Temple priest carries Dalit devotee on shoulder during 'Munivahana Utsavam'

 A temple priest carried a Dalit man, Ravi on his shoulders and took him inside the Ranganayakula Gutta in Khammam, Telangana, on Monday  

Khammam: The Temple's Protection Movement (TPM) along with Samajika Samarasatha Vedika, Narsimha Vahini and other organisations conducted 'Munivahana Utsavam' at the historic Sri Laxmi Ranganatha Swamy Temple in Khammam, Telangana, on Monday.

Beginning with the garlanding of the Mahatma Gandhi statue a few blocks away, a large Shobha yatra was held with Nadaswaram, Kolattam in which hundreds of women participated.

Krishna Chaitanya and Archaka from Bhadrachalam Narsimha Temple lifted Ravi, who is a Dalit, and he was depicted as Tiruppanalwar.

Chilkur Balaji Temple head priest CS Rangarajan officiated the event when Archaka carried on his shoulders a Dalit devotee from outside the shrine up to the Dhwajasthambham.

This is seen as a celebration of the ideals and teachings preached by Bhagawad Ramanuja, a Vaishnava Acharya who stood in his time for a non-discriminatory and egalitarian society.

At present, when discrimination in the name of caste and class is rampant, the same was carried out in April 2018 for the first time at Chilkur Balaji Temple, located on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Here, CS Rangarajan carried a Dalit devotee named Aditya Parasri to Ranganatha Swamy Temple in Jiyaguda amid fanfare.

"The idea is to show that Sanatana Dharma treated everyone as equal before the God and the so-called discrimination crept into the system in recent times," Rangarajan had told media persons.