The Freethought Party of India (FPI) has urged Puri Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb to abdicate his title of Gajapati and stop the custom of Chheraphanra in the chariots during the Rath Yatra as the first servitor of the lords.
The FPI in a release said that this would facilitate end of feudal practices in the Jagannath temple and all people, irrespective of caste and creed, who want to pay obeisance to the lords can have easy access to the Puri temple.
It further said that Dibyasingha Deb having been educated in the West can do a lot like great reformers, Abraham lincoln, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandel etc to abolish casteism and other medieval thinking and practices in Odisha and act as a trendsetter for the whole of India.