Tribal leaders and intellectuals have condemned the attempted ‘Brahmanisation’ at the historic Medaram fair site, where a laddu-making centre set up close to the temple complex was gutted in a minor fire incident on Tuesday noon.

Though the cause of the fire is not known, it had completely destroyed five other makeshift shops before fire brigade personnel managed to bring the fire under control.

However, the incident left the forest tribal leaders fuming after they learning that the laddu-centre, located at 200 metres of the main temple complex, was meant for selling the laddu prasadam to the devotees of Samakka-Saralmma at the rate of Rs.50 each.

This is said to be against the Samakka-Saralamma temple tradition as devotees are only known to offer jaggery (called as bangaram (gold) in local parlance) to the presiding tribal deities.

As per Medaram tradition, the devotees offer two-thirds of the jaggery to the deities while bringing back one third, which is distributed among their family and friends.

“The tribal tradition is different from what is normally practised in temples under the Hindu Brahmanical system. Our forest culture is different as we neither practise idol worship nor do we believe in offering laddus as prasadam at Medaram temple,” said S. Ramamurthy, senior leader of Tudum Debba (a group of forest tribals), who criticised the Endowment department.

According to Siddaboyana Surender, one of the 12 Medaram temple priests, the authorities permitted the gutted laddu-centre even though it was against their culture to offer laddus as prasadam. Interestingly, though the devotees offer two-thirds of their jaggery to the tribal deities, sources said the endowments department has not arranged either to sell them to the devotees directly or making free distribution of the same.

“It is the responsibility of the Medaram Temple Trust Board and the endowments department to see that there is no dilution of the tribal culture by ignorance of non-tribals or even by tribals for commercial reasons,” said tribal intellectual Prof. A. Seetaram Naik.

During 2010 Medaram jatara, tribal leaders expressed anger after some outsiders installed an idol of Doolmutti (said to be the mother of tribal deity Sammakka) in a makeshift temple outside the main temple complex and collected donation from the visiting devotees under the nose of the district administration officials.

Meanwhile, heavy rush of pilgrims during the pre-jatara season of Medaram-2012 in the last one month has already resulted in heavy collection to the endowments department in the form of donation.

Already, the endowments department has started counting of contents of 25 of the 30 large hundis (large yellow painted donation box) installed during pre-jatara.