Amid the opposition battling the “anti-Hindu” tag, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah’s remarks over some Hindu temples asking men to remove their shirt and wear an ‘angavastra’ has set off a new controversy. He recalled how he once refused to enter a temple in Kerala when he was asked to remove his shirt and called it an inhuman practice and an insult to god.
“I had once gone to a temple in Kerala, where they asked me to remove my shirt and enter. I told them I will not enter the temple and pray from outside. They were not asking everyone to remove their shirts, but just a few. This practice is inhumane… All are equal for god,” Siddaramaiah said during the celebrations for the 169th birth anniversary of social reformer Narayana Guru.
The opposition front, INDIA, has been in the eye of a storm since DMK leader Udayanidhi Stalin’s comments on Sanatana Dharma, which were followed by Karnataka home minister G Parameshwara’s remarks on the origins of Hinduism.
Several temples in south India require men to remove their shirt before going near the sanctum sanctorum. They can wear ‘angavastra’, which is a shoulder cloth or a stole-like cloth. Prominent temples like Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kuke Subramanya and Dharmasthala Manjunatha Swamy temples in Karnataka as well as Mantralayam Temple in Andhra Pradesh follow this practice.
The BJP hit out at Siddaramaiah and called this a continuation of his “anti-Hindu” stance. “The Congress has always been anti-Hindu; just to please a community they give such statements. When you go to temples in Kerala, you’re not supposed to wear shirts; that has been there for 1,000 years and we are following it. Some of the temples are now restricting jeans and shorts. Earlier, we would wear dhoti. So, there should be some dress code,” said PC Mohan, Bengaluru Central MP from the saffron camp.
During Siddaramiah’s first tenure as chief minister, the BJP had accused him of eating meat before visiting the Dharmasthala temple in 2017.
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