{"id":7929,"date":"2009-06-19T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/06\/19\/a-debate-on-subsidized-pilgrimages\/"},"modified":"2009-06-19T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T12:00:00","slug":"a-debate-on-subsidized-pilgrimages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/06\/19\/a-debate-on-subsidized-pilgrimages\/","title":{"rendered":"A Debate on Subsidized Pilgrimages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livemint.com\/2009\/06\/17234202\/Populism-takes-pilgrimage-path.html?h=B\">www.livemint.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BANGALORE\/MUMBAI\/HYDERABAD, INDIA, June 18, 2009: In a country proud to be secular, there is increasing debate about government subsidization of religious pilgrimages.<\/p>\n<p>Karnataka&#8217;s Bharatiya Janata Party government proposes to set aside US$210,000 to subsidize pilgrimages for Hindus. In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress party-led government is subsidizing the cost of travel for Christians visiting Jerusalem. Last year the Union government spent an estimated US$14 million on the Haj subsidy for Muslims to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, and also subsidized a part of the cost of the annual Hindu pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet.<\/p>\n<p>At the heart of the debate is what it means to be a secular state&#8211;should the government be involved in all religions equally or in none at all in a country where Hindus comprise about 80% of the population, Muslims around 13% and Christians 3%?<\/p>\n<p>Rama Jois, former chief justice of the Karnataka high court and author of a special report on government presence in temples and temple trusts, says the idea of a secular government subsidizing religious travel is a dangerous one. &#8220;Although it is not unconstitutional for a secular state to subsidize religious travel for citizens, it must be done equally for all. But then the question is about what is equal.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: www.livemint.com BANGALORE\/MUMBAI\/HYDERABAD, INDIA, June 18, 2009: In a country proud to be secular, there is increasing debate about government,&#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-7929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7929","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=7929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}