Now the Kerala government takes an initiative to sponsor conversion in the state in the name of evangelical tourism. In order to woo the church and foreign missionaries, the Kerala government decided to list Manarcaud St Mary'sCathedral in Kottayam as a pilgrim centre. This was announced by Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, Minister for Home and Tourism recently. The government believes that it has a responsibility to ensure sufficient infrastructure and facilities for the Christian missionaries engaged in conversion activities in the state. He laid the foundation stone for the pilgrims? quarters to be set up in the vicinity of the cathedral at a cost of Rs one crore and he will make sure that the sufficient state and central government grant is allocated for this project. The Finance Minister laments that the state treasury is empty. But such appeasing policies cannot wait, as it is their only agenda. The government also wilfully forgets that this same church gets huge amount of donations from within India and also from western countries. The whole site is well maintained with the help of dollars and pounds compared to temples in Kerala. Apart from looting the temples, the government forces the Hindus to contribute money generously for the development activities in and around the temples while the government would not dare to touch the money from a mosque or a church. Few instance of temple looting: The Kerala State Electricity Board charges Rs. 16 per unit in Sabarimala, whereas the normal rate is around Rs 4. The TDB has to foot a bill of Rs. 75 lakh for the police service; The Kerala Water Authority charges around Rs. 40 lakh. The health department bill is around Rs. 55 lakh for every season. The Dewaswom has to pay around Rs. 25 lakh to the sanitation society headed by the district collector for the cleaning work. The roads leading to Pampa are going to be built on BOT basis. That means new toll gates are going to come up, again to exploit the poor pilgrims. Even after this shameless looting, the state exchequer gets around Rs 250 crore as additional revenue from one Sabarimala season. Travancore Dewaswom Board was recently made to pay Rs. 6.5 crore as compensation for getting 110 hectares of forest land in Nilakkal to provide amenities to pilgrims. By shelling out this huge amount, the Dewaswom Board has today become almost bankrupt. The maintenance and developmental work at 1300 temples have been affected at least for the next three years. And to top it all, the so-called forest land handed over to the Dewaswom Board at Nilakkal is in fact plantation land. On the other hand, 58 acres of land has been leased out to the Malayattur Church for just Rs. 100 per year per acre. The Guruvayoor Dewaswom has decided to contribute Rs 24 crore from the temple funds for funding a drinking water project in 10 nearby panchayats. On the periphery, it sounds like a good idea. But note one thing. There are about 40 Christian churches and Muslim mosques in these 10 panchayats. Some of them like Chavakkad mosque have equal or more income than the Guruvayoor temple. But no one can touch even a single paisa offered at a mosque or a church, whereas temple money is used for general purposes according to the whims and fancies of its administrators. In another way, you can say that the money offered by a devotee in Guruvayoor temple will be utilised to provide water supply to the Chavakkad mosque! The fundamentalist Christians in Kottayam and fanatic Muslims in Malappuram were in the forefront in sabotaging the railway lines to Sabarimala and Guruvayoor respectively. The new policies of the Tourism Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan to commercialise the temples, irresponsible statements of Temple Minister Sudhakaran on Sabarimala and this present move to promote conversion in the name of evangelical tourism should be vehemently opposed by the Hindus all over the world, to prevent the extinction of Hindus from the land of Adi Sankara.
