What has remained unchanged, however, is the lack of scientific crowd management in most temples. The overstressed and untrained volunteers push and yell at common devotees, often ruining their spiritual experience at a sacred place. Many books on Hinduism have laid down etiquettes and customs for the devotees, which even include quiet recitation of mantras, slokas or chanting the name of deities in silence. But are there no such guidelines for volunteers, who yell and humiliate devotees even inside the sanctum sanctorum of sacred places like in Shirdi in Maharashtra.

The pious come in droves from across the country to the temple but much of their time goes in pushing their way through the narrow enclosures, with the loud and angry commands of the volunteers adding to the confusion and chaos rather than regulating the crowds.

Here is an example of the famous Kashi Vishwanath Temple, which has undergone a drastic change in its look and space. In early 2000, a group of devotees from south India hurriedly walked through the sleepy and serpentine by-lanes of Varanasi to reach the temple entrance before 2 am for Mangala Aarti at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. In all, there were about three dozen devotees. About a hundred cops manned the tiny crowd. Their loud voices pierced the stillness of dawn. The group did not understand Hindi and the cops were hardly accommodative.

Cut to 2023. The Shiva temple had acquired a new grandeur and the Mangala Aarti in the beautiful ambience was blissful. However, the temple authorities had issued more tokens this time as they had enough open space. But, as soon as the aarti ended, the devotees pushed and jostled to enter the sanctum sanctorum from all the four doors, each trying to touch the Shivalinga. There was no volunteer to handle the crowds in the small place.

Despite a long history of stampedes in temples in Nashik, Tirupati, Vrindavan, Vaishno Devi and Naina Devi, volunteers continue to recklessly push frenzied devotees through the narrow enclosures and streets, unmindful of the numbers they can accommodate.

The plight of the common man is the same across temples in the North and the South – from Shirdi to Tirupati, from Kashi to Mathura. The devotees are ruthlessly pushed like herd of sheep in the melee; their prayers lost in the din created by the unmindful shouts of volunteers who forget they are in the temple precincts and not on the streets where they are managing a brawl.

Fact is VIPs are few, the majority of the people come from diverse social ,linguistic cultures and economic backgrounds. They don’t have money but their faith is in abundance.

The good thing is that there’s an effort to change the situation.

The first-ever course on temple management in the country, starting from this academic year at the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University (SSU), Varanasi, will cover crowd management as a major subject. About 1500 aspirants have already registered for the one-year-course, which will cover temple management, right from its architecture, to construction, to the size and the installation of the idols as laid down in the scriptures.

Bihari Lal Sharma, SSU vice chancellor, said the course will broadly cover the construction, operation, maintenance, cleanliness and administration of the temples. The students will be taught religious rituals, crowd management and financial management by combining the traditional knowledge with modern techniques.