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When it comes to foreign trips, poets and priests can rind themselves in
the same predicament as politicians: in the eye of a storm. Though it
lasted a little more than a fortnight-and ended rather tamely-the
controversy this time was acerbic enough. The debate, on whether the Vedas
permit priests to cross the seas or not, followed the London visit in June
by priest Vishnu Narayanan Namboothiri of the Sree Vallabha temple in
Thiruvalla, central Kerala. The punishment, served by head priest
(thantri) Akkeeraman Kalidasan Bhattathiri on July 5, was prompt and
severe: Namboothiri couldn't conduct pooja at the temple till he underwent
a penance which included chanting the Gayatari mantra a thousand times and
undergoing the punaravarodha (reinstallation ceremony).
But Namboothiri, an acclaimed Malayalam poet and former English professor,
refused to bend, saying he had gone to London to present a paper on the
Vedas and that he had committed no sin. The argument snowballed, pitting
the head priest and the hawkish Temple Advisory Committee against
Namboothiri, who found sympathisers in the Government-controlled Travancore
Devaswom Board (TDB), which administers all the temples in the state, and
even the BJP. But it was soon clear whose way the battle was going when
the TDB suspended the officials who had executed the thantri's ban. Last
week, the head priest was made to dilute his stand-he did cleanse the
poet-priest of what he insisted on calling a sin, but just by sprinkling
him with holy water in the sanctum sanctorum.
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