Pashupatinath

Pashupatinath restricts entry on a basis that is unusual even among restrictive temples, and it has litigated the question of who chooses its priests up to the Supreme Court of Nepal.

The rule at the gate

Entry to the main courtyard is permitted to practising Hindus of South Asian origin, and to Nepali and Tibetan Buddhists. Converts to Hinduism who are not of South Asian descent are refused.

This is worth stating precisely because it is not a religious test. A person may be a practising Hindu, initiated, observant, and still be turned away on the basis of ancestry. The rule is set by the Pashupati Area Development Trust and enforced at the gate by Nepal's Armed Police Force.

Everyone else views the temple from the far bank of the Bagmati, which is why almost every photograph of Pashupatinath is taken across a river, and why almost every one of them also contains a cremation.

The cremation ghats

The ghats below the temple are in continuous use. Cremations are conducted in full view of the opposite bank, which is public, accessible, and generally crowded with visitors and cameras. Families burn their dead a few dozen metres from tourists photographing them.

The priests, and the case

The Bhatta priests who serve the main shrine are traditionally Kannada-speaking Brahmin scholars brought from Karnataka, selected on scholarly qualification rather than inheriting the post. The practice is held to descend from Shankara, and it means the principal temple of Nepal has been served for centuries by South Indian priests.

In 2009 a Maoist-led government appointed Nepali priests instead, bypassing the traditional selection. The move was defended as ending a colonial-style dependence on India and asserting Nepali control over a Nepali shrine; it was attacked as a political seizure of a religious appointment.

Protests followed, and litigation. The Supreme Court of Nepal overruled the appointments, and the government at first declined to comply.

The episode is a clean example of a collision that recurs across this atlas: a state's claim to appoint against an institution's claim to select. At Pashupatinath the institution won, and it took a court to make that stick.

Pashupatinath sits beside a river used for cremation on a much smaller scale than Varanasi's, and entry to the temple itself depends on a religious test the state enforces rather than merely recommends.

Cremation along the Bagmati

Ghats along the Bagmati River immediately beside the temple are used for open-air cremation, following a pattern comparable to, though considerably smaller in scale than, Varanasi's riverside cremation practice, with royal and notable cremations historically held at the ghats closest to the temple itself.

Closed to non-Hindus

Entry to the main temple precinct is restricted to Hindus, a policy enforced at the gate rather than left to informal custom, meaning non-Hindu visitors, including many tourists, can view the temple complex only from an adjacent hillside rather than entering directly, a firmer restriction than is applied at some other major Hindu temples covered elsewhere in this atlas.

A recognition beyond one country

Pashupatinath's significance is not confined to Nepal alone; it is recognised as one of the most important Shiva temples in the entire Hindu world and is inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, a status that sits alongside, rather than in place of, the temple's continuing role as an actively functioning place of worship and cremation rather than a preserved monument alone.