Hyderabad: Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday released a model of the future Tirupati railway station, eliciting a volley of criticism from several users on Twitter for not portraying ‘Indian culture’ and looking like a ‘European Church’ among other reactions.
Sharing a few images of the exterior and interior design of the upcoming railway station for the temple town, Vaishnaw wrote, “Tirupati world-class railway station on fast track. All contracts awarded.”
The inside of the station was depicted in model images as having a wall mounted depiction of the Tirumala temple’s Venkateswara deity. The rest of the design made no reference to the temple’s God, which is one of the world’s richest and most popular Hindu temples, with daily crowds of 70,000 to 80,000 people.
Many Twitter users were unhappy with this, and demanded a design that was more representative of ‘Indian culture’ or ‘Hindu culture.’ While some claimed that the design made the railway station look like a government facility or corporate headquarters, others said it had a ‘Christian’ or ‘church’ vibe.
Since Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, a Christian, came to power in 2019, Tirupati has been at the centre of a series of scandals and attempts at polarisation from right-wing parties in the state. Since then, erroneous information about supposed forced conversions and the presence of Christian beliefs and symbols in the temple town has travelled widely.
Employees’ faith in the TTD (Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams), the entity in charge of the temple’s activities, has also been questioned.
Nag Ashwin, who directed the movie ‘Mahanati’ and is presently shooting Project K with Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, and Amitabh Bachchan, added his two cents to the debate.
He responded to the Minister’s tweet and wrote, “Dear sir…as u might have seen in the comments…nobody likes this…The design looks like some generic western copy, some bad IT park… tirupati is sacred, spiritual…lets get ppl to design it who understand the rich architecture of India..and not this glass n steel copies.”
