{"id":5533,"date":"2005-09-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2005\/09\/06\/2005-09-06-from-inmate-to-priest\/"},"modified":"2005-09-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-06T12:00:00","slug":"2005-09-06-from-inmate-to-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2005\/09\/06\/2005-09-06-from-inmate-to-priest\/","title":{"rendered":"From Inmate to Priest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\">Indo-Asian News Service<\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">BHOPAL, INDIA, August 14, 2005:  When 50-year-old Dinesh Tiwari is released from prison in four years, he hopes to find employment as a priest in a temple.  The Madhya Pradesh government has instituted a program whereby brahmin Hindu inmates are trained in religious rituals as part of their rehabilitation program.  Every morning a Hindu organization called the Gaayatri Shakti Peeth holds classes for about 60 prisoners who are taught religious rites and hymns in Sankrit. Shyam Sharma, a member of Gaayatri Shakti Peeth, says, &#8220;When the inmates are free they will be eligible to get a job in a temple or perform puja in homes.&#8221;  Sharma hopes that the prisoners will become good priests and avoid crime when they are released. Tiwari realizes that there will be obstacles and says, &#8220;Why would people or temples want to hire us when we have served a term in prison?  But our job is to make an attempt and we will try.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indo-Asian News Service BHOPAL, INDIA, August 14, 2005: When 50-year-old Dinesh Tiwari is released from prison in four years, he,&#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-5533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533","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=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}