Jammu's Raghunath Temple trains young women as priests; 150 now on waiting list

Young women in Jammu are training to perform the daily rituals of the city's Shri Raghunath Ji Temple, a role held by men for generations, in a programme that has grown from five trainees to a waiting list of about 150, its organiser said in reports published on Monday, October 19, 2026. More than 100 female university students have volunteered for the training, according to the Jammu Deputy Commissioner. They are being taught by scholars from Banaras (Varanasi) and priests from local temples to lead aartis, recite mantras and conduct havans, with the aim of becoming panditains, or women priests, who can carry out ceremonies on their own.

Temple ritual in India has long been a hereditary, male domain. Knowledge of mantras, the order of worship and the conduct of fire rituals has usually passed from father to son within priestly families. The Jammu programme opens that body of practice to young women from outside those families and teaches it in a structured way, with set training and teachers drawn from Varanasi, one of the oldest centres of Sanskrit and Vedic learning.

That matters for the transmission of the tradition itself. Ritual knowledge survives only when people learn it, practise it and pass it on. A formal training route that welcomes women widens the pool of people who can keep the practice alive, and does so with teachers from an established centre of learning rather than through informal imitation.

The organisers present the programme as adding women to the temple's ritual life, not replacing men. Singh has said the goal is for the trainees to take on the full role of panditains, performing havans, rituals and mantra recitation independently. According to the reports, people in other parts of India have since asked to start similar efforts in their own temples.

There are open questions. The reports do not say whether the trained women will be paid, appointed to regular temple duties or certified in any formal way, nor how the temple's existing priests view the change. Some figures also differ between reports: earlier coverage spoke of about 150 women in training, while the latest describes 150 on a waiting list. These details will decide whether the programme becomes a lasting model or remains a single temple's experiment.

For readers interested in India's knowledge traditions, the Jammu effort is a reminder that these traditions are not only texts in libraries and manuscript collections. They also live in practice, in how mantras are pronounced and rituals are performed, and that kind of knowledge depends on people willing to learn it.

Short-term: More young women will take part in the temple's daily aartis and rituals as training continues, and the waiting list suggests demand outstrips places.

Long-term: If the programme lasts and spreads, it could create a recognised route for women to become temple priests in other parts of India and widen the circle of people who carry ritual knowledge forward.

Who is affected: Young women and university students in Jammu; the Raghunath Ji Temple and its devotees; traditional priests and their families; and temples elsewhere considering similar training.

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