Hyderabad: Poor salaries and unstable earnings are the reasons behind girls unwilling to marry priests. Priests recruited by the endowment department — Brahmins and those belonging to other castes — are paid between Rs 3,000 and Rs 6,000 per month.
Though some priests who work privately, and Veda pundits, earn Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 lakh per month, they find it difficult to get matches due to the profession.
The state has as many as 48,000 priests in the 625 big, 2,000 medium and nearly 5,000 small temples. Of them only 8,000 are Brahmins (Smartha, Vaidika, Madhba and Sri Vaishnava). The rest are from non-Brahmin communities like Jangam, Baijavarlu, Thammala, Chathada Sri Vaishnava etc.
Telangana Archakas’ Federation president Gangu Upendra Sharma said that priests from the other communities were getting matches as there was no gap in the ratio between men and women.
“In the Brahmin community, there is a huge difference in the ratio. As per our survey, there are nearly 5 lakh priests including Veda pundits in Telangana. About 2.5 lakh young priests are waiting to get married,” he said.
Manager of Dhanvantari Foundation V.S. Rao said that at several programmes held for Brahmin marriages by their organisation, it was observed most women were not interested in priests even if they earned well or had properties in prime localities.
“A priest in the city who is earning about Rs 1 lakh per month is still single due to girls showing no interest in them. They generally want the boy to be a software professional,” he said.
Mr Rao added that the ratio of Brahmin girls to boys in the two Telugu states was 1:3. “For filling this gap, we are planning to bring matches from North India. In some Northern states, there is a gap between Brahmin girls and boys at a 2:1 ratio,” he said.
