{"id":11193,"date":"2012-07-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/07\/22\/the-bjp-govt-had-planned-pujas-in-34000-temples-to-appease-rain-gods\/"},"modified":"2012-07-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T12:00:00","slug":"the-bjp-govt-had-planned-pujas-in-34000-temples-to-appease-rain-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/07\/22\/the-bjp-govt-had-planned-pujas-in-34000-temples-to-appease-rain-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"The BJP Govt. Had Planned Pujas In 34,000 Temples to Appease Rain Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indiatoday.intoday.in\/story\/faced-with-drought-karnataka-sets-aside-rs-17-crore-for-prayers-and-yagnas\/1\/209380.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BANGALORE, NDIA, July 20, 2012 (India Today): The Karnataka government has decided to spend US$3 million to ensure that the state does not face a drought this year. However, the money is not being spent on drought-proofing measures, rather the government is handing out this amount for &#8220;special prayers and yagnas&#8221; to invoke the rain Gods. According to the government circular, each of the 34,000 Hindu temples under the purview of the department of religious endowments have to perform special yagnas &#8212; Varuna Homa and Jala Abhisheka &#8212; on July 27 and August 2 as the two days are considered auspicious. The government will grant between US$36 to $90 to each temple.<\/p>\n<p>The opposition party leaders, who were able to grab a copy of the circular issued by the department of religious endowments, criticized the minister concerned for pushing &#8220;superstition&#8221;. &#8220;We agree that divine intervention is needed at every level. The state is facing a severe drought. All of us will join the BJP leaders in praying for the Almighty&#8217;s intervention. But spending US$3 million for the same is ridiculous. The government can utilise the same money for long-term drought proofing measures,&#8221; pointed out Janata Dal (Secular) leader H D Revanna. Following widespread criticism, the government agreed to review its order. [HPI note: similar prayers at temples have worked just fine in the past elsewhere in India.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source BANGALORE, NDIA, July 20, 2012 (India Today): The Karnataka government has decided to spend US$3 million to ensure that,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}