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The Supreme Court (SC) has stayed a politically motivated ordinance by the
Tamil Nadu (TN)
Government that would allow it to appoint priests in temples without discrimination of caste, creed, custom, or usage. Hearing a joint petition of several organizations, a three judge panel including the Chief Justice, restrained the State Government pending judgment.
The TN ordinance claims that priests to the 35,000 temples should be appointed without regard to caste or creed. Petitioners say that ancient Shastras stipulate stringent physical, emotional, dietary, and habitual conditions for priests that the state would violate willfully. For example, priests are expected to be vegetarians, wake up at 4 am every day, bathe only in cold water, not use addictive substance such as cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs, perform personal prayers thrice a day, and perform prayers for the deity 5 times a day. Most importantly, the Shastras require that priests work for a pittance and uphold the Vedas. The original concept of priests was not restricted to any particular group or parentages providing the incumbents meet these stringent clauses. However, over a period of time, these stringent rules have been diluted and children born to priests have been automatically classified as priests and as those belonging to the priest class. When the British first came to India, there are records that say that the entire population wanted a higher status and claimed to belong to the priest class. Subsequently, caste or class based reservation and discrimination by the TN Government has targeted those born in the priest class for personal vendetta of Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and parochial political parties of Tamil Nadu.
The TN Government under Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi is a politically and socially divisive group opposed to the Vedas, Shastras, and Hindu traditions and has publicly stated that they hate those who are born in the priest class. Therefore, his ordinance move is aimed at marginalizing groups of people and Hinduism he does not believe in and hates. That is why the ordinance specifically states that those born as Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs could be Hindu priests as those religions are born out of Hinduism.
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The ordinance is silent on several Constitutional aspects. Firstly, the Constitution says that state and religion needs to be separated or at least at arms length. Therefore, if the state was to appoint priests to temples, would that mean that the state will now manage religion? Secondly, if the state would manage Hinduism, would it also manage other religions in India such as Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, etc? Thirdly, since those belonging to the priest class are called Brahmins and hence divested of any privileges by this Government, would the new incumbents to priest positions also be divested of their birth based status? Fourthly, what parameters will the state use to monitor, manage, teach, and appoint priests and how does that conform to ancient Shastras? Fifthly, what study has the Government conducted to ascertain that their move conforms to natural and ancient customs or to ensure that they are not violating the Constitution?
A similar move was initiated by Karunanidhi several decades ago but was struck down by the SC as unconstitutional since the state cannot appoint priests who do not qualify as required by the Shastras .
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