Rites, rituals fire priestly ire

Vijayawada: Priests performing Pinda Pradanam rituals at the Padmavathi ghat area are up in arms against the police and the government officials. Priests allege that the endowments officials are collecting money from the ‘fake priests’ and have distributed purohit ID cards to the non-purohits. Around 10,000 purohits have been appointed for traditional pitru karma, pinda pradanam during Krishna Pushkaralu from Guntur and Krishna districts from various districts of the state by the endowments department.

Priests complain that some priests, performing rituals at the ghats, don’t know to perform Pitru karma, Pinda Pradanam and other rituals.  People are participating in the festival to perform the ritual are not aware of the rituals to be performed once in 12 years and are blindly following the priests at the ghats. Meanwhile, Jangam priests known to perform death rituals who are present at the ghats are performing rituals.

Jangam priests say that they have all the right to perform the rituals related to Pinda Pradanam and allege that Brahmin priests are stopping them from performing the rituals The squabbling by the priests, including the Jangam priests over the right to perform rituals are confusing the pilgrims, who prefer the Pinda Pradanam ritual being performed peacefully as it is a must to ensure their ancestors’ souls rest in peace.

“Though the number of people are participating in the festival since it began, only a small percentage of them are doing ‘pinda pradanam’ and related rituals and there is huge competition among the priests at the ghats are leading to the allegations,” said Siva Sharma, a priest at the Padmavathi ghat.

“The endowments department has issued cards to more number of priests without checking the proper details. The priests are expecting to make money in the 12 day fete could not do so as the number of priests has increased. Added to this, the governments fixed tariff for the rituals,” said Sudarachary, a priest at Padmavathi ghat.

“Police is not permitting the priests to get into the river water at the ghats to make their clients do ‘sankalpam’ and give ‘tarpanalu’ to their ancestors. Fake priests with ID cards are also present at the Pushkar ghats,” said Dronamraju, head priest.