One of the first statements you come across on the website of the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department’s website is this one: “The management and control of the temples and the administration of their endowments is one of the primary responsibilities of the state” (italics mine).

The irony of the government of a “secular” state running religious institutions is obviously lost on HR&CE. More so when we note that the state has been intermittently ruled by parties like DMK whose leadership has, in the past, formally professed rationalist and atheist beliefs.

But we shall let that pass and presume that, despite top-level political antipathy to Hindu religion, HR&CE is willing to hold its nose and do everything it can to run the 38,481 temples and endowments under its control fairly and efficiently.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case. When you put the fox in charge of the hen-house, you don’t get better protection of your millennia-old spiritual and historical heritage, but wayward behaviour by officialdom. Beneath the surface, corruption festers, and priceless idols and valuables are bartered away for filthy lucre.

This is apparent from a recent Madras high court judgment in two cases (Crl OP Nos 8690 and 12060 of 2017), where the petitioners had complained about officials being careless in protecting idols worth crores of rupees, and possibly acting in cahoots with idol smugglers.

In the first case, petitioner R Venkataraman alleged that ancient idols from Chola-era temples in Thanjavur district were moved and “stocked unofficially, against the HR&CE norms, and the trustees, along with the Executive Officers of the HR&CE department, created records as if the idols are intact, when factually six idols, of which five belonging to Sri Viswanathasamy Temple at Keelmanakudi, and one Vinayagar idol belonging to the Arulmigu Sri Idumbeswarar Temple, were missing.” The petition alleged that instead of keeping the idols at the Icon Centre, they were kept in an “unauthorised tunnel and also in a scrap room belonging to the Public Works Department.”

In the other case, filed by public interest litigant Elephant G Rajendran, it was alleged that a senior police officer, I Khader Basha, now DSP, and two other police personnel, who were earlier part of the Idol Wing, came into possession of six idols while investigating a case involving one Arokiaraj. Two of these were allegedly sold to a noted smuggler in Chennai for Rs 15 lakh, who then resold them for an alleged sum of Rs 6 crore. But despite an FIR being filed against the police officials concerned, they were promoted, and “no further action, either by way of arrest or by departmental proceedings, was initiated.”

The high court, in an order dated July 21, 2017, by Justice R Mahadevan, had no hesitation is saying that the state was wayward in its defence of priceless heritage assets and roasted HR&CE for its failures. After noting that Indian temples had been ravaged by invaders for centuries, he added: “For the past several years, a new form of attack is carried out by smuggling the ancient idols. Foreigners and disbelievers see the idols as antiques worth only … in terms of money, but the people of this country see them in the semblance of god, culture and identity.”

The court castigated the department in no uncertain terms, pointing out that HR&CE is the custodian of most of the state’s temples and their properties, but has clearly failed to do so despite controlling large revenues. “It is startling to find that the HR&CE department, with all its income from major temples, has not been able to maintain historical temples and safeguard the idols … many temples constructed at least 1,500 years ago or much before … are in ruins. Even the daily rituals are not performed. Some temples remain closed throughout the day with no one to even lighten (sic) the lamps … this has also come to the advantage of the miscreants, who have laid their hands on the idols.”

Having come to this conclusion, the court ordered the obvious remedies: departmental action and FIRs against the alleged culprits, moving all idols to strong-rooms or Icon Centres, creation of a list of all temples managed by the state and number of priests they employ, computerisation of records and 24×7 video and electronic surveillance of these idols and other valuables.

But the scale of loot and irresponsibility goes beyond mere smuggling and illicit sale of idols. Some time ago Subramanian Swamy, BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP, alleged in a newspaper article that the Tamil Nadu HR&CE controlled “more than 4.7 lakh acres of agricultural land, 2.6 crore square feet of buildings and 29 crore square feet of urban sites of temples.” These temple-owned properties should have been earning revenues in thousands of crores, but the government collected barely Rs 36 crore.

It is difficult to authenticate these figures from three years ago. But if they are anywhere near correct we have the makings of a gigantic scandal, at the expense of Hindu devotees who contributed to this wealth. But it’s not about Tamil Nadu alone. In the five major southern states over 1,00,000 temples are being run directly or indirectly by governments, making a mockery of the idea of the secular state where separation of religious from temporal activity ought to have been a central principle of governance.

This separation is all the more important when you have cases of gross negligence, where the guardians of temples are also its predators. The fence is eating the crop.