
Online booking in 5 major temples soon: Sekar Babu
The temples identified for the rollout include Tiruchendur, Palani, and Tiruvannamalai, he said after attending the consecration ceremony in Tiruchendur.
Addressing reporters, the minister said more than five lakh devotees took part and that all hymns were recited exclusively in Tamil. "Only Tamil hymns were used throughout the rituals," he said, denying claims that Sanskrit hymns were also chanted.
As part of the temple's ongoing Rs300 crore development project, a 52-bed dormitory was opened for pilgrims.
The facility, with a Rs500 tariff per bed, aims to provide affordable accommodation, the minister said. He added that renovation work will continue at other temple sites, including Saravana Poigai and Aali Kenaru.
Responding to questions about the Hindu Munnani's recent Murugan conference in Madurai, Sekar Babu drew a contrast, saying, "The difference is simple—our conference was about Lord Murugan, theirs was political and they even spoke against our leaders like Annadurai and Periyar. In our event, did we speak anything political or did we speak against any other leaders? We didn't."

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News18
26 minutes ago
- News18
'Fragile, Rare, Priceless': Modi Govt To Digitise India's Manuscript Heritage
In the next three years, the Narendra Modi-led government will digitise thousands of ancient Indian manuscripts. According to a government tender from National Archives of India (NAI), many of the manuscripts are 'fragile, rare, deteriorating, brittle and to be handled with great care". For the digitisation project, a sum of Rs 50 crore has already been approved. These priceless records – some written on palm leaf, birch bark, parchment, cloth, or handmade paper – span a vast linguistic spectrum, including Sanskrit, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Arabic, and Persian, as per the document accessed by News 18. Hailed as India's most ambitious civilisational archiving mission to date, the groundwork for this digital effort was laid much earlier. The culture ministry initiated the process with at least three other websites – Indian Cultures, Abhilekh Patal, and the Indian Mission for Manuscripts. For years, various government and affiliated institutions quietly collected and preserved neglected manuscripts from temple libraries, scholar households, and oral traditions. In Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Kashi, teams collaborated with traditional scholars and researchers to digitise and catalogue regional scriptural records long before it became a priority. Now, the Centre is formalising this mission. According to the official document, the digitisation project will involve several procedures including unbinding, flattening, cleaning, scanning, quality control, metadata creation, optical character recognition (OCR) for applicable languages, and long-term digital storage. Once fully digitised, the content will be integrated into existing national knowledge systems through platforms such as the National Manuscripts Repository (NAMAMI), the National Virtual Library of India (NVLI), the Digital Library of India, the Bharatavani multilingual platform, and the government's flagship portal. These platforms will allow the general public to access and read the documents. This project is aimed at digitally preserving India's ancient manuscripts and important documents. The tender also mentions that several manuscripts are in 'an extremely fragile condition, susceptible to damage due to age and lack of proper storage", and stressed on the need for non-invasive digitisation using high-resolution scanners that do not expose records to heat or harsh lighting. Experts involved in the project told News18 that this effort is more than just preservation; it is a cultural reclamation.


