Friday, November 28, 2014

Adopting Temples ???

The Villagers are concerned. ARE WE ???
The World is constantly under changes. All species are subjected to go along with the transformation. All species except the Mankind are complacent with food and shelter. They just eat,grow, multiply and vanish. The Nature balances the existence of species until they face extinction by means of natural calamities, diseases,poaching etc. In a nutshell, they all fall under the pinciple of "survival of the fittest".  Man alone uses his brain not just to combat the dangers around but moves forward to invent many things to suit his needs. During this process of Modern living, he becomes selfish and greedy. Religious scriptures were written in order to correct him and show the good path. Even the corporates want their employees to sign off the procedure on ethical standards.

Life style gets modern look and force the people to look for more and more. With no strict guideline on  education,profession and business, people are allowed to choose anything of their choice and trespass into other's profession if that is lucrative. Family tradition is thus floated in air and a day will come when we face acute shortage of men in the field of agriculture, fine arts etc. which by no means inferior to any other profession.

Migration of people from villages to cities in the past decades was the starting point of destruction to our Heritage. Then came a situation when the natives never looked back at their ancestral places. The left over population in the villagers are those who struggle for daily bread. They live under the mercy of rich farmers. Politicians too used the farmers to their advantage and allowed the non payment of dues to the Temples unofficially as they were affiliated to some political party. It made the HR &CE ,the Govt. department ineffective.

The gruesome atmosphere has already caused extensive damage to our Culture as the rural Temples which stood for centuries as testimony for our high tradition have started to crumble at many places due to neglect. Hence it is left to the present generation to take up the repair work and stop further damage. Some amount of work is being done in this direction but inadequate. Tamilnadu itself is said to possess some 20000 plus Shiva Temples. When the administrative body has miserably failed to take care of these temples, a well thought out plan to preserve them is urgently needed. While small group activities can not serve in a big way, a time bound action plan has to be launched quickly.
The action plan may look for Philanthropists who can donate liberally. But then they must be allowed to act freely based on some guidelines. Let them procure materials, pay directly to the artisans and  complete the job to the satisfaction of everybody. There should not be any interference from HR &CE in this regard. Nagarathar community that stood all the way to renovate the ancient Temples in the last century should come forward again and set examples for others. On seeing a revolution in this field, Charities, business community , industrialists and others will join the good cause.
Good practices can be followed from any field. The Central Government has asked the elected representatives to adopt a village each and develop them. In the same way, we may appeal to Philanthropists to adopt rural Temples of their choice.

Another modest way is to form a circle that contain 100 well wishers who can contribute Rs 1000 P.A. each. The interest generated from this pool of fund can help perform Puja for an adopted rural temple. More the number of circles, more will be the beneficiaries. This is a very small expectation from salaried and retired segments of the society. But it depends on someone who can take the initiative to make the dream come true. The whole process must be fair,transparent and selfless to earn laurels from the society.