Dr Syed Ali Mujtaba
THE Hindus were shocked to learn recently that the scared ‘laddus’ at the Tirupati Temple contains beef, pork, and fish particles. Lab report of samples sent from Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) to the National Dairy Development Board in Gujarat said: “The samples certify that beef tallow and animal fat – lard, and fish oil were used in the preparation of ghee which was supplied to Tirumala. The ghee had 19.7 % of such contents.”
The information also shocked the Muslims who are lynched, bruised, and battered by cow vigilantes in several parts of the country. Muslims are baffled as to why cow vigilantes are now keeping silent on the TTD beef.
If Hindus are made to consume beef then it is an act of religiosity and piety but Muslims cannot do that because for Hindus it’s a sacrilegious act. Cow vigilantes, always on the prowl to kill Muslims at the slightest pretext, are maintaining a stoic silence on the issue and that is baffling.
The Venkateswara Temple at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati is one of the wealthiest temples in the world. Its net worth is 3 lakh crore Indian rupees. The TTD’s net worth is more than the capitalisation of Wipro, Nestle, ONGC, IOC, and many other companies listed in the Indian stock market. Many state governments in India approach the TTD to borrow money on interest to pay salaries to their employees.
The TTD trust oversees the upkeep of the Venkateswara Temple which receives 50,000 to 100,000 visitors per day. This makes this temple one of the most visited religious sites in the world, attracting 30 to 40 million visitors annually.
The TTD prepares and distributes over 3.50 lakh laddus daily to the devotees. The laddus are offered as ‘mahaprasadam’ to devotees after the darshan of Lord Venkateswara Swamy. A simple calculation can tell how many Hindus have been made impure by consuming beef through the laddus.
A firefighting exercise is going on right now, and the blame game is moving in circles with stakeholders saying they have nothing to do with the controversy.
The first to issue clarification is the TTD saying that the divinity and purity of the laddus is ‘unblemished.’ It adds that now it has set up a testing laboratory within its premises to avoid such controversy erupting again.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has alleged that his predecessor, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, was responsible for hurting the religious ‘purity’ of the Hindus who were forced to consume adulterated ghee that contained beef. Naidu blamed Reddy for stopping supplies from his Heritage Dairy, which had supplied ghee to the TTD earlier.
Reddy has hit back at Naidu accusing him of politicising the issue. The former chief minister has moved the Andhra Pradesh High Court to demand an investigation into Naidu’s claims, seeking action against him for ‘twisting’ facts.
AR Dairy, a Dindigul-based firm in Tamil Nadu that was short-listed among the five companies to supply ghee to the TTD is right now at the centre of the controversy of supplying adulterated ghee to the TTD. AR Dairy spokesperson told the media, “We used to supply ghee to the TTD till June-July but have stopped since then. We supplied only 0.1%, of the total supply made to the TTD from other sources.”
In the same context when the Gujarat lab broke the beef story, some social media users, without verifying facts, started attacking Amul Dairy for committing such a sacrilegious act. Amul Diary immediately issued a rebuttal and is now initiating legal action against the media outlets which went gung-ho against it.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Naidu has ordered an SIT inquiry into the adulterated laddus being distributed at the Shaivite temple in south India. He is also consulting Hindu priests to do the ‘samprokshana’ (ritualistic purification) seeking forgiveness for the sin of consuming beef.
Known Muslim-baiters, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and the priests at Haridwar, are at sixes and sevens now on how to target Muslims for waging a ‘Laddu Jihad’ in the country.
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Dr Syed Ali Mujtaba is a Chennai-based journalist. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com
