{"id":12128,"date":"2007-03-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/03\/06\/puri-temple-priests-purify-temple-following-non-hindu-s-entrance\/"},"modified":"2007-03-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-06T12:00:00","slug":"puri-temple-priests-purify-temple-following-non-hindu-s-entrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/03\/06\/puri-temple-priests-purify-temple-following-non-hindu-s-entrance\/","title":{"rendered":"Puri Temple Priests Purify Temple Following Non-Hindu&#8217;s Entrance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.timesofindia.com\">www.timesofindia.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">PURI, INDIA, March 3, 2007:  After more than 18 hours of debate, the food cooked for approximately 7,000 devotees at Puri&#8217;s Jagannath Temple was thrown away on Friday. A number of priests had insisted the prasadam (food blessed by the Deity) be discarded because it had been defiled by the entry of an American non-Hindu into the temple. The mahaprasad that went to waste was estimated to be worth around US$6,800.<\/p>\n<p>The throwing away of such a huge quantity of food coincided with police confirming that the US national, Paul Roediger, had managed to gain entry through a temple priest. On Thursday, priests suddenly noticed a white man near the sanctum sanctorum, infamous for barring entry to Thai princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People enter in groups and there is always the possibility of someone sneaking in,&#8221; said temple administrator, Suresh Mohapatra. Police detained Mr. Roediger, who is 59, for five hours for allegedly violating the age-old temple tradition which bars non-Hindus, especially those who consume &#8220;objectionable food,&#8221; from entering the shrine. Puri police said no case has been registered because there is no law under which Mr. Roediger can be charged. &#8220;Since there is no law to punish Roediger, the temple administration asked him to pay $5.00 for the mahasnana (purification ritual),&#8221; the police said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.timesofindia.com PURI, INDIA, March 3, 2007: After more than 18 hours of debate, the food cooked for approximately 7,000 devotees,&#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-12128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12128","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=12128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}