Why Are There Non-Hindu or Hindu Registers In The First Place?

I am intrigued to hear that a temple maintains a non Hindu register. Who has written what and where is not the question but why such a register is maintained in the first place is my basic doubt. I can understand as people will start justifying that in order to maintain some statistics, that how many people of other faiths have visited the temple needs to be recorded. Is it justified in the first place? Should it be done, is what my theme of today is?

I understand that a person from Rahul Gandhi’s team filled up the register on his behalf. He may not have seen the cover or the heading of the register. He may not be aware that such a register exists; he might be in a hurry and filled it in the first register he could lay his hands on to move on to the next appointment. I also can keep justifying the reasons why an entry in a non Hindu register was made and such arguments have no end. I don’t care which religion he belongs to by the way.

My next question is that in Rahul Gandhi’s entourage, how many people were there in all? How many security personnel were deployed and were moving alongside him for his safety and security in a place where God is supposed to exist and protect everyone. Was his entourage all Hindus or were there people from all castes, creeds and sects? How many people that accompanied made entries? If not, why not? Don’t they count as statistics? Doesn’t the temple keep count of all visitors?

We in the forces don’t believe in caste or creed, similarly, certain people in his security who would be from other religion or caste. Did anyone question why security people of certain caste enter the temple premises’ and make it unholy? Was the temple purified and sanctified after Rahul’s visit to bring it back to its normal state after the footsteps of “non Hindus” would have entered the temple. I am stretching my imagination too far for no reason it seems.

Be that as it may, I don’t understand in a house of God, irrespective of which religion it is, why is this discrimination? Is my God better than yours? Is my God holier than yours? Is my God more benevolent than yours? Are the teachings of my God not leading to the same path of finding inner peace? Are the preaching’s of kindness, love, affection and bonding of the human race not the same. If the answer to all these questions is more or less the same, then why this differentiation of Hindu and non Hindu register in the first place is eating me from inside.

I might be a practicing Hindu and visit a temple to find solace and blessings of the Gods or Goddesses as the case may be. I might be a Hindu who has visited this place earlier and have now besides the blessings come to admire the architecture of the area. I might be from a different religion and come to understand how the management works here etc. I might be an atheist who has just come to visit because I had to get one of my guests to visit during a sightseeing tour. I may just be a tour guide who has by hearted the history of this place and has refined the art of storytelling to tourists.

The same people who take you for a special darshan through the side door after keeping all the priests and pandas on their right side, are they not from the same religion? Besides making money, what do they achieve by converting this temple into a commercial place? It throws the basic ethos and sanctity of any religious place out of the window. The commercialisation has grown so much that the time and type of darshan are directly proportional to the number of notes and their denominations you are willing to shed. Let me just say that let us stop this “Dharam ki Thekedari”.

What hurt me most is the Non Hindu, Non Christian issue? Why do we have to divide our already divided country? Why have such registers in the first place anywhere? Even as an Indian or a foreigner, if I have to visit any holy place or shrine what is this business of non Hindu, non Christian, non Parsi, non Sikh. Yes, if there is a security issue then let all details be filled at the security gate and not in a visitors register kept inside the shrine to differentiate on basis of religion.

Unless our politics rises above and beyond the religion, which was quite evident on all the news channels yesterday, this country will be compartmentalised, broken, fructified, fractured, split, splintered, cracked, divided and the citizen taken advantage of. I hope “Vikas” (development) we talk about will not be subject to the type of register you make an entry in. If that be so then dear fellow countrymen, what do you want to be, a true Hindustani or a non xyz? I wonder!

(Lt Colonel Noel Ellis is retired from the Indian Army)