[cold start]

I agree with what you have said generally but the case here is a bit more nuanced. The state does not interfere in private bodies running temples, only those where there is no such body or where the rights to run the temples by those private bodies have been successfully challenged in a court of law. When passed into state control, customs that previously were used do not stand. That would be the case here.

[Mrs. Don-o]

As you probably know more of the details, you would be right. It all depends on who has a right to run this particular Temple. If the original families who ran this temple were proven to be illegitimate, then I suppose the law may provide for it to pass into some form of public conservatorship.

Perhaps analogous to what happened in the Western Ukraine, when the USSR handed over all the Catholic Ukrainian Churches to the Orthodox during the Stalin era. The Orthodox at that point were the sole licensed liturgists for the State. That was their argument --- that the Catholic Church was not the legitimate owner-operator of these churches. But I think that was a usurpation by the State.