If Naidu’s government found a problem with the supplier of ghee to Tirupati, he could have changed the contractor without making a sentimental issue out of it
N Chandrababu Naidu announced that during his predecessor YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s rule, animal fat was used to make laddus at the Tirupati temple. Some reports said fish fat and oil were used, and some claimed beef fat. Such rumors are spreading rather dangerously.
Naidu argued that this is Jagan's gravest blasphemy, so devotees must punish him. Now, it has become an issue of spiritual sentiment for all those who bought laddus during the Jagan regime and later.
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A non-vegetarian, Naidu is using food politics around a major temple. In what could be called a calculated Hindutva move, he has walked into a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trap.
Through multiple statements, Naidu is trying to show that Jagan is anti-Hindu and he defiled the richest Hindu temple in India. Such a provocative sentimental issue can potentially cause deep trouble, given the current political atmosphere in the country. More so because Jagan is a Christian.
Naidu's mistake, not Jagan's
The Tirupati temple is the richest in the country, with an annual income of over Rs 5,000 crore. Some 75,000 people visit the temple daily, and 3 lakh laddus are sold daily. Devotees also take them to distant places as spiritual gifts for relatives and friends.
The Naidu government says that they tested the quality of laddus in July 2024 after taking over the temple administration in June. Clearly, they could not have sent two months old (when Jagan was in power) laddus for testing. Obviously, the Naidu regime sent a fresh batch of laddus to get them tested. So the big question is: who should be held accountable if those were adulterated laddus? It is Naidu, not Jagan.
Communalising food, BJP style
An issue like this has enormous implications. It would enrage religious passions, particularly the vegetarians who ate laddus. The RSS/BJP have made the food culture so communalized that several Muslims in the last 10 years were lynched over beef transportation and consumption. The RSS has declared that it is a vegetarian organisation. So have the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other bodies. Since Jagan is a Christian by faith, these networks have started mobilizing forces against the former Chief Minister. In a state like Andhra Pradesh, with a considerable Christian population, Jagan has earlier been accused by the same forces of undertaking conversions. Incidentally, his father, the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, also faced such accusations.
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Now, Naidu has taken this meat-veg conflict into the divine realm. Did he not know that no investigation can remove sentimental feelings among devotees? Did he not know that no court could resolve this issue?
The Big Independence Rebellion of 1857, some reports said, was triggered because some Hindu soldiers felt reportedly betrayed by the British because they used beef fat in the bullets. The Muslims reportedly revolted against the British because they suspected that pig fat was used.
Easier way out
When a Chief Minister himself creates doubts among people, it can spell trouble in society. If Naidu’s government found a problem with the supplier of ghee, he could have changed the firm without making a sentimental issue out of it.
Naidu must know that this is the only country where food habits have divided Gods and Goddesses as well. The social divisions between South Indian Brahmin-Banias and Shudras-Dalits are also rooted in the veg-meat food issue.
Naidu opens Pandora's Box
To clearly distinguish meat eaters from vegetarians, Indian pundits created a new language in English: Veg and Non-Veg. There is no such division in food in Christian or Muslim societies. Food is food, vegetarian or non-vegetarian. In a country like ours, if the state creates food conflict, that too in a spiritual space, the danger is too deep.
Naidu may not know the implications of opening such a Pandora's box. Yet he has used this spiritual food as a weapon to ensure that his arch-rival Jagan does not even think of coming to power in the state again. Things are hotting up, and the war of words is continuing between the two, with Jagan’s plan to visit Tirumala on 28 September for darshan.
Quite strangely, Naidu made a condition that he give a written faith affidavit to go there. Naidu knows that Jagan, being a Christian by birth, cannot do that. Earlier as CM, he had several darshans without giving such a faith affidavit. This is a dangerous spiritual and political game. Naidu’s condition also violates a person's Right to Religion.
To visit a Hindu temple, one does not have to give up one’s own religion, if it is non-Hindu. No religion in the world puts this kind of condition. Now Jagan cancelled his visit. The whole approach of Naidu seems to appease the BJP and RSS, who do not believe in secularism, enshrined in the Constitution.
Laddu is being used to undermine the Constitution of India.
This kind of weapon is more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. We do not know where it will end.
