Several states have enacted special laws that allow them to have a say, or even a controlling stake, in the administration of Hindu temples, their income and expenditure. This control is exercised through boards and trusts that have government representatives or are even chaired by a government official.

Tamil Nadu, which perhaps has the largest number of Hindu temples under government control, has a department called The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department (HR&CE) to manage these temples. Even the Tirupati temple is run by a body called the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) that is under the control of the Andhra Pradesh government. The state government appoints the TTD head.

Most states that control temples take a share of the income the temples generate through offerings and donations, using them for the administration and upkeep of the temples; upkeep of smaller temples; and for welfare activities that may or may not be connected to the temple. The latter may include running hospitals, orphanages or schools, and colleges with secular education.

Some of the states that have laws governing the management of temples are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. Several states also have laws on specific institutions, such as the Vaishno Devi Mata Shrine in Katra, Jammu, which is governed by the provisions of The Jammu and Kashmir Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Act of 1988.

All these Acts draw their legislative strength from Article 25 of the Constitution that deals with “Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion”. The power to legislate on religious institutions is part of the Concurrent List, with both the Centre and the states having shared jurisdiction.

How did Hindu temples come under government control?

There are around 30 lakh places of worship in India, according to the 2011 Census, of which the majority are Hindu temples. Kings often donated land and riches to the temples, which were then both centres of culture and economy. Cities developed around temples, driving the growth of the region.

According to a paper on temple management by Prof G Ramesh of the Centre of Public Policy at IIM Bangalore, historical evidence points to the involvement of temples in promoting agriculture, cultivation, and irrigation on a scale comparable to the State.

The British saw temples not only as a gateway to socio-political influence but also as a repository of massive wealth and thus the need for official oversight. From 1810 to 1817, they enacted a series of laws in the presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay that gave them the right to interfere in temple administration.

“These regulations allowed the British government to assert their sovereign authority through the East India Company’s Board of Revenue, with the claim that income from endowments was being misspent and misappropriated by the persons in charge, and thus active supervision was needed to be statutorily asserted,” Prof Ramesh wrote.

Following opposition from within the British establishment and people — as an essentially Christian government was seen to be running Hindu temples — the Religious Endowments Act of 1863 was enacted and control of temples was handed over to committees appointed under the Act. However, judicial jurisdiction over temple administration — the extension of the Civil Procedure Code and the Official Trustees Act to temples and the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act of 1920 — helped the government retain considerable influence.

The first specific law on Hindu temples came in 1925 through the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act. It drew strength from the Government of India Act of 1919, which enabled provincial governments to legislate on matters of endowments. “This legislation (the 1925 law) and its many subsequent amendments provided for oversight of the management of temples through a board of commissioners with enormous powers, and in some cases the board could altogether take over the management of a temple,” said the IIM paper.

What happened after Independence?

Independent India retained much of the legislative control that the British exercised over temples, with the 1925 law acting as a blueprint for various states.

The first such act passed was the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of 1951. A similar law was passed in Bihar around that time. The Madras law was challenged in the courts that struck it down and finally came a new Act in 1959 with a few modifications. Most southern states follow similar legal structures to control temples. Many states argued the necessity of government intervention in managing temples to ensure entry of all sections of society and castes into Hindu places of worship.

How old is the demand for ending government control of temples?

In 1959, the RSS passed the first resolution demanding that temple control be handed back to the community. In a resolution on the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the top decision-making meeting of the RSS, said, “The Sabha urges the government of Uttar Pradesh to take steps to return this temple to the Hindus … The tendency of the government to establish its control and monopoly, directly or indirectly, over the various spheres of life is becoming more and more pronounced over the last few years.”

In 1988, the Sangh’s Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal again brought it up. These resolutions had preceded protests by religious leaders in south India for control over temples.

The VHP has been raising the issue since the early 1970s. In 2021, it passed a resolution demanding a central law to free temples from government control.

The BJP has also echoed this demand in the past 10 years. At an election rally in Telangana last year, PM Narendra Modi accused the Tamil Nadu government of taking control of Hindu temples, an allegation Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin denied in strong words. In 2017 and 2019, then BJP MP Satyapal Singh introduced a Private Member’s Bill on the issue.

The Uttarakhand government of BJP leader Trivendra Singh Rawat enacted the Uttarakhand Char Dham Devasthanam Management Act in December 2019 to establish a board to manage the Char Dham temples and 49 other temples. However, in 2021, the BJP government of Pushkar Singh Dhami withdrew the Act and abolished the board due to protests from priests, locals, and politicians.

Similarly, the Madhya Pradesh government of Shivraj Singh Chauhan loosened state control over temples in 2023, while the Basavaraj Bommai government in Karnataka announced similar measures but demitted office before their implementation. A central law on this, however, has not yet seen the light of day.

What have the courts said?

While there have been legal arguments in favour of freeing temples from government control — senior lawyers Fali Nariman and Rajeev Dhawan once criticised this control as “nationalisation of religious endowments” — the courts have largely been reluctant to interfere in the matter.

In the 1954 Shirur Mutt case, the Supreme Court held that a law that takes away the right to administration to the religious denomination altogether and vests it in any other authority would amount to a violation of the right guaranteed under clause (d) of Article 26. It, however, held that the State has a general right to regulate the right to administration of a religious or charitable institution or endowment.

In Ratilal Panachand Gandhi vs The State of Bombay & Ors, the Supreme Court said the right of management given to a religious body was a guaranteed fundamental right that no legislation could take away. On the other hand, it said, a religious denomination has the right to administer its property as per the law. This meant that the State could regulate the administration of trust properties through laws validly enacted.

In the 1996 Pannalal Bansilal Pitti & Ors vs State Of Andhra Pradesh case, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a law that the Andhra Pradesh government enacted to abolish the hereditary rights over the chairmanship of the Trust administering a Hindu religious institution or endowment. It also rejected the contention that the law must uniformly apply to all religions and contended that the government had brought the law following recommendations of a committee that found mismanagement and corruption in the existing system.

In 2022, then BJP spokesperson and lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court to free temples from government control. The court, however, argued in favour of the status quo, saying under the present arrangement temples have also “catered to the larger needs of society and not only their temple”. The court said reversing this would “turn the clock back” to days when “all these temples … these centres of religion, had become places of wealth”. Upadhyay withdrew his petition.