The Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments(TN HRCE) Board, trusted with the protection of temples, has vandalised a temple sculpture to install a CCTV camera. After much outrage and BJP taking up the issue, the CCTV camera was removed, and the sculpture of Dwarapalaka was hastily restored.

HRCE was installing new CCTV cameras in Thiruvannamalai Arunachaleswarar temple on the occasion of Karthigai Deepam to monitor devotees. Karthigai Deepam is the important festival of the temple. Lakhs of devotees throng the temple on the day of Karthigai Deepam and the following days to get darshan and perform circumambulation of the hill. HRCE planned to add more CCTV cameras to monitor the crowd, a good thing considering the devotee influx.

But in the process, workers broke the face of a centuries-old sculpture of Dwarapalaka on the 70ft temple tower to mount one of the cameras. Vishwa Hindu Parishad members among the devotees found the broken face and shared it on social media to expose HRCE’s apathy towards Hindu heritage and beliefs. They also took up the matter with the HRCE officials.

TN BJP President K Annamalai issued a statement condemning HRCE’s action, accusing the DMK government of trying to impose their ideology on temples and mathas. The statement read, “A camera was nailed to the face of a deity because atheists are managing the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department. No one in their right mind would do this. This is a planned action of the DMK as they want to please the minority by creating issues for the majority. Who is going to take responsibility for this vandalism?”.

It further said, “Ancient jewellery and ornaments of deities are being melted and turned into gold bars, paving the way for corruption. The DMK is continuously disrespecting spiritual beliefs. It will neither be forgiven by the people nor the gods. The training duration for temple priests has been reduced to a year from five years and it is condemnable”. As the issue escalated, HRCE removed the specific camera and hurried to replace the face of the desecrated sculpture in a day.

But the historical importance of the sculpture is lost and cannot be recovered. Disregarding the heritage and historicity of temples appears to be a qualification to become an officer of HRCE. This is not the first time temples have been subjected to such indifference. In the video shared by temple activist TR Ramesh, it can be seen how the heritage temples older than 1000 years are being destroyed to satisfy the greed of civil servants and the government with blatant disregard for Hindu beliefs.

This disregard for heritage has another sinister agenda of destroying Hindu history. On more than one occasion, HRCE was found damaging inscriptions in temples to accommodate new constructions. The anti-Hindu DMK government, to the call for freeing temples from government control, responded that kings built temples and the secular state, as the ruling establishment, has the right to control them now.

But, while kings ran their kingdoms as Hindu states, endowed land, jewellery, cattle, etc, on temples to establish an ecosystem around it, the secular state had destroyed that ecosystem and is out to destroy their historicity as well. As such, the secular state, whichever party is in power, should be treated as an enemy of Hindu interests when it comes to temple administration.