The following is the rebuttal to the Expat Priests article in The Straits Times:
Well, I am quite disappointed with the article "Expat Priests" published on the 23rd of August (Saturday) in the Home Page B8. I feel that the interviewer might have been misinformed.
Before anything else, the word "Priest" itself was misrepresented. The actual word is "Brahmana". According to Vedic Civilization, the human society is divided into four social orders and four spiritual orders. The four social orders are Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra. This division is unavoidable for the smooth running of society. These divisions are not based on birthright. They are based on the aptitude and work of the person concerned. This is confirmed in the Vedic literature. The Brahmanas are the intellectual or the priestly class, the Kshatriyas are the warrior or administrative class, the Vaishyas are the business class and the Sudras are the laborer class. The Brahmanas are considered to be the head of the society, the Kshatriyas are the arms, the Vaishyas are the waist and the Sudras are the legs of the society.
The Brahmanas are first class ideal men. They have six kinds of activities. Firstly, Pathan Paathan; he is well-versed in the study of the Vedic scriptures. Not only is he well-versed, he teaches this knowledge to others without any monetary remuneration. A Brahmana never accepts any salary. He voluntarily keeps himself in a poverty-stricken condition so that he will not be intoxicated with wealth and be always dependent completely upon God for his necessities. He is not very anxious to maintain his body. He has full faith that God will supply him everything. His main concern in life is how to develop unconditional love of God. Then the next activity is Yajan Yaajan; he performs sacrifices to purify himself and he performs sacrifices to benefit others. Then Daana Pratigraha; he accepts donations from the general people, offer them to God, uses whatever is barely necessary to keep his body and soul together and distributes the rest back to the public. A Brahmana never hoards any money or anything for that matter. All these are the qualifications of real Brahmanas, not of so-called Brahmanas who only worry about their own bread and butter.
Well, let's now look at the article itself.
The article says:
In fact, community leaders claim that there has never been a locally born Hindu Temple Priest.
And....
"Singaporeans? Nobody is interested."
I am member of Sri Krishna Mandir and the Temple President His Grace Sundar Gopal Das has been a priest for the past 30 years. All these years, he never had any salary whatsoever. In fact, he trained so many others also in this respect. All of them follow these principles very strictly. They even have Chinese priests, what to speak of Indians. None of them accept any salaries. They are genuinely not interested in earning a salary. They are 100% dedicated to the service of the Lord. Therefore the above statements quoted in the article are completely false.
The article then says:
Even if a Singaporean Hindu wants to become a temple priest, he would have to head to India for training, as there are no schools here.
There it is:
Sri Krishna Mandir
9, Geylang Lorong 29, #03-02
(S) 388065
Tel: 6250 2280
They have already been teaching this invaluable science for decades now. Again the quoted statement is wrong.
In fact, the job of a priest or Brahmana is not just to mechanically perform some prayers keeping the public in the dark about the knowledge of self-realization. A real Brahmana is very compassionate. He always looks out for ways and means to enlighten the suffering humanity about the authorized science of self-realization based on authoritative Vedic sources such as Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam, which alone can bring complete peace to the afflicted soul.
I positively suggest that the interviewer kindly interview the monks and priests at Sri Krishna Mandir as you can find locally-trained priests there.
