R.E.A.C.H has now got a new abbreviation,thanks to the new forming committee, comprising of the
Author of the new trust, Mr. T. Satyamurthy, Superintending Archaeologist and director for excavating and leading many land mark findings in India. A man with various missions and feathers in his cap, who recently retired from Archeological Survey of India, happily consented to be the head of the affairs.
Core member Mr.S.Ramamurthy, called as âKovilâ Ramamurthy by all who know about his one man army and adventures. He had single handedly constructed more than 160 temples within a span of 16 years. A Scandinavian and Indian Naval Officer, who had seen many warfront and just â"missed death traps, had also seen similar situations while fighting with communal and caste forces to erect temples in unknown terrains and win the people by their heart. He has a simple theme: Identify the temple, make people commit to half the cost of reconstruction and make them do shramdhaan. The balance will be pooled in by Ramamurthy. The temples of Kundrathur stand today at least to some respectable shape only due to his long waged battle to get them going. This page would be insufficient to write on him.
Also joining them is another member from the auditing fraternity, is Mr.S.Hariharan, a leading auditor, advisor and author for many economic forums. He has the direct blessings of the Paramacharya himself and he takes care of almost 6o ancient but non-descript Shiva lingams in and around Kanchipuram. He had consented to take care of the legal and accounting aspects of trust formation, maintenance of accounts.
3 existing members of the temple_cleaners, founder of the temple cleaning yahoo group and software expert, Mr.Rajan Ganesh,
an independent tax advisor and and the trustee of Subramania Swamy temple in his native Kallidai Kuruchi and son of a famous lawyer, and named after his renowned industrialist Ramasundaram, Mr.Ram Sunder and
J. Chandrasekaran a plastics technologist and liaison manager for an US based firm from India, a voracious writer and artist (painting, cartoons, sculpture and dramatics) who hails from the renowned poet Kavi Yogi Shuddhanandha Bharati lineage
Are the other three members of the founder committee.
REACH Foundation will be abbreviated as Rural Education and Cultural Heritage foundation, having the ideals as follows:-
1. Mark, preserve and restore ancient monuments of heritage value, and maintain it. 2. Teach rural masses about our ancient ideologies and culture, make them believe that these monuments are important in their lives and try to create temple-centric cultural centres branching out to self help groups who do hand made products used in temples. 3. Try to help financially poor artisans, pundits, scholars 4. To preserve and teach ancient scriptures, train youth on scripture reading, understanding of agamas, heritage monuments, etc and breed a team of youngsters who can become true guides for visitors helping them reach all nooks and corners, show them the wealthy heritage and explain the intricacies in a smiling and efficient manner 5. To help the ill and needy fellow beings for operations involving high expenditure. 6. To preserve Goshalas, prevent animal slaughter etc
The trust deed runs to pages, but I have tried to make it as short as possible.
There are almost 80 members in this temple_cleaners yahoo group. Now comes the most important question:-
How many would become permanent members of the newly found trust?
If yes, what should be the membership fee (it can be a one time life member fee which adds to the corpus fund or it can be an annual subscription).
More than the big corpus we need to create for the greater tasks we have in hand, how do we mobilize masses? More youth for volunteering the cleaning and restoration activity? For learning the kalvettu - epigraph reading? For reaching all villages and shrines whenever called for? For becoming a leader himself who can generate more members under him/her?
Members,please think seriously and draft your action plan and send it to
[email protected] asap,and not to the yahoo group mail. We will be considering all suggestions, evaluate the best out of them and finally bring out the action agenda.
I wish all members fill the new mail box with your enthusiastic replies and valued suggestions.
Come letâs dream big and make our land a culturally rich one!