lived and preached. I have always admired Shri Ramakrishna and Vivekanand and liked their teachngs. So I was eagerly looking forward to this visit.

I visited the Panchavati in Dakshineswar temple and saw the Banyan tree under which Ramakrishna got enlightenment and where he also used to meditate at night. However I was horrified to see quite a few vendors sitting under it and selling chana and other eatables. An old signpost stating that it is here that Ramakrishna got enlightenment was hanging crookedly in the tree. The sight was sickening and all around the heritage tree was littered garbage of plastic water bottles and other plastic waste.

Yet there are plenty of clean temples that I have visited like Vivekanand Rock temple in Kanyakumari; Jain Temple in Mount Abu; Akshardham in Ahmedabad (which is of recent origin); and Kolhapur Mahalakshmi Temple. Even the ancient Vithoba temple in Pandharpur was clean though the atmosphere inside was hot and claustrophobic.

I also had an occasion to visit two times Shri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry and sat in the room where he used to live. I found it very strange that a man could live in one room for 25 years without stepping out. He cut himself off from the world and it seemed as if he was afraid of the world ! Only few of his disciples could see him. He used to walk in the balcony adjacent to his room. The balcony was 10-15 steps end to end and this was his only exercise. I sat in that room for half an hour but did not feel anything.

I have also visited many world famous churches and mosques in Europe. In some places the silence and the huge ceilings have been awe-inspiring but I

©Anil K Rajvanshi. February 2019 6 never got any feeling of presence or peace. That peace and tranquility I have felt in snow-clad mountains and forests.

In 1992 I visited Switzerland for a conference. In Swiss Alps, just outside the city of Interlaken, I climbed on a nearby hill and sat under a tree. The scene of beautiful snow-covered mountains while sitting under the tree shade gave me a tremendous sense of peace and happiness. I spent quite some time meditating on the beautiful scenery.

Similar feeling I got much later on (2009) when we visited the hill station of Binsar in Kumaon area in Uttarakhand state. The 300-500 km pristine snow peaks from Chaukhamba all the way to Panchachuli group (including Nanda Devi, Trishul, Kedarnath, etc.) was a mesmerizing sight and sitting in Binsar and watching them in absolutely clear sky was a very spiritual experience.

In India most of our religious beliefs are ritualistic in nature. We feel that we can do anything and have an irresponsible behavior but if we bathe in Ganges or go to a temple and offer Prasad all our sins will be washed away.

This behavior and our insecurities lead us to bribe the gods and goddesses with money, gold and other things. Some of the wealthiest organizations in India are the well-known temples with huge unaccountable wealth. In such an atmosphere it is very difficult to think that one can get any peace or tranquility by visiting such temples.

It is sad to see that India which has produced the greatest spiritual and philosophical thought of mankind should focus so much on ritualistic behavior as practiced in our temples. We should rediscover our roots and try to become more spiritual. This will help us reduce our greed and insecurities and help us live an emotionally satisfying life.

On a lighter vein, I sometimes feel that gods and goddesses in Indian temples who have to resolve the insecurities and solve so many problems of the disciples visiting them, might have been by now overburdened and overloaded with problems. Who knows they may have even migrated to far away lands !