[Sri Ramakrishna]bad condition of ancient hindu temples

May 13, 2002

About the bad condition of temples, Mr Vivek has made certain

points and here are some facts to justify his points:

From Rediff column by Aravind Lavakare

" Take, for instance, a recent interview given by Ravi Shankar, a

disciple of Mahesh Yogi and founder of

the Art of Living Foundation that's now getting widespread

international recognition. In that interview

Ravi Shankar revealed that the annual income from the 40,000

temples of Karnataka is Rs 400 million, of

which only Rs 5 million are spent on the temples while the rest

goes to the government; in contrast, the

income from religious institutions of the minorities is just Rs 5

million and they get grants of Rs 80 million. "

----

Whatever the " secular " government of India may do, there are so

many other institutions which are taking up the renovation of such

temples which are not taken over by the government, for example in

Karnataka Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheswara Society, which takes

up the renovation costs provided 50% of the expenses are borne by

the local devotees.

Shri Shakarachary of Kanchi Swami Jayendra Saraswati in his

interview to Rajeev Srinivas on Rediff said,

" There are many ruined and decaying temples in India, including,

alas, even such great ones as Chidambaram. What is Kanchi doing

for them?

Every year we renovate ten to twenty temples in Tamil Nadu alone.

We receive a lot of applications from various states, including

your home state, Kerala. We always consider the applications

favourably, and where appopriate, we provide some money, at least

a few thousand rupees. We have set aside funds for this, from the

contributions of devotees who can explicitly mention this as the

desired use of their donations. "

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