FB Discussions - We need temples - and livlihoods.

I want more gods, more temples, more rituals.

On Friday, the old lady on the footpath had a very small heap of flowers left on the cloth spread out before her. I asked her if today her sales had been good, and she smiled and said 'Vellikazhamai Amma' ('Friday Amma'). On Friday every ordinary household buys flowers for the god pictures at home. In our village also on the Friday, every man or woman who goes to the santa comes with 10/- worth of yellow samandhi flowers for the gods. Three small vendors at the santa sell flowers and earn their daily bread. 

Those progressives who dismiss gods and rituals better make sure they have alternative social structures in place first. And that the old lady does not, because of their efforts to promote atheism, lose even her once-a-week good sale.

Temples were traditionally hubs for small enterprises and businesses, and many many livlihoods were anchored in a way that society owned up and validated. Every effort needs to be anchored in the reality of a society's being.

Mohammad Chappalwala Who will pay for carbon footprint of travel conspicuos consumption stampedes

Like · Reply · 5 hrs

Aparna Krishnan the pilgrimages of yore were in foot and of years, and it was that that knitted this land together. once you creat a modern, industrial and centralized state, inself doomed, and then blame religion and god, what can i say.

Like · Reply · 1 · 5 hrs

Aparna Krishnan there were local temples. and there were larger temples where one made pilgrimages to, from badrinath to rameshwaram. those larger temples sustained many livlihoods, and smaller temples sustained smaller livlihoods. these were not 'charity bazaars' or 'artisan markets' that the elite went to. there were part of the framework of the common people. those frameworkks are what we need to protect and create Mohammad Chappalwala.

Like · Reply · 2 · 5 hrs

Aparna Krishnan losing those. we flounder from delii haat to dastkar bazaar.

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