Scroll.in
38 minutes ago
- Scroll.in
In his new book, Suraj Yengde writes about local manifestations of caste among Indians in Trinidad
When we speak of caste and its presence worldwide, the conversation is often confined to the contemporary rise of migration and caste in the West. Most often the dialogue is restricted to the diasporic Dalits resident in the West. One can hardly find a comprehensive study of castes in locations outside the Western episteme. When I went to South Africa, one of the urgent projects that I had intended to study was caste among Indians and non-Indians in Africa. I was advised instead to focus on contemporary Indian migrant labour. During my research, I found out that major studies of the history of indentured labour, the sociology of political movements, and the economics of social classes in India did not feature caste as one of the subjects of analysis. There are various reasons for this. But the three most important are that caste was forgotten during the era of the indentured system; people gave up caste owing to pressure from the colonial regime; and Indian identity was mostly divided because of regional and religious (Muslim–Hindu) differences. While these reasons partly explain why, they do not give a complete picture. In my research, I found out how both Hindus and Muslims, the South Indians and Gujaratis, had retained their own cultural practice of caste through the recounting of memories of their ancestry. This was reflected in the way the socialisation of families took place and the remembrance of their heritage. Though the current generation does not adhere to caste norms and beliefs, there is a recognition and also a disowning of castes among the older diasporas. Caste has evolved and accommodated itself to local practices and state norms. We cannot speak of caste as a common ancestral practice that originates in one country and replicates similarly elsewhere. To do so is to ignore the ability of caste to reproduce itself as a system that accommodates itself to local customs and introduces its hierarchical logic as a justifiable practice of old. Thus, caste develops in different forms and takes on localised manifestations embedded in the practice of tradition and faith. Even though it faces opposition, it nevertheless assumes a position of importance as a recognised element of the spiritual order. In this chapter, we will take a look at Trinidad and see what caste has meant to this island nation whose population is nearly 40 per cent Indian. Most Trinidadian Indians are of subaltern caste origin. What has this done to the intellectual retelling of the Indian story of Trinidad and what does it tell us today? More specifically, can Trinidad be regarded as a satellite Hindu society without Dalits? As my research explored the archival history of Trinidad, it also engaged in deep empiricism. My fieldnotes from my first trip in 2022 were lost but then miraculously reappeared in late 2024 in a trunk I had left in Europe. However, it was the data I had collected in the summer of 2024 that became the source of much of my analysis. I had written down broader summaries of the 2022 visit. What changed in these years was the confidence I acquired from my informants who had taken a bold and critical political stand on the caste question. This encouraged me to produce a proud and complex story of the Trinidadian Hindu community. Trinidadian Hindus, like many in the diaspora, live in the complex conditions of a post-independent, racialised democratic country while also being a prominent, indeed dominant, player in its economic affairs. This has brought them closer to Western modernity. Nevertheless, their faith in their ancestral heritage takes precedence over their transnational outlook. For many of the elites whom I met and interviewed in Trinidad, their ancestral land is but a figment of their imagination. Some are nostalgic and hope to visit India, but many are content with what their home country of Trinidad offers them. Their Hindu and caste identity was and continues to be primarily shaped by brahman-centric forms of ritual. There is some opposition to this brahman centrality by non-brahman Hindus and some progressive brahmans. These, however, do not take account of the changing landscape of caste. The important historical role of Brahmanism in defining Hindu identity as an ethnic group still continues today. this respect, the research findings of Peter van der Veer and Steven Vertovec from the 1980s broadly align with some of my own. In India, the concept of a single Hindu identity, as opposed to plural definitions, was promoted to create one ethnic community, especially after independence and the establishment of a democratic republic. Subaltern cultures and traditions were subsumed into the dominant brahman caste rituals, sidelining lower-caste gods and their cultures. This was evident in practices such as kathas, yagnas, mandir havans, bhajans, marriages, funerals, and night-long recitations of the Ramayana. The stereotype of the brahman as a learned pandit persists in religious circles, where he is expected to be a brahman 'religious specialist'. This confers legitimacy on rituals and authority on religious functions. Brahman dominance became a part of Hindu life, though not without opposition. Nevertheless, brahmans have succeeded in maintaining their control. After taking over Hindu institutions, brahmans began to manage the affairs of temples and religious organisations, and broker deals on behalf of Hindus to secure political alliances. Hindu ethnicity as a religious category is recognised in the constitution of Trinidad and Tobago. Van der Veer and Vertovec, like other scholars, argue that brahmans were instrumental in making Hinduism an ethnic identity. Hindu