The tantri is right on most points here, except for two critical arguments he has failed and avoided answering here. First, he carefully creates an analogy to compare punyaham after someone's entry into the temple to punyaham after vomiting/blood shedding. He knows very well that the two are not the same. The latter is a natural body act that is considered impure but does not render the person impure. So, it is the act that requires purification. The former punyaham, is required when someone who is not believed to be of the faith enters the temple, which is an insult on that person, if he/she is a follower of Hinduism. At the heart of this lies the archaic tradition, as the tantri pointed out, that a mother's children takes the religion of the mother. This is an extremely chauvinistic perspective and one expects better of a supposedly egalitarian religion. What would have happened if Ravi had a daughter by his Christian wife and that daughter had a daughter and so on? Aren't they "non-believers" in the tantri's eyes? In the end, one should not go by what these temple priests believe to understand Hinduism. All a true devotee has to do is go back to the basics - the Gita - to understand who are true devotees of Hinduism and who are not. And when one does so, one realizes that a Hindu is not chosen by a temple priest or a temple tradition, but a Hindu is a person who approaches God and knows him as his "own Divine Self".
