Jayendra Saraswati: Temple curse?

Chennai, March 5: Towers of ?doom? or simply lack of money?

Work on the north and south towers of the ancient Ramanathaswamy temple has come to a halt, reviving an old belief that if south-facing gopurams of some major Tamil Nadu shrines are completed it would harm the sponsor and spell doom for Sri Lanka.

Sources said Kanchi Mutt pontiff Jayendra Saraswati had taken up the responsibility of completing the towers of the temple in Rameshwaram that had been built in phases more than 500 years ago by Pandyan dynasty kings and philanthropists. They said the acharya, who is out on bail in a murder case after two months in prison, went ahead with the construction after demolishing the unfinished structures.

The Rs 3 crore needed for the project was to have come entirely from private donors and the towers were to be completed by the end of this year.

?Now with the tsunami hitting Sri Lanka badly and the Kanchi seer facing a problem, we cannot say whether there is really any truth in the belief,? said a temple official in Rameshwaram.

None of the kings who ruled in these parts took the trouble to complete the towers because of this belief.

Although the temple, on an islet in the Bay of Bengal where Sita is believed to have shaped the Shiv linga out of the beach mud and installed it for worship after her return from Lanka, is an important pilgrim centre, the towers remained neglected.

That was till November 2000 when the Kanchi seer decided to take up the construction of the towers.

Earlier, a similar move led to the completion of the south-facing mottai gopuram ? or unfinished structure without any progression beyond the basement ? in the equally ancient Vaishnavite shrine of Lord Ranganathaswamy in Sri Rangam.

The same belief that harm would befall the ruler had deterred the Nayak kings until the then pontiff of the Ahobila Mutt came forward to take up the project and complete it in 1987.

The 13-tier 236-foot-tall tower was consecrated in the presence of then chief minister M.G. Ramachandran on March 25, 1987.

The structure, considered the tallest temple tower in Asia, cost over Rs 1 crore. The Kanchi Mutt contributed Rs 9 lakh.

The sources said the sudden brakes on the project to complete the Ramanathaswamy temple towers came after Jayendra Saraswati?s arrest in November 2004.

The private donations, they added, stopped after the arrest, slowly bringing to a halt the construction work.

?The two towers are in the same stage as they were 350 years ago,? said an official.

Asked whether the Tamil Nadu government?s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department had put a damper on the project, district collector K. Chellamuthu said he was not aware of any such development. The project had been taken up at the initiative of the Kanchi seer purely on private donations, he pointed out.

As for the old belief that the completion of the towers does not augur well either for the rulers of the day or for Sri Lanka, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments minister, P.C. Ramaswamy, said he was not aware of any such belief stalling the completion of the project.