THE SIZE OF DEVOTION

KCR’s extravagant bid to outdo the Tirumala shrine, in a grand display of competitive religiosity, will cost the state Rs 1,800 crore

- AMARNATH K. MENON

An artificial plateau has come up on a hillock at Yadagirigutta, some 70 km northeast of Hyderabad, and what was once a modest cave shrine has been transformed into a grand temple. Labourers are braving the torrid summer heat to build an ornate 330 feet long gold-coloured passage, which will be the corridor for worshippers to access the sanctum sanctorum of Narasimha Swamy—the part-lion, part-man avatar of Vishnu that Hindus revere as the incarnation that came to Earth to destroy evil and restore dharma.

If Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) is to be believed, he is putting in place a “21st century world-class Hindu spiritual destination”. And it’s all being done at state expense. In March 2015, he launched the Rs 1,800 crore project spread over 1,885 acres, after shortening the name of the place to Yadadri from Yadagirigutta, in the hope that it will become a major temple tourism centre in the country. Apart from the shrine, the surrounding landscape is becoming a temple city, modelled on the popular shrine at Tirumala in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Until 2015, worshippers had to trudge down rocky terrain to reach the narrow cave and offer obeisance to the deity in the temple built in 1246 by Bommanna Dandanayaka, a commander of the Hoysala empire, during the rule of King Vira Someshwara.