Should secular state control Hindu temples?

BY Satya Prakash

The Supreme Court’s verdict upholding the Shebait rights of the Travancore royal family in the administration of Shree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala has been welcomed by many as it limits the state’s role in control and management of a prominent Hindu temple.

Shree Padmanabhaswamy Temple made headlines in 2011 after a court-appointed panel found jewellery, idols, weapons, utensils, coins and other items worth Rs one lakh crore in five of its vaults. But the mysterious vault-B (Kallara B) — believed to be protected by cobras — wasn’t opened. It was vault-B that generated wider public interest in the case due to the widely held belief that it doesn’t augur well for those who dare open it.

A Bench of Justice UU Lalit and Justice Indu Malhotra left it to the discretion of the advisory committee and administrative committee — set up to oversee the temple’s administration — to consider whether Kallara B is to be opened for the purpose of inventorisation.

But the verdict doesn’t address the core issue of government control of Hindu temples alone in a secular state. Should a secular state control a religious institution? If yes, then why should it control only Hindu temples?

Articles 25 and 26 together provide a constitutional framework to deal with the relationship between religion and state. Article 25 — which guarantees fundamental right to religion — authorises the state to make laws to regulate or restrict economic, financial, political or other secular activities associated with religious practices as also for social welfare and reform. Article 26 confers on every religious denomination or any section thereof a fundamental right to its religious affairs.

Even if one presumes that there is mismanagement of a particular temple, can the state be allowed to take over the temple management permanently?

Secularism is all about separating the state from religion. While some European countries are constitutionally Christian in nature, India, a declared secular state, controls Hindu religious institutions. This contradiction needs to be resolved as it goes against the idea of secularism, which has been declared a basic feature of the Indian Constitution.