Temple prasad in India comes in a new form during COVID-19

Temples across India and festivals associated with temples have changed following the pandemic. Most temples have shut down for prolonged periods; a lean staff of priests carry out minimal devotional services in some prominent temples; devotees are logging on to temple websites for offering prayers instead of visiting them.

One of the important aspects of prayer rituals in India’s temples is the prasad or holy food offering. This is either prepared by a select band of chefs in the temple kitchen; producing millions of sweets or rice, offered in leaf cups to devotees are blessed food.

On all festive occasions, devotees offer special food as sacred offerings and as part of festival treats before shrines in homes.

Following the pandemic and the lockdown in India since March, most temples were closed to devotees. Many temple websites now allow devotees to offer money in lieu of food offerings using online facilities. Some like the Venkateswara Temple at Andhra Pradesh or the Jagannath Temple in Puri in Odisha have huge temple kitchens that make prasad like the sweet ladoo or bhog or blessed meals.

Special food outlets in temple precincts across the country offer these prasad to pilgrims and devotees buy from these shops as part of worship.

Often priests offer blessed food with bare hands that are received by devotees in hand. Since the pandemic sharing of food and exchange of prasad by hand has come to a halt in temples.

Offering contactless prasad is Amul, one of the extraordinary success in building a cooperative of dairy farmers in the western state of Gujarat. It has developed a sweet offering, the panchamrit that is hygienically produced that can be offered and eaten by devotees as blessed food.

The panchamrit (five kinds of ambrosial food) is a special sweet packaged offering. Hailed as a blessed food in Ayurveda, the panchamrit is a pudding that contains cow’s milk, curd, honey, sugar, and ghee.

“As consuming food that is unpacked and which exchanges several hands is not considered safe Amul has launched the first single-use pack of panchamrit,” says RS Sodhi, MD Amul India.

The product was developed after due consultation with priests and devotees across India. Plans are afoot to offer this as bhog or blessed food in the temples where the priest may symbolically offer it on a plate before the shrine to bless and distribute it to the devotees.

The product can be bought off Amul retail outlets and used as a sacred offering for worship at homes and at temples when they reopen after lockdown to maintain hygiene standards in food offerings. Major temple complexes in India like Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, the Somnath Temple, Ambaji, and Dakor in Gujarat have Amul outlets which will stock the pachamrit.

When temples reopen and pilgrims and devotees begin their visits shops outside the temples will also stock the blessed food across India.

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