Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email Well, its a well known fact that the boycott is a success. No one expected Batu Caves to be empty. There would be tourist, non-Hindus, non-Indian, foreign Indian workers etc who will still visit Batu Caves. However, the reduction of crowd is an unprecedented success. Figures being quoted are about 500,000 people only. The reduction in collection is nearly half (43%) this year (RM1.8 to RM1.04 million).
Reduced donations for Batu Caves
http://malaysiakini.com/news/77710
K Kabilan | Feb 1, 08 3:31pm
The calls for the boycott of the Batu Caves temple for this year’s Thaipusam celebrations seemed to have created the impact it was supposed to do. Official figures show there were fewer devotees as well as a drop in the amount of money collected by the temple in the three days of celebration.
The boycott-call gained momentum on the ground as Thaipusam drew closer with community members on their own urging others via short message services (SMSes) and emails to visit other Murugan temples in the country for the festival. Those visiting Batu Caves were also asked not to donate any money to the temple. They sought the Batu Caves boycott to show their displeasure over the manner the temple had allowed the police to violently disperse a crowd in the temple compound in the early hours of Nov 25. The crowd had gathered in the temple to take part in a rally called by the Hindu Rights Action Force later in the day in Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur.
Temple chairperson R Nadarajah yesterday revealed that the temple only collected about RM1.04 million in donations and other income in the three-day Thaipusam celebrations this year.The amount received for this year was much lower than the RM1.8 million collected by the temple last year.
Reasons for the drop
Also down were the number of visitors to the historic hill-top temple, dropping from a high of almost 1.3 million in 2007 to as low as 500,000 this year. Officially though, the temple is insisting that it drew a crowd of one million from Jan 22-24. Thaipusam was celebrated on Jan 23. Nadarajah, while announcing their income from public donations and other income from the rental of stalls and others, admitted that celebrations at Batu Caves were muted this year.
He however did not attribute the drop in the money collected and the crowd to the boycott. Instead, he said that the number of visitors to Batu Caves were down this year as Thaipusam was celebrated grandly in many Murugan temples across the country. As for the drop in collections, Nadarajah said that this was largely due to the fact that the temple had allocated fewer stalls this year. “This is because we wanted to create a bigger walking path for the devotees.
Also with the construction of a new temple within the Batu Caves vicinity, we were unable to place stalls there,” said Nadarajah.He said that the construction of the new temple – the Vengadasalapathi temple – had taken up the space usually allocated for stalls during Thaipusam. “This caused us a loss of about RM100,000,” he said. Nadarajah came under tremendous pressure in recent weeks following calls for him to publicly reveal the total sum collected by the temple during the Thaipusam festivals.
Collection 1995-2008
1995 – 519,434.78
1996 – 651,141,12
1997 – 675, 677.00
1998 – 687,364.00
1999 – 656,200.40
2000 – 831,475.00
2001 – 1,143,162.00
2002 – 1,310,683.70
2003 – 1,391,723.00
2004 – 1,364,730.10
2005 – 1,576,559.00
2006 – 1,724,676.00
2007 – 1,802,260.15
2008 – 1,041,473.00
Milk kavadi controversy
In recent years, the announcement of the collections would be done only among the temple circle, receiving a small media coverage. Taken in by this bout of criticism, Nadarajah also said that the temple had always been transparent with its accounts. He said that the money collected for this year was counted last Sunday and announcement could only be made yesterday after some banking formalities had been done.
He also released the amount of money collected by the temple for Thaipusam since 1995, the year he assumed the chairmanship of the temple committee. He also gave a breakdown of the total sum collected this year. Of the RM1,041.473 collected this year, a large bulk of it came from stall rentals (RM468,170) and prayer offerings (RM374,677). The temple received RM88,435 from kavadi bearers and another RM29,680 from people shaving their hair.
Nadarajah also announced that from next year the temple would be charging only RM5 for milk kavadi. Until now it has been charging RM10, attracting much criticism from various quarters, including political parties such as PKR and Malaysian Indian United Party. MIUP president KS Nallakaruppan however said that the temple should totally stop collecting money for the milk kavadi. “Other temples in the country have started following the Batu Caves temple in this. Why reduce it to RM5? They might as well totally stop the collection. The temple shouldn’t burden the devotees,” he said today.
When people can spend 10-20 ringgit on milk or RM 10 for parking, why can’t they give RM 10 for the temple? The principle of giving to God is to sacrifice yourself for others (God acts as a bank – receives and distributes many-folds). By right you deprive yourself of a cup of milk and offer to God – not buy liters of milk. In our religion what we offer to God is the simple things we use ourselves = milk, curd, fruits, honey flowers rice coconuts oil, ghee, etc. Deprive yourself of these for one day and give it to god – you do not have to spend anything. The fees you pay the temple is to cover the expenses of organising the festival and for proving the facilities,
It is most regretful that we see a million people visting the temple and yet the undiyal collection is only about RM 400,000 less than 40 sen per devotee. Understand nothing is free in this world.
The amount of money collected by the transport companies, parking attendants, business at the stalls, the entertainment show far far exceeds the temple collection. i would prefer the temple authorithies to place collection boxes at the entrances and guide the devotees in rows just as in temples in South India.
Siva