Last week I told you that there are more temples and religious places than schools in India. I have also written many times that India is a religious place and this is how it shows and is expressed.
All over India, also here in Vrindavan, people like to establish temples and small ‘places of God’ everywhere where people get together. Of course public places like squares and road crossings are not excluded from that. Wherever there is a bigger crossing or a square with a tree, someone brings a statue, puts it under the tree, puts some flowers in front of the statue and starts a ritual – another temple has been created. In the course of time they add a little house around the statue, put up an altar in front of it, make another little chamber next to it and make this place bigger and bigger. Nobody asked anybody about a permission to build this place, no building permit and not any plan had been made before.
In this way so many such places have been created and as India is a religious country, even the government feels that they cannot just remove such small temples again because they were built without permission. They are after all places of God.
The government really got into a kind of problem because of this way of building temples. They want to make the road wider and make their squares bigger but there, where once was space for a road, is now a temple! Even the government does not dare to remove a place of God. People started taking big advantages of this, building even full houses and, declaring them as temples, in this way illegally possess land which actually belongs to the government. The government gave orders to remove some of such places but as they are temples and places of worship, the opinion of the population is very strong about this: you cannot touch a place of God. So each time when they actually do this, people feel insulted. Does God really need a place to live in which can be measured in square meters? No, God doesn’t want to own a house or a temple. It is the greed of people who want to own land – and if they can possess it on the name of God, they do.
The result is a rule passed by the Supreme Court: in public places you are not anymore allowed to build religious places. I hope they will also enforce this rule and not let people take illegal possession of land anymore on the name of religion.
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This is very Indian! They would rather build everything around the temple than just breaking it down and shifting it anywhere else! It is funny for us but for people who are religious and believe in this all, it is very important that the government does not touch their temples. It makes them also happy with politicians and ready to vote for them 😉
The problem is that proper street planning and organization is missing. If there were proper building departments controlling the area, so that new buildings can only be built by permission, this could not happen.Of course, you may say India does not have enough money for such expensive surveillance but they would actually save money: people are stealing their land! The government could get more of the land if they kept illegal land possessors under observance and kept their roads clean and rented their fields out where people start building illegal houses on.
They just need more organization
Oh my God, is this a picture of the Parikrama? The crossing up the road of your Ashram Swami Ji? How much has changed! They tore down the whole building and wall to the right?But I can see, they left that temple thing standing! Really funny!
Dear Marlene,Yes, that is the Parikrama Marg. They are actually making the road broader and nicer and it will be really nice in the end – but all those little temples will stay and some trees, too, nearly in the middle of the road.
Will be nice to meet you some day at the Ashram in Vrindavan again!
Much love!