The Many Birthplaces of Hanuman
On April 21, on the occasion of Sri Rama Navami, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), custodian of the richest Hindu shrine, unveiled “mythological, epigraphic and geographic evidence” to claim that Tirumala is the birthplace of the Hindu god Hanuman. To bolster the claim, the TTD had constituted an eight-member committee, including Sanskrit and Vedic scholars and even a scientist from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in December 2020 to produce “irrefutable” evidence on the purported Hanuman . This came after questions were raised during the special religious discourses the TTD held in June last year when participants asked why there were uncertainties about the birthplace. It seems were mentioning several places with similar-sounding names.
