Don't waste food for worship - an appeal!

The Hindu deity Shiva is worshipped in the form of a linga(linga means penis). Throughout ancient times there has been a practice of pouring milk over the Shivlinga as an offering to the deity. In ancient times 90% of the population was concentrated in villages and almost every one had a milch cow in their home. So milk was available in plenty of amount, pouring little bit of milk over the Shivlinga didn't make any difference at all.

Again in all Hindu pujas, ghee or butter is used. Ghee and Butter are made from milk and for the reasons mentioned earlier, both were available in plenty. So during the pujas and yagyas, plenty of ghee and butter was used. If you read ancient books of India, you can hear stories about people having plenty of butter in their meals. The story of child Krishna stealing butter from the houses of villagers are well known. It used to be butter filled in big pots.

Now consider the present situation. The population of the country has increased many times over, however the population of cows, buffaloes etc has not increased proportionately. So there is shortage of milk and hence milk, butter, ghee and other milk products are expensive. 

If in the present day we used milk freely on Shivalinga, we actually deprive someone from having the milk, specially children. It is a well known fact that across the nation there is huge amount of adultery done in milk. Packaged milk in India cannot be trusted for quality and purity, that is why there seems to be a never ending supply of milk. The truth is there is a shortage of milk in India and the adulterers are taking advantage of the situation. Also the prices of milk has increased significantly.

Everyday thousands of litres of milk in India is wasted this way

                                               

So in the present context milk should not be wasted on Shivalingas. Also ghee and butter should not be wasted in pujas and yagyas. Its better to give it to the needy people. After all as Swami Vivekananda says "Service to man, is service to god". If you feed the needy, it is a thousand times better than performing a puja or yagya, where the priest is making a fool of you by reading words from an ancient book(in a language that you won't even understand), pouring some ghee in fire, making you recite some words and all that and at the end extracting a good amount of dakshina from you.