BENGALURU: Taking a dig at the Sri Kalikamba Seva Samithi in Mandya for approaching the court with a plea that allowing slum adjacent to the temple will affect the sanctity and serenity of the temple, the Karnataka High Court rejected the petition with an observation that such a contention projected by the Temple Samithi is wholly untenable.
Equality does not admit gradations of worth; it encompasses the entirety of our citizenry, it said. “The sanctity of a temple is not so fragile as to be endangered by the presence of the creator’s children who, by accident of circumstance, live modestly beside it. To suggest otherwise is to deny the very universality that our Constitution professes,” Justice M Nagaprasanna observed.
The court made these observations while dismissing the review petition filed by Sri Kalikamba Seva Samithi of Mandya and a petition filed by devotees questioning the notification issued by the Deputy Commissioner in 2018 for acquiring the land in question for the construction of houses for slum dwellers following the compromise deed entered into by the Samithi of the temple and the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board.
The temple argued that samithi that the coexistence of the temple and the slum together will affect the religious feelings of a large number of devotees, which is a violation of Article 29.
The court observed that what deeply wounds the conscience of the court is the contentions advanced by the Samithi. The contention proclaims that slum dwellers are lesser beings, bereft of the right to devotion, the right to shelter and the right to dwell beside a place of worship. Such an assertion, in this enlightened age, is appalling.
The notion that the divine aura of a temple could be diminished by the proximity of humble homes is sullied by the entry of a slum dweller, which bespeaks a mindset steeped in prejudice and exclusion. This court cannot but observe that such a stance is an attempt to rend society asunder along the lines of caste, class or creed, the court added.