Recently, the Supreme Court upheld the rights of running the Padmanabhaswamy Temple to the royal family of Travancore. This case has been settled after pending in the Supreme Court for over 9 years due to allegations relating to the management and administration of the temple. However, an infographic going viral on Whatsapp claims that the Kerala Government has made a new law where Muslims and Christians can also control the temple.

The text in Hindi roughly translates to, “Kerala government makes a new law where Hindu temples can be controlled by Muslims and Christians. Hindus are being treated as outsiders in their own country. Would they accept if the control of a mosque or church to Hindus?”. 

The same infographic which claimed that non-Hindus can control temples in India is also being shared on Facebook. The post now stands deleted but it garnered a lot of attention and shares, and here is an archived version of it.

Fact Check

We did a keyword search and no news platform has reported such information, nor is there any Government order stating the claim made above. Thus, the claims are baseless and they are made up.

Moreover, several articles have been published which confirm that according to the Supreme Court ruling, the rights to the temple have been given back to the royal family of Travancore which had been handling it earlier. 

This is not the first time that such fake news has been created in relation to the court proceedings regarding the temple. In 2018, a rumour spread that the Kerala Government has appointed non-Hindus as commissioners to its five Devasom boards ( where ‘Devasom System’ refers to the management of temples by the state government or private bodies). This rumor led to the Kerala government confirming that no such decision has been taken. 

In conclusion, the claim that the control of temples is to be given to non-Hindus is fake. Moreover, the image of the temple used in the viral picture is not of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple or any temple in Kerala but a temple in New Delhi called the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple. This can be found by administering a simple reverse image search.