What is the Caste of Sri Venkateshwara?

The Sri Venkateshwara Temple in Tirupati (Tirumala) Andhra Pradesh, is one of most visited sacred sites in the world. It is also among the wealthiest. In a welcome and significant change (2015) the temple administration (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams -TTD) offered to train Dalits (members of the so-called untouchable communities) to serve as temple priests. It is profoundly sad and troubling that the administration will not allow any of these priests to serve in its own temples. They may work only in their own local temples, serving their so-called lower caste communities. https://theprint.in/…/tirupati-temple-trust-is-train…/51368/).

This decision is tragic for so many reasons. It serves to perpetuate the structures and assumptions of purity and impurity, segregation, inequality and hierarchy that give legitimacy to caste. It is a heart-breaking missed opportunity by one of the Hindu tradition’s most famous and prestigious temples to reject notions of purity and impurity and to affirm in its worship practice the equal worth and dignity of every human being.

What is the theological understanding of the divine and of the divine-human relation that underlies this distressing decision? Isn’t Sri Venkateshwara the source, support and goal of every human being (“That from which all beings originate, by which they are sustained and to which they return (Taittirīya Upaniṣad). Is Sri Ventakeshwara not Ishvara, the one dwelling equally in every human heart? Is worship more acceptable to Sri Venkateshwara when offered by a priest coming from the so-called upper caste? What are the theological grounds for the temple’s decision? The temple is obliged to provide us with an explanation that clarifies its understanding of the nature of the divine. Appealing to the practice of a hereditary priesthood is not convincing.

The challenge to connect our theology with life must be ongoing. The assumptions of impurity and inequality that underlie caste is a blatant denial of the equal existence of the divine in everyone. We cannot honor and value the divine and devalue human beings. We cannot give our assent or support to any religious, system founded on human inequality and indignity. The decision of the Tirupati temple to not allow so-called lower caste priests to serve in its places of worship denies the most fundamental truths about Sri Venkateshwara taught in the Hindu tradition. It should not be ignored or go unchallenged by Hindus. Decisions like these challenge us at the deepest levels to struggle with what it means to be Hindu.

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