A Million Mandirs?

[edited briefly for content April 7]
This is a simple back-of-the-envelope approximate statistical exercise that took less than 10 minutes to do, using the "Sepoy" approach that generally looks at every Indian problem with a non-Indian (western) lens, and measures Indian performance on western metrics. Unlike the Amartya Sen humanities approach, we will not use some wild POTA ("pulled out of thin air") numbers to make up a case, and will try working with plausible approximations using data available in the public domain to make order-of-magnitude calculations.

In predominantly Christian USA (population 314 million) has approximately 450K churches.

Rate:  1433 churches per million of national population.

How many mosques are there in Saudi Arabia?
There appear to be 20K in Mecca alone (population 2 million). wow. But let us suppose than an average, "less-holy" Islamic city perhaps has a rate that is only half as much.

Rate: 5000 mosques per million of national population


Number of dharmic Mandirs in India?
South India has an estimated number of 110K temples. [I assume this number ignores the street-side deities and tiny shrines that doesn't allow more than a handful to congregate - there's probably a couple of million of those in India - and counts only the reasonably sized mandirs that allow public services]. Relatively speaking, this region suffered the least in terms of wholesale temple destruction by Islamic invaders. Still, let us conservatively assume about 100K mandirs per quadrant, which gives us about 400K temples in India (population 1237 million).

Rate: 323 mandirs per million of national population


If India is to achieve parity with just the US rate (forget the middle-eastern rate that is much higher), it roughly needs to increase the number of dharmic mandirs by a 4X factor. To achieve this target, India would need to construct:

(1433-323) * 1237 = approximately 1.37 million more mandirs have to be built. Given that these are rough calculations, we can conclude that an order of a million new mandirs have to be built in India to achieve some degree of "parity" with the US, and several million more to achieve parity with the middle east.


Perhaps more importantly, similar statistics can be compiled to calculate the additional number of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh seminaries and educational institutions, libraries, think-tanks, etc. that have to be built to achieve parity.

Modi's manifesto talked about one temple, and the sepoy media goes into shock. Let them take a look a this :)


The Lost Temples of India
What started off as a ten-minute trivia exercise turns interesting when we ask (assuming that the above calculations are not way off): Why is the Mandir number relatively small? After all. Hindus are/were pretty "religious" like anybody else, and Mandirs were the most important and popular public institutions in the past and its number in India must have been proportional to the size of the population served. My own line-of-thought is to ask: are these "lost temples" partly or largely attributable to the wholesale destruction of temples by Islamic invaders over the last millennium? Descriptions of these acts are available in rich detail via first-hand accounts. If we compare the Mandirs-per-million population in different geographical regions of India and segment these areas into those most affected and those least affected by foreign invasion, and statistically adjust for time, population-growth, and other factors, we may be able to get an order-of-magnitude estimate of the number of mandirs destroyed in this manner. This may help uncover a portion of that shocking era in Indian history that is being white-washed by Marxist historians. This important statistical analysis needs to be taken up by Indian engineers and scientists.

The Talking Stones

This December 6, there will be the same old drum-beating drill about Hindus tearing up an unused mosque in Ayodhya twenty years ago. Independent of the merits of the actions of the group that day, excavations prove beyond reasonable doubt that a monotheist victory-prayer hall was built by trampling upon a preexisting Mandir-like structure, mocking an sacred and pluralistic geography revered by a billion Indians, including non-Hindus. However, come 12/6, another generation of gullible Indian kids who check 'Hindu' in their school application forms will be selectively indoctrinated into feeling guilty for the rest of their life about their amazing,  inclusive faith that attracts new followers everywhere else in the world without any proselytizing. They will receive subtle guidance from textbooks to recognize the trouble that temple culture causes by coming in the way of progress and unity - without ever being allowed to examine the facts. Impressionable youth will be shown pop-cultural examples to let them know that a modern Hindu is a non temple-going 'cool guy' and 'hip girl' who discards the superstitious Ishta Devta of his/her boring parents and subscribes to the supremely intellectual notion of a single sys-admin with super-user privileges.

There is much echoing power in the orchestrated sounds coming from the now-fallen masonry that was erected by a triumphant but murderous tyrant. In stark contrast, the broken Murthis of Halebidu and Hampi have performed their penance in mutilated silence for more than half a millennium now; they once welcomed thousands of despairing innocents into a magnificent Karmic oasis when nearly all hope for natives was lost and desert dogma reigned supreme in the land. However, it's not just these ancient temples that gave so much and asked so little in return, which appear to be so quiet now.  Many temples are strangled and turned into retirement museums called "national monuments". Now even the active, working ones seem to be tired. Like the one I met the other day.

Trash strewn around her, unclean; deserted; the premises unmaintained and uncared for. It seems a lot of Hindus around that area lost their jobs and moved on, so there was a shortage of funds. It's hard not to notice the well maintained Chinese church just a few hundred yards away. Everything there seemed to be shiny and well crafted, perhaps even made in America. Irritated to find that the temple had closed her doors to me so early in the day, I checked the time in my watch and as I turned to leave that depressing place, she wondered if I too would be deserting her? I got defensive. "It's not my job. It's not fair ...", before the sheer inertia of a defeated mind stopped me in my tracks and and the weight of despair dragged me down to my haunches. It is after all an unequal and unfair battle.

Just two weeks ago, I chatted with the young, dynamic, English-speaking priest of that temple who left his wife and little child in Bangalore to serve the small Hindu community here. He had saved enough to make a trip to India last week. It took him more than a year of struggling with paperwork to just get a driver's license here and was left to his own resources. Some priests in domes can conjure up an peaceful mob after a prayer. Others in cathedrals can go one better and have loving human-rights people and media microphones serenade you on-demand. Our priest cannot even afford an Internet connection in his tiny apartment in a lonely land, and is the lowest in the pecking order within the community he serves.  Temple-priests and their children will be encouraged to pay for their ancestor's real or imaginary crimes even as the voices of December will warn you to cease and desist from applying the same sickening logic to others.

Sure, my community wants the services of this priest - just not the profound Sanskrit mantras (and he chants them beautifully and explains their meaning too), but quick mumbo-jumbo at a discounted price. They petition him to provide them with any auspicious date for a family function as long as it is on a weekend. A white American lady seeking solace within Hinduism once showed up at that temple with deep questions for our priest. An avid temple-going, prosperous Indian-American, a dentist by profession, who happened to be there at that time, volunteered to translate the accent. At the end of a very positive three-way conversation, the dentist informed the lady that "Hinduism was the worst religion in this world"... As we cleared some of the trash, I hoped the Murthis would feel just a little better about their American home now. How often do we go to a temple to return a favor?

Many important voices will be speaking for the December stones, and I have no problem with that. My temple stones are not mute, and they need to be heard too. Not by the government, the media, or anybody else, but by us. If we listen carefully enough, we may perhaps begin to rediscover our own voice of Dharma.