Srirangam Prasadam Stall

HR & CE has converted ‘Food’ into a lucrative business inside the temple complex

Food Counter auctioned for around Rs. 1crore at the Srirangam temple, that’s a mind boggling Rs. 30000 a day
At the Varadaraja Perumal Temple in Kanchipuram, the auctioned Food Stall this year has fetched the HR & CE Rs. 65 Lakhs 

Food made outside the Madapalli and not presented to the Lord is wrongfully sold as ‘Prasadam’

Till the 1970s, devotee crowd was minimal and restricted to the respective local town. The devotees looked for Theertham and Shatari in Vaishnavite Temples as the blessing from the Lord. At the Saivite temple, sacred ash and kungumam were considered as the blessing for the day. The food presented to the Lord was distributed amongst the devotees present based on the quantity available.

It has been historical tradition and belief that prasadam of the God is to be consumed in minimal quantity and devotees typically shared even this minimal quantity handed to them with other devotees who missed out.

But like so many other twists that have happened inside temple in recent decades, the concept of prasadam and the way it has been positioned and now viewed too has undergone a dramatic change. The new wave of devotion that has struck devotees has seen them buy food from the so called prasadam stalls. It may have nothing to do with the historical concept of prasadam and how it is to be consumed. The new set of devotees – and they are in huge majority- is comfortable buying and eating food inside the temple. In most case, a temple trip is incomplete without the consumption of the now popular delicacies of the respective temple.

The Srirangam Temple

Till the 1970s, paniyaram at the Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangam was presented to the Lord and brought to Sri Pandaram, where it was sold to devotees. It was on a very small scale. The traditionalists who understood the process waited near the flag post at the Ariya Bhattal Vaasal and picked up the real ‘hot’ prasadam.

It was a period when Trustees held a strangle hold on the temple and its functioning. The trustees ensured that the temple activities were performed in an orderly manner. HR & CE played less of a role.

However, with HR and CE gaining dominance in the 1970s and in the subsequent decades, things began to turn hugely commercial. The focus shifted to generating revenue out of the open spaces in the temple. Out of nowhere, a small 200 feet space opposite the Garuda Sannidhi was converted to a food counter disguised as a Prasadam stall.

But even the HR and CE would not have visualized the potential of this new revenue model, one that was to turn into a big money spinner for them across the large temples in Tamil Nadu. 

Prasadam - The Food presented to God?

Prasadam is food made at the Madapalli in a pious way and presented to the Lord / Thayar/Ambal and distributed to the devotees in small quantity. It is not something that is to be ‘sold’ for a price.

However, in the new few decades old model, food is made far away from the Madapalli and is even brought in many temples from outside the temple complex.  It is also food and snacks prepared by non-traditional people. And yet the foolhardy devotees have fallen for the ‘devotional quotient’, for the HR & CE sold this as ‘Prasadam’, the sacred food of the Lord when there was very little element of sacredness about the food.

As decades passed by, the value of the stall went through the roof. Driven by the physical hunger (after having been inside the temple for a couple of hours) and a belief that they were consuming Godly food within the temple, devotees queued by in large numbers through the day to pick up different varieties that was on offer at the food counter.

Delicious Menu on Offer

The menu on offer had a luring element to it, so as to entice the devotees into believing that this was from the God. And the devotees fell for it, the young and old, the modern and the traditionalist. Laddu, Athirasam, Chakkarai Pongal, ‘Mysore’ Paakku and Puliyotharai gave devotees the feel that it was Prasadam. Little did they know that this was food that was neither made at the Madapalli nor presented to the Lord. 

From the Past - The Unofficial Kitchen at the Srirangam Temple

Demand drives Combo Offers

Encouraged by the huge demand, the food stall put together combo offers which included a variety of snacks packed in a cotton bag that devotees took back home. Sales sky rocketed and the HR and CE cashed in heavily on this opportunity to bolster its income from the temple. The annual price (that the franchise had to pay the HR & CE) of the small food stall is said to have gone up to a mind boggling Rs. 1 crore, amounting to roughly Rs. 28000 a day. It had now become a full fledged business inside the temple. Give this huge tender price, one can imagine the sales that one has to generate each day to recover this money and run as a profitable business.

Over a 3-4 decade period, HR and CE, across all temples in Tamil Nadu, coined the vulgar title of ‘Prasadam’ stall misguiding devotees to consume outside made eateries as the Lord’s Prasadam.

One of the Sthalathars of the Srirangam Temple was a little more forgiving. "When devotees now enter the temple, their mind is on the food / prasadam. The food made at the madapalli is just not enough to distribute to the devotees. It is better to eat something inside the temple complex than consuming food  in a restaurant outside, though I am not fully defending what is happening inside the temple."

When Chairman, Board of Trustees Venu Srinivasan tried to shift the older and the smaller of the stalls from the Sri Pandaram, as part of the temple restoration exercise, he faced stiff resistance on the grounds that he was hitting at the very survival of a Sri Vaishnavite family.

To shift the more recently and just a few decades old official food stall of the temple will be an onerous task if not near impossible for it generates huge revenue for the HR & CE.

One of the members of the Temple Worshippers Society filed a case against the sale of food at the Chidambaram temple. 

Prasadam is to be distributed, 'Not Sold'

Temple Activist TR Ramesh, who played a significant role in securing the Chidambaram Natarajar Temple back for the Dikshithars a few years back, refers to an ancient verse relating to the temple that food is to be 'distributed'. He is not happy that food, even though prepared at the Madapalli, is ‘sold’ for a price. 

At the Varadaraja Perumal Temple in Kanchipuram, the auctioned Food Stall this year has fetched the HR & CE Rs. 65 Lakhs. There too, the food and snacks are prepared outside of the madapalli. 

First the Devotional Wave, Now the Food Wave

Wrongs over several decades have now been formalized as the rights of the temple and have become part and parcel of the system, misguiding the devotee in the process. A long distance has been travelled since the 1970s and it will require a herculean effort to undo the wrongs that have now come to be part of everyday life at the temples in Tamil Nadu. 

The devotees, on their part, can resist from ‘buying’ and consuming food wrongfully sold in the name of Prasadam. However, it seems that it does not matter to the devotee anymore as the taste buds have succumbed and given way to temptations even inside the temple, a place where God expects devotees to ‘Give-Up’. And it is this temptation that HR and CE has cashed on, in a vulgar way. They have understood the mood and requirement of a devotee after darshan and have catered to that need. 

Delicious food, call it by what name, is difficult to resist for the normal human mind even in a sacred zone like the temple complex. Chakkarai Pongal at the Parthasarathy Temple in Thiruvallikeni Divya Desam, Panchamirtham at the Murugan temple in Palani and Athirasaram at Srirangam Ranganathaswamy temple are all made outside of the madapalli through auctioned contracts.

Devotees are now well entrenched in a cycle that ends with consumption of food from the official stall outsourced by the HR & CE. They are happy to ignore the truth that there is no sacred element to the food. Just like the new devotional wave that swept the state over the last decade and a half, the food wave inside the temple is unlikely to subside anytime soon.