Encroachments come in two forms : public, and private. Religious places of worship have seriously encroached upon both public and private spaces and nothing is ever done about it. We should.

Lets talk about public space. How do most religious places of worship break ground? Someone places a boulder under some tree, and overnight the boulder is turned into God by local foolish inhabitants and the place then converts itself over time into a temple by building upon donations from fools. And there you have a temple. There are simply way too many illegal shrines all over the country, urban and rural. Its land-grabbing made easy. No government dare touch shrines such as these since it is always a touchy affair and a ‘law and order problem’

The recent Supreme Court order that prevents new shrines from cropping up has come is little, and way too late. This would have made much better sense atleast 3 decades ago. This is because removal of these structures is way too expensive now, both in terms of money and effort – safety and security aspects – needed to do so.

Talking about encroachment into private space, I write this article as I listen, or rather am being forced to listen to ‘religious’ songs of Batakamma, with thunderous drums in spurts. I have been blessed with a temple bang opposite my apartment. Every morning, millions of Indians are subjected to torture of many sorts ranging from temples’ bhakti songs to dargah/masjid’s morning prayers broadcast to the entire locality over loud-speakers. And may God help those with a marriage/function hall somewhere nearby.

A unique encroachment of both spaces at the same time is when we decide to announce an entire part of the city of our marriage. We roam about streets with the choicest of drums accompanied with a whistling, dancing and drunk batch of people all around – in the process, waking up every little inch of other human beings trying to rest. We clog up traffic behind us and hit drivers that honk. After all, we built the road with our money and we have every right to (mis)use it, don’t we? Yet another horror every year is the Ganesh nimmajanam when every street in town is a virtual parking lot for traffic. We also celebrate Deepavali with deafening bombs(as in firecracker bombs) and the smokiest of other fire crackers. And you thought deepavali was a festival of lights.

The police seems to have gone deaf with all the noise and fails to even try any form of noise and nuisance control.

I’m pretty sure a majority would rather prefer illegal religious structures removed or shifted, and would love to wake up to a bright, lovely morning, with the air filled with nothing but the occasional chirp of the bird and the occasional wind brushing past tree leaves . Alas, the government has to deal with the so-called religious organizations and senas that are nothing but a bunch of madmen and religious fanatics ever ready to destroy public property and to instigate religious sentiments of discrimination all over again.

Solution: India needs to develop a national demolition force – a team comprised of a couple of trucks of armymen/ or men from the Anti-terrorism squad and ofcourse bulldozers. Teams should be formed and sent based on the religion the structure deals with. (A man of a different religion demolishing a structure of another could seriously risk life in the hands of the above said madmen.) This demolition force could easily bulldoze atleast 3-4 illegal structures everyday. Policing in sensitive areas of the city could be upped whenever a demolition is scheduled. Several such teams across the country would immensely speed up the entire process. Meanwhile, the government must keep talking to the public in various forms of media to explain the entire process and to request co-operation. The government should also engage in talks with religious organizations and keep them in trust. This will help ease taking over religious structures for government projects such as road widening.

Finally, as citizens of this great democratic country, we need to open ourselves up to seeing our favorite place of worship vanish overnight just as it cropped up. We need to understand that it is for our own good and in a country with no dearth of religious places of worship, one would always find another.