Jesus Christ’s name appears on Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam’s website; Hindu organisations respond

Hyderabad: God is everywhere. God is omnipotent. However, if a god of one religion encroaches into other religion’s privacy, of course, with the help of people’s malicious intention, then it’s objectionable. It is what perhaps happened with TTD website. Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam’s (TTD) calendars are very valuable to devotees. Right from November onwards, devotees eagerly look forward to the release of next year’s calendars. This time, the release of calendars delayed owing to unknown reasons. Generally, TTD releases new calendars during mid-November.

Unable to wait for the release of calendars, several devotees searched on Google for the PDF copy of TTD 2020 calendars. For their surprise, Vikarinama Panchangam for 2019-20 opened and they found Yesaiah’s name along with Lord Sri Venkateshwara on one page.

‘Sri Yesaiah Sri Venkateshaya Namah’ a printed sentence on the page of ‘Sri Vikara Nama Samvatsaa’ Sidhntha Panchashabdam. Devotees were astonished seeing Sri Yesaiah sentence. They expressed anger over campaigning of other religion on the TTD website and religious content. Devotees said that error 404 appeared when clicked on Sri Yesaiah sentence. It means that the user was blocked from opening the page.

Devotees started complaining to TTD call centre. Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other Hindu organisations immediately responded to this and took it to the notice of Executive Director (ED) of TTD. Subsequently, TTD took action by blocking the website and removed the text from the page. The technical department also took measures ensuring that such text is not traceable from Google search as well. The TTD Vigilance Department is investigating into the issue to find out how much text got into the official website.

Expressing anger over the negligence of TTD, a Hindu activist said that the officials were not divulging the information on why and how it happened. “TTD officials are attributing the reason to Google as it was “misinterpretation” by the search engine. We suspect people with access to the official website of TTD. Without their role, no one can log in and change the texts on the webpages. We demand an investigation by the cyber police immediately,” remarked the activist.