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Re: ARTICLE : Who decided that all vaishnavs are not hindus?
Sankar Jayanarayanan <kartik@Eng.Auburn.EDU> writes:
>priest persisted and asked him what his caste was before he took to sannyasa.
>Vivekananda said that he was a Kshatriya. The priest told Vivekananda that only
>a Brahmin could enter the temple and that Vivekananda should pray to God in
>order to be born a Brahmin in his next birth.
I think even now in temples like Chidambaram and Guruvayur, only
Hindus are allowed to enter the inner parts of the temple. Since I lived
in chidambaram for a few years, I asked a few people what the reason was
especially since many shaivities (not all) believe that everything and
everyone is Brahman.
>A Shaivite saint from Tamilnadu was denied entry into a Shiva temple as he
>was not a Brahmin. The saint remained outside the temple and could not
>have darshan of the Lord because Nandi, who was directly facing the Lord, was
>blocking his view. Legend has it that Shiva then requested Nandi to move to one
>side so that the saint could have darshan. Nandi moved aside allowing the
>saint to behold Shiva. To this day, the Nandi in the temple remains slightly
>shifted from his usual position.
The person was not a saint before this happened :-) The person's
name is Nandanar (if I remember right). The temple is situated around
a couple of miles from the famous vaideeshvaran's koil in Tamilnadu.
The Nandi is shifted a few feet.
>In South India, until the nineteenth century, you had to be a *Brahmin* to enter
>many (or all?) temples, not just a Hindu. No Kahatriyas, vaishyas or shudras
>were allowed.
I am not sure whether this is correct since many kings built temples.
Are you saying that kings themselves were not allowed inside the temples ?
I find that hard to believe.
The only place I was asked whether I was a brahmin to enter a temple
is the sarasvati temple in Tamilnadu. Just because I was asked does not mean
I would have been denied entry otherwise. As is evident, there are extremely
few temples dedicated to Sarasvati.
>Pointing out such incidents is inapproriate and would be like pointing out that
>Christians were responsible for torturing Galileo and then concluding that
>Christians believe in torturing people who hold contrary beliefs.
Why is pointing out such incidents inappropriate ? Are we ashamed
to admit that differences based on caste, religion, race exist all over the
world despite all measures to the contrary ? Only attributing these crimes
to a few select people is wrong, because adharma will always exist, though it
may not truimph.
Giri