practices in the Caribbean provide an interesting study of the future development of castes in the diaspora. Many who left their homes as indentured labourers envisioned a new future for themselves, and what we find today offers a glimpse of potential developments in the evolution of caste and identity. Hindu practice in the Caribbean society makes for an interesting case study of the afterlife of castes in the diasporic imagination. Caste has achieved its purpose of segregating and further dividing various cultural groups into subcategories and groups as jatis. Though jatis do not exist in their innate forms, they operate in interpersonal relationships and reproduction. One of the prominent routes proposed by Dr Ambedkar to escape caste was by intermarrying and by destroying the beliefs of caste promoted in the Hindu shastras (scriptures). In addition to reformation, Ambedkar also proposed conversion out of the religion that maintained caste. Given the violence in the rural agrarian political economy, Ambedkar exhorted his followers to migrate to urban areas, where the intensity of caste practice was relatively mild. Migration out of caste was a way to challenge caste. Migration was a form of dislocation as well as a voluntary exodus. Have there been attempts to test the migration-out-of-caste proposition in the context of transoceanic mobility? Studies of the Indian diaspora do not pay much attention to caste, for two major reasons. The first is the non-availability of easily accessible data on caste as opposed to the noticeable ethnology of Indian religions in the diaspora. The second is the paucity of information in the colonial archive about caste and academic studies of caste experience are far too scant. To investigate caste in the diaspora, we need to look not only at the peculiarities of caste institutions. We cannot, for example, expect caste to exist in the same form as we find in India. Although the practices of Dalits and their cultural artefacts have continued in one way or other in the diaspora, caste has not migrated unchanged. Over the years, it has moved away from being a strictly cultural institution to becoming an assimilated part of life in which outcastes exercise agency. Caste has undergone a creolization of sorts. It might even have become an institution that is reborn in a new shape with every generation. Owing to the intermixture of Indian indentured labourers with other caste groups and racial ethnicities, caste now operates as a distinct element of observable belief in host society. The question remains whether caste exists as a system in diasporic societies or whether, simply, castes exist. In Trinidad, my research shows that caste does not exist as a system of strict rules enforced by public support and institutional sanction. However, caste does exist as a personal or associational feeling bound up with identity, prestige, ritual and endogamy. For a caste system to exist, a ritual background is necessary, while castes can exist outside the purview of religion in a secular society. Trinidad has retained an attraction for anthropologists and sociologists since the 1950s. Various researchers have visited the island nation to understand rituals, endogamous practices, creolization the West Indian and East Indian grouping of its African and Indian population ethnic castes and cultural practices. There are also various sociological studies of Trinidadian Hinduism, which through social acculturation became stabilised in the regular practices of diverse castes. This is what also took me to Trinidad. The existing research studies came to my attention when studying the Indian diaspora in South Africa. The rapt attention they paid to caste and ritualism among Indians in Trinidad made a strong impression on me. It was because of this that I returned to the region and its practices. After the abolition of slavery in all British territories by the British Parliament in 1838, the Empire looked at the indentured system as a way of providing bonded labour in the plantation colonies. To give indentures a separate status from slavery, contracts and records were kept and formal processes of recruitment were observed. As a result, many lower-caste Indians and a few from the dominant castes took the route of the much-dreaded kaala paani – black waters – a metaphor for the dangerous oceans. Ritually, it meant that one would lose one's birthright to one's caste. All the same, 143,939 indentured Indians landed in Trinidad, with 90 per cent returning to India after the completion of their contracts (the actual numbers of returnees vary). Of these, 88 per cent practised Hinduism. As the General Register of Indian Immigrants makes clear, the Indian indentured labourers who were recruited for the plantations of Trinidad left their villages and travelled abroad in batches. Naturally, their social relationships and social circles were based on their caste, village, and language similarities. This made it possible and likely for them to reproduce caste in Trinidad. Over the years, however, the material conditions in their newly adopted land did not prove conducive to the maintenance of the caste system as they had known it in India. Moreover, because their work was secular in nature, requiring hard labour in the canefields, the economic and occupational basis of caste was 'eliminated almost completely' in Trinidad.15 Yet despite the argument that caste dissolved after two or so generations, the power and authority of ritual and the hold of a brahman-centric theology continued to shape people's lives. Caste became part of people's Hindu identity, being revealed in their practice of religion and their reverence for the hierarchical order. Many of those considered lower or outcaste Indians who arrived on the shores of