These meals, are typically of the traditional South Indian variety, where Hindu people are served food over plantain leaves on the temple floor.
[8] The practice in the prominent Kukke Subramanya Temple has generated controversy in the State of Karnataka, where certain groups and individuals, including the State president of the Backward Classes Awareness Forum, K S Shivaram, who suggested that the practice symbolizes slavery, are demanding a ban,[9] calling it a campaign against “blind beliefs”.
It has been continually challenged in court by the Rajya Adivasi Budakattu Hitharakshana Vedike (ರಾಜ್ಯ ಆದಿವಾಸಿ ಬುಡಕಟ್ಟು ಹಿತರಕ್ಷಣ ವೇದಿಕೆ), an Adivasi (classified as Dalit) rights group, who have questioned the motives in banning a practice voluntarily undertaken by people from all walks of life:[3] It has also been reported that members from the forest tribe, Malekudiyas, who traditionally decorate the Temple Ratha for the procession, refused to do so, were the stay on the practice not lifted.
[17] The Government of Karnataka sought to bypass the courts by including a provision banning the practice, in the Anti-Superstition bill tabled -and subsequently dropped- in the Winter assembly of 2014.
[18] The legislation also included laws, which allowed the state to gain administrative control of Hindu Temples & Mutts over arbitrary transgressions.