Before commercial cultivation of flowers began, each temple used to grow the flowers required for poojas and rituals in its own surroundings.
Combining devotion with environmental concerns in times of global warming and climate change, Kerala has drawn up a scheme to plant trees in 6000 temple premises across the state as part of its mission to create green cover in all available open spaces.
A joint scheme of Forest and Devaswom (temple affairs) departments, Haritha Keralam-Devaranyam, would cover temples under Travancore and Kochi Devaswom Boards and other major Hindu shrines like Guruvayur and Koodalmanikyam, according to state Devaswom Minister Ramachandran Kadannapally.
Space available around temples and along the avenues leading to them would be utilized for the planting trees. The Forest Department would provide saplings to temple boards at a nominal rate of 50 paise per sapling.
When global warming and climate change pose a serious threat to the earth, creation of green cover through planting trees in all possible spaces is the only way out, forest minister Benoy Viswam said after a meeting held to work out the project in Thiruvananthapuram.
Well known poet Prof Vishnunarayanan Namboodiri, however, sounded sceptical on successful implementation of the project.
“Just working out the scheme and taking publicity mileage out of it is not enough. Our past experience has been quite disappointing. What always happens is that the saplings are left un-watered and un-nursed after planting them with fanfare”, Namboodiri, an authority on Kerala temple culture and traditions, told PTI.
Instead of implementing the scheme through state agencies, it should be entrusted to nature protection movements and groups who had been doing sincere work, Namboodiri said.
“It is really disturbing that you won’t find any tree in any of the temple premises in Kerala other than those planted at least 50 years back”, he said.
According to Namboodiri, it has been a tradition for the Hindu temples to have all sorts of shady trees and flowering plants in the open space around them.Besides trees like banyan and sandalwood, floral plants like jasmine are planted around temples.
Before commercial cultivation of flowers began, each temple used to grow the flowers required for poojas and rituals in its own surroundings. Big temples even had ponds to grow lotus in its premises. Now, flowers for temples are mostly brought from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
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