Rajahmundry: Hereditary archakas have been fighting to preserve the practice of archakatvam, which the endowments department and temple trust boards want to abolish, but the Hyderabad High Court on Friday has brought them major relief as it decreed that they can serve as long as they are physically fit and do not have to retire at the age of 65.
The archakas complain that as they are becoming old and unable to serve in the temple, the officials and trust board members are not allowing their sons to succeed them resulting in the family losing its only source of livelihood. The archakas want their sons who have been trained by them, to succeed them and serve in the temple. But of late, temple officials and trustees are allegedly not allowing the sons to succeed their fathers but want to replace the aged archaka with someone from outside.
The archakas say that at the time of installation of a temple as per “agama shastra,” the archaka who performs installation rituals is believed to have a vision given by the Lord or Deity, on how to conduct the temple rituals to please the Deity. The archaka accepts the responsibility to fulfil the vision presuming that he will be succeeded by his son. There are also complaints that though the state government has issued a GO in 2017 and fixed wages for regular archakas of '25,000 per month depending upon the grade and quantum of revenue to the temple, the temple officials are allegedly not paying even minimum wages to the hereditary archakas, saying they do not have enough funds.
According to one estimate, nearly three lakh archakas are working in 50,000 temples in the state. In some temples, the third, fourth, fifth and even 10th generation of archakas is working, as some temples were established 100 to 200 years ago.
AP Archaka Samakhya organising secretary K.V.S.R.N. Acharyulu said, “We all welcome wholeheartedly the Hyderabad High Court verdict. We appeal to the state government to ensure that the son succeeds the aged archaka father in the temple without any trouble from anyone and also for expeditious implementation of GO Ms No. 76 issued in February 2017 pertaining to endowments hereditary archakas qualifications and emoluments.”
