Tirupati laddu row: BJP's silence on controversy contrasts with public statements by RSS, VHP over temple ownership

New Delhi: The Tirupati laddu controversy, which has seen two key NDA constituents, Andhra chief minister and Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu as well as Jana Sena chief and deputy CM Pawan Kalyan take centrestage, has been marked by the silence of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The BJP’s conspicuous silence on the Tirupati laddu issue, goaded by the compulsions of alliance politics, is partly on account of the party not wanting to get embroiled in the issue of government’s control in temple management.

Several BJP leaders said that the controversy has been handled well by Naidu as well as Kalyan, and since the matter is in court, any comment from the BJP might not be taken well, or might land the party in trouble. “The matter is now sub-judice, and so anything we say will prove to be detrimental to the party,” a senior spokesperson said.

The BJP has typically been a supporter of the idea that temples should be free of government control. But after the change of the government in Andhra Pradesh, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the governing body of the temple, has as members some BJP leaders, which is a change from the position that the party has taken in the past.

For instance, the Punjab unit of the BJP, in a letter to CM Bhagwant Mann in January this year, demanded that Hindu places of worship be freed of government control. BJP state unit vice-president Subhash Sharma wrote a letter to Mann. In 2021, the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP, in its manifesto for the state Assembly elections promised to hand over the control of temples to religious leaders. The manifesto was released by union minister Nitin Gadkari and endorsed by prime minister Narendra Modi on X.

Recently, RSS-affiliate Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded that governments leave temples to communities, a demand it has echoed in the last several times in the last few decades. In a meeting of its Kendriya Margadarshak Mandal met at Tirupati on September 23 which convened in light of the controversy, the VHP passed a resolution that they viewed the incident as “a direct result of Government interference in temple affairs”.

“... the appointment of individuals from other faiths to positions of authority within temple management … Such actions erode the autonomy of Hindu religious institutions and create a sense of distrust among devotees. We demand that the State Governments immediately cease their control over Hindu temples and allow Hindu society to manage its own religious institutions,” the resolution read.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, too, has made similar demands. In 1959, it passed the first resolution demanding the freeing of temples from government control. In its latest issue, RSS mouthpiece Organiser has once again endorsed this view. “The RSS does not endorse or comment on every view or stand of the BJP because they act politically, which is not our mandate. But the fact remains that this is a violation of Article 25 of the Constitution,” an RSS leader said.