{"id":1849,"date":"2002-04-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-04-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/04\/06\/2002-04-06-lenasia-s-black-hindu-priest-breaks-myths\/"},"modified":"2002-04-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-04-06T12:00:00","slug":"2002-04-06-lenasia-s-black-hindu-priest-breaks-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/04\/06\/2002-04-06-lenasia-s-black-hindu-priest-breaks-myths\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenasia&#8217;s Black Hindu Priest Breaks Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.newsindia-times.com\/2002\/03\/29\/intl-sa.html\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>LENASIA, JOHANNESBURG, April 5, 2002: He used to be a devout Christian until curiosity took him to a Hindu temple in Lenasia town, 25 miles south of this South African city. Four years later, Meshack Jantjies, 35, is South Africa&#8217;s first black African Hindu priest. Not only does the deputy resident priest at the Siva Gnana Sabay temple have a large following, but with tremendous effort he is also mastering the Tamil language. Initially, Jantjies joined activities at the temple while working as a cleaner there. When his family joined him to live on the premises, he found more time to engage in deeper studies. &#8220;The resident priest then made me a tape which I listened to over and over. I learned to recite prayers from the &#8220;Thevaram&#8221; (collections of Tamil devotion songs) by doing that. I also joined the adult Tamil classes at the temple.&#8221; Two years ago, Jantjies was appointed the deputy resident priest. He has been fully accepted by the devotees. &#8220;When I stand before the people here and lead the prayers, I feel that I am with my own family,&#8221; said Jantjies. He goes to great pains to emphasize that he was not recruited or converted by anyone. &#8220;I was like a wild animal before joining the temple, and now I have found peace with myself. Jantjies now plans to make it his mission to break prevailing myths among other communities about worship at Hindu temples.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE LENASIA, JOHANNESBURG, April 5, 2002: He used to be a devout Christian until curiosity took him to,&#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-1849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849","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=1849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}