Narasimha Konda is a very famous temple dedicated to Lord Narasimha, the fourth avatar of Vishnu Bhagavan near the outskirts of Nellore. Eager to get the blessings of the Narasimha Bhagavan, I went along with my relatives living in Nellore during the month of December, 2015. The journey to the temple is quite pleasant - surrounded by mountains and green cultivation fields, its a pleasant drive away from all madness that tends to plague cities. Along the way, one of the Nellore Tanks was overflowing onto the roads.
Entrance
After travelling for more than 40 minutes, we finally reached the temple surroundings. Like any other Hindu temple, we found a couple of sadhus sitting near the entrance of the temple involved in deep conversations.
Getting past the gopura, we waded through a thick cloud of smoke. Looking around, we found a homa(होम) which must have ended within the past hour by looking at the homa pit.
Waiting for Darshan
To our disappointment, the main deity’s darshan was closed; More than a hour of waiting. Wondering what to do with the extra time we had on our hands, I decided to experiment with my new camera 😉. I climbed to the highest platform and treated myself to an excellent view of the pristine surroundings. Monkeys! That’s the first thing I see after climbing up…
My relatives explained to me that Nellore and its neighboring towns play host to a large monkey population; They manage to get inside houses and turn everything upside down while looking for things to eat. One of these monkeys sneaked into my friend’s apartment and threw her laptop down damaging it in the process! Is there insurance for damages caused by monkeys 😂? I was reminded of this when the monkeys started fighting each other and making violent noices.
Temple not maintained properly
There are only so many photos of monkeys one can take and I reached that limit pretty quickly. We decided to walk about the temple premises and see how things are; I began to notice how untidy the entire place was. There were plastic cups, plates and food spilled near the steps located near the umbrella (Its the photo you see at the beginning).
This is not something new to me. Since my childhood, I have gone along(not willingly always) with my parents to a number of temples and have seen many folks throwing away plastic covers, empty water bottles and just about any shit they can inside temples without a second thought. We also found an entire compound of garbage located close to the murthis. I cannot fathom the mind that decided to keep shit right next to murthis that we revere and pray
Its like keeping shit on your plate right next to your food. Would you do that? I don’t think I can. I squarely blame the current education system which causes apathy and disregard for cleanliness in the public spaces such as roads. But throwing shit inside sacred places such as temples is just beyond comprehension.
Swachh Bharat ?
Our prime minister Narendra Modi(2014) talks about Swachh Bharat(which means “Clean India”) and the importance of cleanliness and some people believe its not working. But shouldn’t education start at temples which Hindus frequent ? (Note: I am explicitly not mentioning other religions because, I don’t want to divert our focus from Hindu temples and places we hold sacred).
Instead of placing ads on tv motivating people not to litter, imparting education/information within religious places could play a very important role in providing impetus to the movement. You could educate people by placing boards with textual messages in various places around such buildings reminding them the importance of cleanliness (And please, no images of politicians or for that matter anybody on such boards).
I also think it is high time to implement fines to discourage folks from littering/spitting inside temple premises. While this is very difficult to implement in public places, it is easy to execute such measures within Hindu temples/buildings because they are manageable using a couple of cctvs and a dedicated team of members.
TLDR;
- Use Hindu temples to educate citizens about the importance of cleanliness and encourage them not to litter.
- Implement fines and penalizing measures to discourage folks from littering in temples.
- Define a framework which can be easily customized and implemented across various temples. Make the data public(through a website/mobile app) so that you have many more eyeballs monitoring the entire system and contribute to improve its efficiency and efficacy.
Summary
Unless people stop littering in sacred places such as temples, you can never have Swachh Bharat.
