Over the last week, Andhra Pradesh politics was completely dominated by the visit that Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy took to the Tirumal...
Over the last week, Andhra Pradesh politics was completely dominated by the visit that Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy took to the Tirumala hills to participate in the Brahmotsavam festival of the famous Balaji temple.
On September 17, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, the board that manages India’s richest temple at Tirupati, invited Reddy to offer silk clothes to the deity. It has been a tradition for some years that the chief minister of the state participates in this ritual, a sort of a throwback to previous centuries when kings patronised temples to assert the legitimacy of their rule.
The visit, however, turned controversial due to a rule that non-Hindus who visit the temple should declare their faith in the deity. While Jagan Reddy offered the silk clothes to the deity on September 23, it is still not clear if he made this declaration.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and other Sangh Parivar organisations latched on to this controversy to mount a campaign that sought to project Reddy, a Christian by faith, as anti-Hindu. The principal Opposition, the Telugu Desam Party, went after Reddy separately over the matter, with its chief Chandrababu Naidu claiming that violating traditions would not bode well for the state.
In this campaign...
