The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court(MHC) has made a controversial observation that building a church beside a temple will only encourage communal harmony. It made the observation while hearing a petition filed against building a church near a temple in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu.
Bhaskar, an activist, filed a petition in the Madurai Bench of MHC against building a church near a temple in Kayamozhi village in Thoothukudi district. A Dinamalar report says his plea read, “Hindus live in majority in Kayamozhi village. Many Christian teachers from other places have rented houses in the village. They have converted a few villagers to Christianity”.
“Now they are building a church near the village temple of Oor Kaatha Sami. If the church is built there it will lead to disturbance of peace and law and order issues. So the court should direct the authorities not to grant permission to build the church near the temple”.
The petition was heard by judges SS Sundar and T Bharatha Chakravarthy. They said, “What is problematic in building a church on private property? Everyone has all the rights. Building a church near a temple will only encourage communal harmony” and dismissed the petition. This observation has invited widespread criticism from Hindu activists as evangelists use this method to harass templegoers and lure more people into Christianity.
Hindu Munnani which has been at the forefront of fighting against illegal churches and prayer houses in Southern Tamil Nadu has questioned whether the judges took the recommendations of the Venugopal Commission and other verdicts in similar cases before making such an observation. The Venugopal Commission was constituted following a Christian-initiated riot in Kanyakumari district in 1982. It suggested that no new place of worship should be allowed to come up within 400m range of an already existing place of worship.
In June 2020, Christians opposed a Bharat Mata statue being installed in an already existing temple. A Christian group, the All India Christian Development Army (AICDA), demanded that the Bharat Mata statue should be removed as it would disturb communal harmony, quoting the recommendations of the Venugopal Commission. Its President said, “What is the purpose of installing such a statue on the compound wall of the road which is widely used by the public, especially during the lockdown? (it is said that Christians walk through the road to the churches)”.
With such fanatics not even allowing a statue to be placed in a temple once they become the majority, Hindus are supposed to tolerate churches being built near temples in an apparent attempt to provoke. In another instance, the church located near the famous Mandaikadu Bhagavathi Amman temple had collected rent from shopkeepers who had set up shops during the annual temple festival. This same church was behind inciting Christians to riot against Hindus during the same festival in 1982.
If not at the same level, Thoothukudi district has also been evangelised to the point that Christians might become the majority a few years down the line. The church-led anti-Sterlite and anti-Kudankulam protests showed the church’s clout in the district. There have been many incidents in which evangelists ‘planted churches’ by obtaining permission to build houses in areas where no Christians were living. Without taking such incidents and ground reality into consideration, the Madurai bench has made the observation that “building a church near a temple will encourage communal harmony”.
It is not at all surprising as another judge of the MHC, Anand Venkatesh had said that “the best course of action will be to close down such Temples so that peace and normalcy is restored in the locality. It is a paradox that closure of a Temple actually leads to peace”, while hearing a petition which sought to resolve a temple issue. When the judiciary has such a ‘secular’ view of the world, such observations are perhaps to be expected?
