Coronavirus impact: Hindu priests with body cameras & new temple economics

India's biggest, richest and most sacred Hindu temples may have to change themselves for the sake of their devotees

As the divine reverberations of ‘Om’ followed by the chants of the Shiva Panchakshara Stotram — na-mah-shi-va-ya and shi-va-ya-na-mah — permeate Varanasi’s Kashi Vishwanath temple, a solitary priest in the sanctum sanctorum housing the sacred Shiva Lingam continuously pours milk over it. Overhead, a brass receptacle ensures a steady stream of Ganga water drips on the lingam as the priest reaches the last stages of his rituals.

This priest is joined by another in the concluding moments of the prayer and both pour the remaining milk in a final floral-studded tribute to Shiva before the god is allowed to rest for a few hours in the afternoon. All this, including the 3 AM mangal arati (the first prayer of the morning) attracts thousands of devotees even during the ongoing nationwide lockdown. The difference, however, is that all of them now watch it on their mobile phones via live streaming.

A wide-angle camera, placed on the ceiling of the sanctum sanctorum to give a continuous top-down shot of the Shiva Lingam, is connected to a high speed server. It beams the rituals throughout the day to devotees across the world. Little do they know that the two priests here are under a constant watch of the authorities. Their movements are recorded and their contacts traced, and they are sanitised multiple times before entering the temple, even if there are no devotees physically present.

For one of India’s most sacred and revered Shiva shrines, the coronavirus crisis could herald some refreshing changes. In fact, most temples are bracing or have already planned for disruptions – right from facilitating digital darshan of deities, to personalisation of rituals, disinfecting tunnels for all pilgrims, and revenue models that would be driven by online donations and VIP passes to escape queues.

“Even after the temple re-opens, devotees won’t be allowed in the sanctum sanctorum. All devotees will be thermally screened and sanitised before entering the temple premises. Sanitisers will be placed within the premises as well,” says Vishal Singh, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The coronavirus crisis may also have a slingshot effect on the temple’s plans of digitising many services which were earlier stuck in the pipeline due to various infrastructural constraints. For instance, many devotees who came to Varanasi from across India and the world to organise special functions like the 11-day Rudrabhishekham with their families would now be given the option to have exclusive streaming facilities with which they could watch dedicated priests performing the rituals for them right from their homes. Priests will be equipped with body cameras or there could be trained people shooting with hand-held cameras.

“We are looking to upgrade our internet services with the much faster fibre network. We will also update our server capacity so that personalised darshan and exclusive streaming of personal religious functions could be made available to devotees. We had already planned this upgrade (even before the coronavirus outbreak), but accelerating its implementation will become more pertinent under present circumstances. Many people in the UK and US have been asking for these facilities for long,” says Vishal Singh.

In effect, this would entail additional costs which would eventually be passed on to devotees, though temple authorities do not elaborate on this. For virtual Rudrabhishekam, all functions that were performed by families at the temple – buying five litres of milk daily for 11 days from the in-house Amul booth, and getting worship materials and additional donations to priests and the temple — would now have to be factored in while determining the new pricing mechanism. Functions like these currently cost over Rs 50,000 for a family of six.

While Kashi Vishwanath receives a large number of local devotees on a daily basis, other big temples like Tirupati, which is one of India’s richest shrines, is planning to completely discard its old system of worship. “All devotees will now have to register online before they plan to visit the shrine. No offline visits without prior online registration will take place once the restrictions are lifted. Time slots will be given to devotees and they would leave their guest houses or hotels according to those slots. Security personnel will perpetually monitor the queues to ensure that a one-metre distance is maintained,” says Y V Subba Reddy, Lok Sabha MP and chairman of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the trust which manages the shrine.

On special occasions, Tirupati’s footfalls can exceed 100,000 devotees in a day. Even in March 2020, when various advisories regarding social distancing were in place, the shrine received anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 pilgrims daily. The shrine is now installing disinfection tunnels at various places and checkpoints before the climb to the hill. Everyone – from those on foot, to those arriving by public buses and private vehicles will be disinfected in these tunnels.

A second stage of disinfection will take place on top of the hill before the shrine when all devotees will again be sanitised – all this even as security staff specially deployed for the purpose keep devotees at a suitable distance from one another. The management has prohibited large groups of devotees from coming to the temple and will allow smaller families to proceed together with necessary precautions.

While it is unclear whether the crisis will have a long-term impact on footfalls at some of the most revered shrines in the country, it may certainly rejig temple economics in the times to come. Big shrines like Tirupati, Shirdi, Siddhivinayak and others, with annual budgets running into crores of rupees, are anticipating a change in their revenue models, with more donations shifting online as footfalls and donation-box collections dwindle in the short term.

With pre-alloted time slots in place at Tirupati, swathes of humanity descending unregulated on the shrine could well become history. Most of these temples issue ‘VIP passes’ to people who wish to evade queues and avoid mingling with the masses. With passes costing Rs 300 on an average at most of these temples, their demand could skyrocket due to the coronavirus crisis. At shrines like Tirupati, the annual earnings from issue of such passes are over Rs 200 crore – almost a tenth of their annual budgets. There could be different classes of VIP passes, with those priced higher significantly reducing or removing the wait time.

Temples like Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak already have such systems in place where non-resident Indians and others can jump queues for worship by paying Rs 1,500. Tirupati reportedly gives such privileges to those who contribute more than Rs 10,000 to the temple trust. Those with ‘VIP passes’ costing less still have to wait for a couple of hours to worship on crowded days.

Even temples that do not mete out special treatment to those who can pay more might be forced to rethink their strategies as a more lucrative revenue stream — driven by enhanced demand for less crowded pilgrimages and more exclusive access — arises due to the psychological fear of human proximity caused by the coronavirus crisis.

Gujarat’s Somnath temple is one of the few big shrines in the country that do not provide VIP treatment to those willing to pay more. The temple’s supervisor Nimesh Pathak says: “Till now, nobody got a special treatment here. The temple is huge and we have successfully managed to avoid large crowds to date. But now the situation is different. The management will have to think of issuing special passes to those who will be scared of queuing up to worship due to the coronavirus crisis.”

While Hindu temples have been live-streaming many services for many years, adherents of other religions across the world have also been forced by the pandemic to stay away from their much-loved religious traditions.

Protestants and Catholics stayed away from the Pope’s Easter Mass on April 12. Pope Francis had only a handful of devotees in attendance during his mass as thousands of others watched his sermon online. On April 19, Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Easter a week after others faced a similar situation.

Muslims face a much harder choice, with Saudi Arabia completely banning certain rituals that were part of religious customs at Mecca’s Grand Mosque – one of Islam’s holiest sites. While live-streaming is not an option, even the handful who were initially allowed to undertake the Umrah have been prohibited from performing the all-important tawaf ritual (where Muslims perambulate the holiest site in Islam, the Kaaba, seven times). Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, through a royal decree, has also ordered closure of other pilgrimage sites in the Grand Mosque besides banning the distribution of holy water (Zam Zam) by Muslims.