Baby Urinates in Temple, Priests Show True Colors

It sounds like a set up to a weak joke, “a lady is praying in a Buddhist temple when her baby pees.” However, priests at the Thrissur Hindu temple in the Indian state of Kerala didn’t find it funny when that very thing happened. The clerics decided that their temple had been desecrated and fined the six-month-old child’s parents 1,001 rupees. The $23 fine may not sound like much, but it represents 33% of father Amil Kumar’s gross monthly pay. Fortunately, the state government intervened and told the priests to forget about the fine. The whole episode raises the question, was it about the desecration or was it about the money?

Organized religion is a two-edged sword. It can provide a source of comfort and hope when people faced with life’s traumas need them. At the same time, it does tend to create a clerical class within societies that resembles the common leech more than angels. Indeed, many revolutions are anti-clerical because the clergy supports regimes like Louis XVI, Nicholas II, and the Chinese Imperial Family. Literature is replete with examples of fat priests of various religions – the implication always being the fat came from the bread that didn’t go to the men and women who worked for it.

Now, it is up to every faith to decide what is clean and unclean if it feels the need to make such distinctions. It is not for the Kensington Review, which is largely innocent of Hindu theology, to comment on whether a baby urinating in a temple requires a cleansing ceremony. The cleansing ritual here consists of a rag and some bleach, prayers optional. But the local BBC reporter, Sri Devi Pillai, said the Hindu temple felt the need for a ceremony, and his word is good enough.

However, just why does it require a third of a poor man’s monthly wage? K.C. Venugopal, Kerala state minister responsible for temple affairs, told the BBC. "If they want to conduct a cleansing ceremony, let the money be taken from the temple funds. It should not be taken from worshippers." Which begs the question of where the temple funds came from in the first place, but yes, why fine a poor man?

Not even the most rabid law-and-order type can argue that the fine would deter a baby from doing that at which babies excel. And while some could argue that the child should not have been in the temple if there was a concern about defiling the sacred grounds, surely no religion wants to turn away the young. So, was it a matter of purification or a matter of finance? The next time a baby pees in the temple, the priests can send the bill here, on condition that they admit that their primary motivation is financial.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home