[pic: kapaleeswarar.com]
Yesterday, I spent a warm evening at the Mylapore Kapaleeswarar Temple. This is the first time I had been to the temple since the consecration happened on August 30th 2004. To visit a temple within the first forty days of its consecration is tantamount to performing a Ashwamedha Yaga. I missed it anyway. Mylapore still remains/will remain to be the center of spiritual chennai. Not much has changed around the temple except for the new bhavans and hotels that have mushroomed. However, the roadside shop near the theradi still gives away tasty bajjis of all types.
After the kumbhabishekam, the gopurams glitter in the twilight with the backdrop of a bluish sky. Couldn’t take a shot as I didn’t have my digital camera. Usually I love the gopurams that have lost their paints which give them a antique look and re-itrating that truth stands tall over time. However, this mylapore temple has one of the finest gopurams in the city and I did bask that same pleasure even with the finest of paints.
That new red neon board fixed in the middle of the gopuram said, Anbe Sivam. Wow !! It meant a world to me. For Hinduism, isn’t to be seen as a religion. Its a way of life. Anbe Sivam is a much profound explanation to that definition. The ideology of Shiva, the theology of Hinduism all encompassed in just two words.
Inside the temple, near the sanctum sanctorum, the white cardboard read, Non-Hindus Not Allowed. Ah!! Red alert. With all that Anbe Sivam philosophy up the gopurams, this board with just a few feet away contradicts. It hurts. This is the second time I’m boring this over in the blog. The last time I vented this out was while I had been to the Madurai Temple. Why wouldn’t this be taken out may be a question to the believers who have understood the Hindu school of thought.
kirukkal.com 
9 responses to “Contradicting Anbe Sivam”
Good point, LG.
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This is not meant to religious war on LG’s blg 🙂 The last time I saw the same kinda board was in the Varadarajar temple in Kanchipuram. Woefully, I had gone inside with my Muslim friend and he gracefully declined to enter into the temple. He said, “Lets follow ideologies”. That was definitely a moment of my life I wish to forget. Though, the purpose of the visit is to go to the temple, I didnt enter the temple too. Where there is no place for humans, how can you find god there!!
Today, in the same Varadarajar temple, blood flows.. In all, Anbe Sivam and burn those boards!!
PS: Nice to find souls who took note of this!!
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The same with Tirupathi. Foreigners, need to sign a decleration that they believe in hinduism before they can be allowed inside the sanctum!
But there is no option for non-hindu Indians to go to Tirupathi…what a pity!
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Totally Agree! Sankaracharya has already preached about the futility of it.I dont need to reiterate.
Funny thing is that the last time I visited the Kapaleeswar temple I was being chased by some people and had hurriedly got into an auto.This was because the fellow who was keeping the “chappals” was charging something rs.200 instead of Rs.2 to a foreigner.I politely told the foreigner the price and he left thanking.Then the chappal stand owner started cursing me and called in his other friends presumably to beat me up.Luckily my reflexes worked and had to run and got into the auto to save the beatings..Point here being that everybody should be the same in such a holy place.Foreigner or No Foreigner.After all Shiva didnt think he was Devil’s creation..
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HI guru, remember me ….the GIRL guy…we met at the blogger meet. can u please add my name to ur links section ?
thanks
bye
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Karthik,
You are too good man. That was a blaster :-)))))
Guess LG is busy with moving blogs. He should blog roll you pretty soon
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hmm..what do I say here ? I dont get very offended by seeing such boards because I have come to strongly believe that God is not inside temples. If God can be confined to a temple, God is not God.
Remember paramacharya used to do poojas to himself saying that God is within him and his body is the temple of God ?
So, leave such discussions to people who are not capable of thinking beyond religion. God and religion are different.
And you know what ? The greatest aethists are the temple priests. Once in Srirangam a priest was accepting bribes and allowing the “devotees” to touch the embalmed body of Ramanujar. Do we call them priests and the bribe-givers Devotees ?
not to forget that even the great ramanujar was not allowed inside the srirangam temple for his anti-hindu philosophies !
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adipex Such evil deeds could religion prompt.
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