Renowned authoress Pratibha Ray had carried a story of ‘servitor woe’ forty years ago when she had felt devastated as a personal friend from Pune was virtually bashed up by some awfully rude and greedy Jagannath Temple servitors while she was the guide and company.
The Pune lady had only refused to cough up big money as demanded by the crooks. Very strangely, again after years, another devotee family from Pune has suffered the same fate at the hands of some unruly, greedy servitors. The relatively young couple simply ignored the unreasonable demand for money and got beaten.
Pratibha Ray got active yet again and wrote a stinker like she did forty years ago. She wrote a strongly-worded article that the stain from ‘our typical religion’ has not been erased in all the years.
She exhorted all devotees to abandon the idea of temple entry and have a glance of lord ‘Patitapabana’ from outside as designed for the ones not allowed to enter the sacred inside for being ineligible for some crazy reasons.
Several reactions and responses poured in; and on a high voltage television talk show, a headless Daita servitor went on saying that Pratibha Ray had no right to persuade people not to enter the temple.
This small-minded servitor could not figure out the hurt feeling of devotees who are ill-treated and manhandled by violent servitors offending the Odia race for long.
This Daita fellow has to be brought to book for not feeling ashamed or apologising on behalf of the servitor community. His television act was shameful; and reports about the guy came in huge quantities.
He is now an hotelier and a politician who hardly has any time to devote to the service of the deities.
The Jagannth Temple has always been a famous Hindu shrine, but it became immensely popular only after ISKCON founder Prabhupada preached the Jagannath cult very effectively across the globe, particularly the Car Festival event.
But successive Odisha Governments did not look the temple way until an outwardly religious Janaki Ballav Patnaik became Chief Minister who got into the trap of some rogues and rascals and promoted them as principal servitors across the famous, the rich and the glitterati of India he knew.
He may have reaped some political dividends in the whole game, but he created a gang of servitors, most of them from the Daita community which is not even allowed to touch the deities on normal days.
This category of servitors have access to the deities only for one month in a year, between the Snan Purnima and Niladri Bije events, only to offer physical services of burden-bearing, nursing and massaging the deities when They fall ill after the grand bath.
The Daita community is never part of the ‘Panda’ class who are necessarily Brahmins by caste, and are strictly endogamous. If they marry outside the community, they are instantly outcast and lose the right to serve at the temple.
The Daita community is non-Brahmin and practise exogamy. They can marry in any caste and class except, maybe, Dalits and outside the Hindu fold. Interestingly, this community is most visible when their service begins, television cameras roll to cover the events in the open.
Thus, late Janaki Patnaik promoted the Daita community beyond limits; and a few of the cunning ones took undue advantage to pose as the servitors, some even presenting themselves as ‘Pandas’.
Most of the Daita guys until late were illiterate and without exposure to decency and etiquette due to lack of opportunity and poor status in the temple chores.
But the current generation boys have done extremely well. Some guys have educated themselves highly and are in respectable professions. Unfortunately, a thoroughly unworthy Daita servitor has managed to deceive authorities into believing that he is a knowledgeable one with great ideas. Somehow or the other, he has walked into the political domain and grabbed a position normally to be occupied by a truly-educated politician or a statesman or a person of eminence.
This guy was so brazen and bizarre in conduct that during the Nabakalebar quest for the ‘Daru’ trees, he posed in a theatrical attire to ape lord Vishnu relaxing on the rolled-up body of the divine serpent ‘Anant’, its majestic hood providing shade over the lord’s head.
When every act of the timber quest was expected to be a top secret affair, the half-literate Daita community had made a mockery and made loads of money by exposing every act and object to the public glare. Amusingly, the incumbent DGP, an established moron, fell at the theatrical Daita and lost his job.
More than all this, whenever Naveen Patnaik visits the great temple, this character sticks to the CM like a leech to the irritation of millions of conscious Hindus. Scripture masters say that bad omen would happen to the Chief if he is seen around with one who has no scruples or sense of ethics.
The objective here is not to malign the ignorant Daita. The anxiety is about whoever promoted him to this state. The promoter, if an unworthy fellow, is the sinner.
locals say the politician Daita servitor hasn’t even passed any graduation-level examination.
All this tale of worry and anxiety is to make clear to the general public that the Jagannath Temple, with all its cultural beauty, is a hugely-glorious heritage, over which the Odia race is basking perpetually but also suffering badly in the present times only because of the bitter experience with which pilgrims and devotees are going back with a vow never to return. That damages the Odia reputation and pride as well as kills the scope of religious tourism.
The incredibly popular and wealthy temple of lord Ballaji at Tirupati is known to the whole world for the discipline and order they have put in place for the devotees who not only are treated with respect but also given a free package of Prasadam.
All said and done, Madam Pratibha has always been right and, more so, now as she exhorts devotees to avoid going inside the temple only to agitate against the violently greedy servitors degrading the State’s reputation. NT Rama Rao had fixed the greedy (never violent) Tirupati servitors with one simple stroke: scrapping the hereditary rights of the servitors. The affected parties knocked at all doors of the judiciary but only to be hit back. The NTR decision was upheld as reasonable and logical in a modern democratic republic only because the ordinary people would benefit.
The Odisha Government too set up a temple reforms commission, but it seems the judicial luminaries have failed to appreciate the NTR stand which would have solved all problems.
*lastly, some talk of Odisha politics and administration. Dharmendra Pradhan, for sure, has no sense of the Constitutional spirit.
He cannot differentiate between the executive and the public administration as he is known to have studied a bit of anthropology with a routine degree in hand. But as he has become a Union Minister, arrogance seems to have crept into his head. He was a Bihari MP earlier, now one from MP.
But while speaking on home turf, he has to display power and supremacy no matter how farcically.
Thus, he forgot his stature and went berserk to talk crap at the NIC event. He tried in vain to belittle a federal administrator by making mad insinuations. The best deal would have been to ignore him.
After all, the poor Oil Minister is only struggling to prove he is still a force to reckon with, especially after the shameful defeat in Bijepur despite the insane promise to the bosses of limiting the margin within two thousand votes.
Hopefully, the wise IAS guys and girls would take note and write Dharmendra off their mind right away. Replacing him with Dharmendra Deol, husband of Hema Malini, would be great fun and relaxing!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)
