Bengaluru: Calling the practice of denying women and people of a certain caste entry into temples "inhuman," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday instructed the muzrai department to ensure that everyone irrespective of their caste, colour or creed were allowed into them.
Mr Siddaramaiah ,who was inaugurating a state level convention of archakas here, said although there were no such restrictions on temple entry in Bengaluru, it should not happen anywhere at any cost. "Our government's endeavour is to ensure that entry into temples is not denied to anyone since all are equal before God," he added, emphasising that such a practice would not be tolerated in Karnataka. "Such practices should not be supported by any government. Unfortunately, vested interests are creating divisions in society," he regretted, asserting that humaneness was more important than religion , and discrimination of any sort was detrimental to peaceful co-existence in society
Reiterating that he was not an atheist, he said while he did not go in search of temples for darshan of their deities, he made it a point to go to them when he happened to be in their respective towns. For instance he went to the Chamundeshwari Temple while in Mysuru, the Sri Male Mahadeshwara Temple while in Kollegal and the Sri Venkateshwara Temple while in Tirupathi.
"I am a strong believer in the theory of one God, many names. To me God is everywhere. No one has said secularists must forget their religion, but we must learn to respect all religions without believing that only ours is supreme and the others are not," he stressed.
Admitting that the living conditions of archakas had become difficult after the abolition of inam land, Mr Siddaramaiah said the state government was considering hiking the monthly tastik of archaks to Rs 7500 a month to ensure they made a decent living.
While admitting that he was not supposed to make any new announcements in view of the elections to the Legislative Council from the South East Teachers' constituency in view of the poll code in force, he said his government would take a call on hiking the tastik amount to Rs 50000 a year from the current Rs 36,000.
