Author: Faizan Ahmad
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 12, 2007
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Now_an_all-Dalit_temple_trust_at_Hilsa/articleshow/2274696.cms
The affairs of the 300-year-old Khaki Baba
Ram Janki Thakurbari at Hilsa will now be managed by an all-Dalit trust. Bihar
State Board of Religious Trusts administrator Kishore Kunal said it would
be country's first all Dalit trust of any temple.
Kunal, who has launched a campaign to install
Dalit priests in important temples with the consent of the worshippers and
Hindu society as a whole, said the suggestion for all-Dalit trust, coming
from the mandir mahant and the local population, showed people have started
shunning the age-old practice of non-touchability.
The trust has been constituted with a local
school teacher hailing from Paswan caste as head and all its members
are Dalits belonging to castes like Ravidas, Chamar, Rajak and others, Kunal
told TOI on Saturday.
He said he went to that temple to inquire
into the complaints of illegal selling of temple land. He found that during
the last several years, 26 acres of land were sold in two phases. The temple
is now left with 13 acres of land and legal procedures have been initiated
to get back the sold land.
Kunal, who is busy giving final touches to
his second volume of his 1500-page work "Dalit Devo Bhava", has
made it a point to install Dalit priests in temples.
He said at about half a dozen temples Dalit
priests are leading prayers. "I have installed Dalit priests at temples
in Hajipur, Bihta, Paliganj, Begusarai and other places with Vedic rituals,
and, after convincing the people," said the former IPS officer.
He blamed the so-called dharma gurus of keeping
the "Shudras" away from temples for over 2000 years while the holy
scriptures preached otherwise.