Trinidad aspired to a superior status and adopted a new identity in the hope of climbing up the ladder of the caste hierarchy. Reinventing themselves and thei status was clearly an advantageous and attractive move for those untouchables who were ritually outside the ranks of the brahman sramanas (ascetics or hermits). Becoming a brahman automatically provided one with a prominent position in the society of indentured labourers. Some people touched their feet as a mark of greeting. brahmans were also served food first and they were assigned the title of 'panditji' (educated priest). This public practice of recognising brahmans and their position of superiority was indicative of the widespread acceptance and prevalence of caste among the Indian community in Trinidad. People also usually preferred a brahman over a non-brahman for conducting religious ceremonies. Given the ceremonial authority that brahmans wielded, temples became a space for exercising power and demonstrating status in the community. Caste is, after all, a ritualised, ceremonial practice in the Indian Hindu caste order, which receives social sanction as a result of the influence of the shastras (holy texts), mainly the smritis. The caste origins of the many orthodox brahmans in Trinidad thus remain suspect. Though many claim that they can trace their ancestry through memories passed down from their grandfathers (aaja), their authenticity is not quite on a par with that of the brahman sramanas. Today those who claim a brahman identity in Trinidad face some hurdles in asserting a superior identity. In his pioneering study of Trinidadian caste formations, Colin Clarke noted that two prominent castes of brahmans were recorded on the island: Gosain brahmans and Maharaj brahmans. It was commonly accepted among brahmans that the former, who were considered hermits or ascetics, formed the highest caste. The Maharaj brahmans were dominant in the town of San Fernando, the most populous city on the island. Part of the reason for this is that Maharaj is not a subcaste of brahmans but a title that refers to royalty or the ruling class. Many socially mobile and aspirant Indians took this name in the hope of enhancing their status, and thereby ascended from non-brahman castes to brahman. That is why one could find a pork-eating Maharaj in Trinidad. A second reason for the number of brahmans in the biggest town of Trinidad could be related to the salience of class over caste in a modernising multiracial society. Clarke reports that families who graduated to the brahman caste regarded it as a 'secular' status quite distinct from that of the retrograde, ritualistic brahmans. An important part was played in the reproduction of caste in Trinidad by the Ramayana and other Puranic stories, which acquired a heightened value and significance among all believers. Ram became the Ram of everyone. As soon as the lower castes – the East Indian Trinidadians – started claiming positions of leadership by virtue of Ram – the lord of displaced nations – they became respected representative figures. Their understanding of Ram was informed by the writings and teachings of the accessible and egalitarian 15th-century mystic Kabir. One of the earliest Indian organisations to be formed in Trinidad was the Kabir Das Kendra, which represented Ram as a virtuous figure.


Hans India
an hour ago
- Hans India
Ban on cow slaughter demanded
Rajamahendravaram: A well-known social volunteer and founder of the Maatrurupini Seva Samstha Ajjarapu Haribabu has demanded a complete ban on cow slaughter and urged the government to protect Hindu temple properties. Addressing the media at Maatrurupini Seva Mandiram in Rajamahendravaram on Monday, Haribabu warned that he would launch an indefinite hunger strike if the government fails to issue an official response by July 10. Haribabu, who has been on a relay hunger strike for the past seven days, appealed to the government to immediately issue orders banning cow slaughter and take strict measures to prevent the illegal transportation of cows to slaughterhouses. He urged the authorities to establish shelters for cows to ensure their safety. He expressed anguish over the inhumane treatment of cows being packed into trucks and taken to slaughterhouses, resulting in severe injuries. 'Many cows suffer broken legs and are left in a helpless state,' he said. Suggesting a practical solution, Haribabu proposed that each district be allotted 30 acres of barren land for grazing and feeding cows. He suggested the need to link these shelters with veterinary hospitals to provide timely medical care. 'Cows are revered and worshipped, yet we lack seriousness in protecting them,' he lamented. Haribabu also called upon Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, who recently spoke about Sanatana Dharma, to take a stand on cow protection. He said that with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister, implementing a cow slaughter ban across the country is possible and should be prioritised. Haribabu further demanded that the state government include cow and bull symbols in its official emblem. Raising another critical issue, Haribabu urged the government to safeguard Hindu temple properties and reclaim those that have been encroached upon. He called for the enactment of strict laws to punish those involved in attacks on temples or assaults on priests and temple staff. He said that he had sent letters outlining these demands to the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister, and other ministers four months ago, but there has been no response. That is why he began the relay hunger strike on June 30, he explained. Desireddy Balarama Naidu, CH Krishna Shastri, Sripada Subrahmanyam, and other prominent figures were present at the meeting.