Thursday, July 12, 2007

The temples of Southern India -Churche of western Europe

I was born in a small village in tamilnadu in india,the city of temples ,the land of cholas and pallavas.Almost in every village,town and city you find a soaring structure well walled with rock structures ,Gopurams as we call them in tamil,Each temple will carry a distinctive history to itself ,The Temple of Tanjore the lone granite stone temple with the biggest linga rupam as you can get,the vast temple of meenakshi madurai ,to the 1000 pillars temple in chidambaram to the water of nine wells in Rameshwaram they are all architectural marvels,just mind blowing structures built in ages where a chisel and hammer was all what was at man's disposal.
Many of those sights are now deemed as archealogical tresures and major tourist destinations and provide with such income the govt as well but slolwy fading away is the majesty of such creations and their history,What grandfather knew about the temples and their history is not even half known to me,then with this hectic life and western domination i am afraid the next generation will be completely oblivion to the history of these temples and their importance.

There are thousands of channels in India showing us all unnecessary prime time programs like Kyon ki Saas... Selvi.... Pelli chesukundam soaps which are not helping or aiding any cause ,if a channel like national gegraphic which does not in anyway related to indianess are keen on these tetmple histories why not we .......Slowly but surerly Indian culture / hinduism is losing its charm with lazy interpretations ,i do not remember an major renovations happening any where

On the other hand,with coffer full of money and an eye on the heritage the christian community,should i say eurpean community has a strong feature going on where they protect these old chruches of theirs as a heritage ,can say national heritage,what all i see back home is a policeman / gaurd holding a stick and sacring the living hell out of the people who come as close squareleg umpire to a batsman to the statues,here there are no such scenes,but still people are much more knowledgeable,they do not unnecessarily damage / cause any irritation to the public behind,the major reason behind this behaviour as i see it is not the basic naure of the people,i firmly believe that people are the same every where it is they way they grow up determines their behaviour,it is the senitization evoked by governments ,religious organizations ,studies that has led to this behaviour,also to an extent the richeness and lack of population.

With a better organized plan Indian / Tamilnadu can make its temples a steady source of income and pool of knowledge from which the future generation can drink heritage and culture of the ancient times.Also people can be sensitized with better educating them about the imporatance of these structures,hoping that these things in place would help the secodn generation from now to have a look at these gothic archtectural marvels standing for real instead of the photos by their predecessors

1 comment: