December is the follow-up month at TNM where we go back to headlines of the past for a status update. In this series, we strive to bring focus back to promises made by governments, revisit official investigations that should have been completed by now and exhume issues of public interest that lost steam over time.

In December 2021, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had announced that his government will ‘free temples from government control’ in the state. The grand announcement came at the BJP’s state executive meeting and was mooted as a first-of-its-kind move. Giving autonomy to temples has been a pet project of the right-wing for long, and also featured in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 2018 Karnataka manifesto. But a year later, little has been done to realise this Sangh Parivar dream.

Before we get into where the issue stands, here’s what the policy is. Karnataka has around 1,80,000 temples, of which only 35,500 temples come under the Muzrai Department. But contrary to right-wing propaganda, the funds collected from these temples are not used to fund any minority organisation or for any other purpose for that matter. A small percentage of the funds collected from the temples go in the common pool and this in turn is used to pay for the maintenance of the smaller Hindu temples that don’t make enough money. The state government gives funds from the state exchequer’s tax money for development and maintenance of Hindu temples.

During his budget speech, CM Bommai had announced that “autonomy will be given to temples coming under the purview of the Endowment Department. Necessary legal action will be taken to delegate the discretion of developmental works to the temples.” He had proposed to do so by devolution of functions, funds, and functionaries.

While CM Bommai’s announcement was hailed by many in his party, the BJP, and its supporters as a ‘bold move’ to ‘safeguard Hindu interests’, in practice it turned out to be complicated to implement. In January and February of 2022, several meetings were held between officials of the Muzrai Department, CM Bommai, and Minister for Hajj and Waqf Shashikala Jolle. And in April, the Department submitted a report documenting the historic reasons behind bringing the temples under government control and how temples gradually became centres of economy. The presentation compares laws to govern temples in different states like The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu, the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Act, 1987, the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950, the Kerala Devaswom Boards, and the Gujarat Public Trust Act, 2011.

The Muzrai Department contended that in many of these states, governments have taken a prominent role in the administration of temples, and trusts have been a common form of alternative mode for management of temples. It added that bigger temples are governed by separate laws for their management, and in some cases, smaller temples have been neglected.

In subsequent meetings, the Department reportedly informed the Chief Minister that the issue of giving complete autonomy to temples is a very complex issue and could lead to violation of several laws of the land. According to a source privy to the proceedings of the series of meetings, representatives of the Department told the CM that welfare of people will be compromised and the move could lead to caste discrimination. “There are huge assets and large tracts of land involved in this transaction. In addition, there is also a social aspect that has to be considered,” a senior government functionary who took part in the meetings said.

The source added that just around 200 temples – which have huge incomes – are in demand to be taken over and run. But there are no takers for the rest of the temples.

In view of these discussions, the project has now been put on the backburner and the CM has instructed that the temples be administered as they were, a source in the CMO said.

So despite the state BJP’s grandstanding, after a more detailed look the state government has come to the realisation that ‘freeing temples’ might make for a great Hindutva campaign but is an onerous task to implement and has shelved the project.