TIRUVALLA: Vishnunarayanan Namboothiri, who passed away on Thursday, was also known for his stern stand. In July 1997 when he was a priest of the Sree Vallabha temple at Tiruvalla, he was asked to undergo a ‘punishment’ for crossing the seas to visit London.
The argument was that the Vedas did not permit the temple priests to cross the seas. The punishment, decided by the thantri (head priest), said Namboothiri can’t conduct poojas at the temple till he do penance, which included chanting the Gayatri mantra a thousand times and undergoing the punaravarodha (reinstallation) ceremony.
Namboothiri, then aged 58, stood firm saying he had gone to London to present a paper on the Vedas, and that he had committed no sin. The controversy raged with Namboothiri pitted against the thantri and the Temple Advisory Committee. But he got support from the government-controlled Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) and even the BJP leadership.
The tussle came to an end when the TDB suspended the officials who executed the thantri’s ban. Later, the thantri was forced to dilute his stand. He ‘cleansed’ the poet-priest of the ‘sin’ by just sprinkling holy water in the sanctum sanctorum.