July 1984
Importance of Religious Rites
Swarup, Ram
Man is a psychic being. He seeks
to praise, to adore, to invoke the invisible at every step. So we must
recognize the importance of worship in the life of an individual as well
as a nation. There is a constant interchange between men and gods. They
sustain and nourish each other, as the Gita says. It further adds that the
ayajna belongs neither to this world nor Ï the next.
The best
worship is the worship of the heart, but form and discipline in worship
are also important. Collective worship works for social vitality and
cohesiveness. Those who pray together stay together. Hence, all nations
have built temples of one kind or another for themselves.
Once the
Hindus had mighty temples and an active temple worship. But these
edifices, in the North, were systematically destroyed by the Muslim
invaders. In the South some of the temples still stand in their old glory,
but they are in a sad state of neglect. They lack the means of
self-sustenance. Even urgent repairs are not undertaken, and many of them
are not even properly dusted and cleaned. They were deprived of their
traditional revenues by the British rulers, and no suitable alternative
arrangements have yet been made.
India has acquired some sort of
independence, but its deeper spiritual life has yet to come into its own.
The new rulers carry on the old tradition of the alien predecessors and
discriminate against Hindu institutions. Hindus have yet to acquire a
government of their own. Thanks to a thousand years of exploitation by the
Muslims and the British, the Hindu society has become impoverished and has
fallen into a state of apathy, indifference and self-forget-fulness. Its
temples have fallen into disuse; and Ï its Gods are not properly attended
to.
Not only the temples, but the priests too have been neglected.
They have become illiterate and indigent. Consequently, they have lost in
self-esteem and social prestige. They may be the poorest and the most
neglected class among the Hindus.
Besides service in the temples,
priests in the past were needed for other functions as well. Hinduism
conceived life sacramentally. It invested everything secular with the
spiritual, individual with the cosmic, visible with the invisible. So all
events in life-birth, name-giving, wedding and death-were fortified with
the religion rites. All these functions needed trained priests. But in
their absence now these functions are being neglected, and Hindu society
is falling apart. The quality of Hindu life is suffering irreparable
damage.
We are happy to note that our brothers on the other side of
the globe in Hawaii, the monks of the Saiva Siddhanta Church, under the
leadership of His Holiness, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, have taken up this
matter in right earnest. They have taken up the question of the Saivite
priesthood, and their answer should hold good for all of us, whoever be
our Ishta Devata, our chosen Deity for worship. As one American Hindu
leader noted: "Hindu priests should be well paid so they are never
dependent on gifts. Training programs and community support are vital, for
today it is true that Hinduism can create a brave new
world."
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