Editor,
The latest controversy over the proposed construction of a temple within the CBI premises at Mawdiangdiang raises a question that deserves an honest answer: would the same organisations have rushed to the CBI if the proposed structure had been a church, chapel or any other place of worship? That is not an inflammatory question. It is a legitimate question about consistency. If the objection is genuinely about government premises, land-use regulations, administrative sanction and the secular character of a public institution, then the same standard must apply regardless of whether the structure is a temple, church, mosque, monastery or any other place of worship. But if the objection surfaces specifically because the structure happens to be a temple, then the issue is no longer administrative—it becomes a question of selective secularism.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with asking whether the construction has received the necessary approvals. Every public authority must comply with applicable building, land-use and administrative rules. If the CBI premises are governed by particular regulations, those regulations should be followed. But such questions can and should be addressed through the appropriate administrative channels. Invoking the CBI itself and raising the spectre of constitutional secularism over a place of worship before establishing that any rule has actually been violated risks turning a routine administrative question into a communal controversy.
There is also a fundamental distinction between establishing a place of worship for private or institutional use and converting a government office into a religious establishment. If the proposal is for a modest temple intended for the personnel working at the premises, then the relevant question should be whether such a facility is legally permissible and whether the required permissions have been obtained—not whether the religion represented by that facility is acceptable to particular pressure groups. Government employees do not cease to have their religious identities when they enter an office. The State must remain secular; that does not mean that individuals working for the State must become irreligious.
Indeed, government and security establishments across India have long had spaces where personnel can pray or practise their faith. The existence of a place of worship does not automatically compromise institutional neutrality. A police station, military establishment or government campus can accommodate the religious needs of its personnel without the institution itself becoming a religious organisation. The test should therefore be institutional neutrality, not religious visibility.
There is another uncomfortable dimension to this controversy. New Shillong Township is being deliberately developed as one of Meghalaya’s principal administrative, educational and economic centres. The State itself describes New Shillong as an emerging growth engine built around tourism, sports and culture, education and skilling, and technology. The new Secretariat and other major public institutions are already coming up there, including a ₹1,188-crore Secretariat complex. If New Shillong is destined to become a modern administrative township accommodating thousands of employees and visitors, the presence of facilities that cater to the legitimate needs of its workforce—including spaces for prayer—should not automatically be portrayed as an affront to secularism.
More importantly, Meghalaya cannot aspire to project itself as an inclusive, modern and investment-friendly state while allowing every cultural or religious question to become an identity confrontation. The State needs institutions that work, roads that function, water supply that reaches people, educational facilities that produce results and an administration capable of resolving disagreements without turning every issue into an ethnic or religious contest. The government has already sanctioned a massive water-supply project for New Shillong designed to serve the township and 32 adjoining villages. Against this backdrop, whether a small religious structure has received the necessary administrative permission should hardly become a civilisational battle.
And there is a larger principle here. Secularism cannot mean the absence of Hindu religious expression from a government landscape. Nor can it mean privileging one community’s sensitivities over another’s. Secularism means that the State does not discriminate among religions. If a church is permissible under the rules, a temple should be permissible under the same rules. If a temple is impermissible because of a particular land-use restriction, then the same restriction must apply to a church, mosque or any other religious structure. That is genuine secularism.
Therefore, if the construction violates a specific law, produce the law, identify the violation and demand its correction. If the required sanction has not been obtained, ask the competent authority to obtain it or stop the work until it does. That is perfectly legitimate. But opposing the very idea of a temple while invoking constitutional secularism is an entirely different proposition.
The people of Meghalaya deserve an answer to the simplest question of all: If the structure proposed at the CBI premises had been a church instead of a temple, would the same objection, the same memorandum and the same appeal to the CBI have been made?
Ranjit Bose
Shillong
