{"id":2568,"date":"2002-11-13T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-11-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/11\/13\/2002-11-13-patna-s-mahavira-temple-accepts-dalit-priest\/"},"modified":"2002-11-13T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-11-13T12:00:00","slug":"2002-11-13-patna-s-mahavira-temple-accepts-dalit-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/11\/13\/2002-11-13-patna-s-mahavira-temple-accepts-dalit-priest\/","title":{"rendered":"Patna&#8217;s Mahavira Temple Accepts Dalit Priest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.ndtv.com\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>PATNA, INDIA, November 10, 2002: Patna&#8217;s Mahavira temple, one of the biggest temples in the country, is known for its break with tradition. Not only the traditional Brahmin priests but also Suryavanshi Das, a Dalit (&#8220;untouchable&#8221;), also performs religious rituals at the temple and has been a priest there for the past nine years. &#8220;We believe in equality among human beings. This temple is associated with the Ramanand community which believed and practiced nondiscrimination 700 years back,&#8221; says Kishore Kunal, administrator of the Mahavir Mandir Trust. Suryavanshi Das says, &#8220;I live here without any fear. There are no restrictions. I come here whenever I feel like. No one questions my work either.&#8221; Misconceptions and opposition to a Dalit priest from brahmins and religious leaders has now dissipated. &#8220;There was discrimination in the early days. It continued for a year or two but now there&#8217;s nothing like that at all,&#8221; says Suryavanshi Das. Since Suryavanshi has been accepted as priest, the temple authorities have now decided to increase the number of Dalit priests.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE PATNA, INDIA, November 10, 2002: Patna&#8217;s Mahavira temple, one of the biggest temples in the country, is,&#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-2568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568","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=2568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}