“The days of the Endowments Act are numbered and it is bound to be scrapped by courts even if it is not repealed by the government. Then, lakhs of temples in the country will be freed from the clutches of the government,” BJP leader Subramanyam Swamy has said.
Delivering the keynote address at a seminar on ‘Repeal of Endowments Act’ organised here on Saturday by the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation as part of its ‘save temples mission’, Dr. Subramanyam Swamy said that when the Tamil Nadu Government sought to take over the Chidambaram temple, he had moved the Supreme Court.
“In a landmark judgment, the court had prevented the Tamil Nadu Government from taking over the temple and restored it to the hereditary trustees, the Dikshitars.”
“I think that verdict will be applicable to all temples,” he said.
Ghazal Srinivas, the brand ambassador for the mission, conducted the proceedings.
“In the past, temples used to be community centres and they should be used to bring about Hindu renaissance,” he said. “Thousands of acres of temple lands had been alienated and properties of temples, gifted by donors, destroyed,” Swami Swaroopanandendra Saraswati of Sarada Peetham said, decrying the government’s control over temples.
“The government is adopting selective secularism by keeping temples under its stranglehold and letting others alone,” he said.
President of Global Hindu Heritage Foundation V.V. Prakash Rao spoke.
Earlier, a ‘Walk for sacred cow’ was organised on the Beach Road in which Dr. Swamy and Swami Swaroopanandendra Saraswati, among others, participated.
