The need for state intervention in temple management was realised during the temple entry movement, which stressed the importance of treating temples as public spaces
For almost a century, the Tamil Nadu government has been
trying to bring the Chidambaram Natarajar temple or the Sabanayagar
temple as it is officially known, under state administration. The
Dikshitars, the priest community controlling the temple, have resisted
this. After litigating bitterly for two decades against the appointment
of an executive officer to manage the temple, the priests have got a
favourable judgment. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Dikshitars are
a religious denomination, and the State has to protect their right to
manage the temple as guaranteed by Article 26 of the Constitution. This
judgment may appear to have settled a long tussle, but, in fact, it has
raised new questions and brought back important old ones. In a State
where even Jain temples are managed under a Hindu Act as approved by
courts, accepting Dikshitars, who have many cultural commonalities with
Smartha Brahmins, as a religious denomination, is bound to be contested.
At the core of the debate is the critical question: whether temples are
private or public places. If they are collective cultural assets and a
part of a larger heritage, can they stay outside the purview of reforms
that further public interest?
State-administered
temples are not a phenomenon limited to Tamil Nadu, nor are they a
peculiar outcome of the atheist principles of Dravidian party politics.
Across the country, various governments have approved state
administration of temples. Congress governments too had actively pursued
temple reforms. Jawaharlal Nehru’s wish, as T.S.S Rajan, a minister in
the Madras government, explained in 1951, was not to have any private
temples. Some of the earliest attempts to regulate temple administration
commenced in Tamil Nadu. The first legislation passed in 1817 set the
tone and objective. The emphasis was on proper management of endowments.
In 1888, when there were discussions about amendments to the Religious
Endowments Act, a government committee of “six Hindu gentlemen,” which
included T. Muthuswami Iyer and V. Bashyam Iyengar, concluded that legal
measures were indeed needed. It is necessary “for the removal of
widespread and recognised abuses,” the committee reiterated. Newspapers
such as
The Hindu
chided those who opposed legal reforms and compared them to a thief who
might “object to the Penal Code that will look upon him as one deserving
of punishment.” It was during this period that the Dikshitars
approached the Madras High Court to designate the Chidambaram temple as a
private one. The court after hearing the arguments ruled that the
temple was a place of public worship and not a private property of the
Dikshitars.
Those who legally challenged state
control of temples complained that it was interference in religion and
sought protection under Articles 25 and 26, which provided for the right
to freedom of religion. The government knew full well that not all
aspects of temples were out of bounds. As Justice Gajendragadkar, who
had adjudicated important religious disputes in Supreme Court,
elucidated, when religions “impinge adversely on the secular rights of
Citizens and the power of the State to regulate socioeconomic
relations,” the state has the right to interfere in the interest of
public good. Courts on several occasions have been supportive of this
position.
In the landmark case of the Durgah
Committee, Ajmer and Another vs. Syed Hussain Ali and Others, the
Constitution Bench of Supreme Court in 1962 held that the legal
protection “must be confined to such religious practices as are an
essential and integral part of it [religion] and no other.” It further
cautioned that without such a separation, there is a danger that “even
purely secular practices” could be “clothed with a religious form and
may make a claim for being treated as religious practices.”
Managing
temple funds and property are secular activities, and they never
qualified for protection. In 2009, the Madras High Court Bench, which
upheld the government management of Chidambaram temple, reiterated this.
It did not view as improper the government’s decision to administer 400
acres of temple land belonging to the Chidambaram temple and manage the
large contributions.
The need for government
intervention was best explained and fully realised during the temple
entry movement. The need to treat temples as public spaces was
significantly underscored then. In Tamil Nadu, temple entry movement,
though it started in the 19th century, achieved its objective only in
1939 in Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple. It was not easy. Priests opposed
it as interference in their religious practice. Nevertheless, the
government pushed the reforms through by passing suitable legislation.
Some of the temples such as Venkataramana temple in Moolky Petta in
Karanataka, which claimed denomination status, sought cover under
Article 26 and denied entry to Dalits. The Court facilitated Dalit
entry.
Abolishing hereditary rights of priests was
the next major step to make temples accessible to all. Priesthood for
long was an exclusive preserve of select Brahmin families. Many
reformers and governments considered this as unjust and felt it often
led to abuse of position. The Andhra Pradesh government, through a big
bold move in 1987, showed that not only removing hereditary rights of
priests is necessary, but also legitimate. It chose the Tirumala
Tirupati temple to demonstrate this. Predictably, the priests and their
supporters saw this as an “outrageous interference” with religion.
The
priests of Tirupati argued that they belong to the Vaikanasa agama,
which was the liturgical tradition followed in the temple, and hence
have the exclusive right to be priests. They emphasised that they were
not office holders, but an integral part of temple religious practice.
The Supreme Court thought otherwise. It ruled that performance of the
rituals was part of religion, but the person who performs them is not.
Any
qualified person could be appointed, it concluded. The Tamil Nadu
government, which abolished hereditary rights of priests in 1971, took
reforms to its logical conclusion. In 2006, it passed an order to
appoint liturgically trained non-Brahmins as temple priests and set up
colleges to train the interested. It tried to remove the last preserve
of caste discrimination. This scheme is presently under litigation, and
the 207 qualified non-Brahmin priests await appointment.
It
is a misconception that the government is interested only in large and
wealthy temples, and that in the name of reforms, it tries to take over
temple properties. Numbers prove that this allegation is far from the
truth. About 34,470 religious institutions, which constitute 90 per cent
of those managed by the Tamil Nadu government, are small and earn less
than Rs. 10,000 annually. Only less than one per cent earns more than
Rs. 10 lakh annually. Preventing misuse of public offerings has been the
core concern. The government recently brought temples under the Right
to Information Act, which is another right step toward making temple
administration more accountable and transparent.
In
Chidambaram, funds and property were not the only issues in question.
Some unreasonable practices too drew government attention. For instance,
Dikshitars for long did not permit singing of Tamil Saivaite
devotional-hymns, which is a popular practice with the non-Brahmins,
near the sanctum. They even got a stay order against it. Only when the
government contemplated taking legal action and issued an official order
in 2008 to permit hymn singing, did the Dikshitars relent. The
government has tried many times to restructure the Chidambaram temple
administration. The Madras High Court even upheld its 1933 scheme
involving Dikshitars to manage the temple, but with minor modification.
Strangely, the government did not implement it, leading to the present
situation.
It would be pertinent to recall what the
central Commission on Hindu Religious Endowments constituted in 1960
observed about the situation in South India where temples had been under
statuary regulation for decades. The commission, to its satisfaction,
found most of the large temples fairly well administered and that “many
of the gross abuses” are “happily absent”. It also quickly added that
this does not mean that there is no need for further reforms. Marc
Galanter’s
Law and Society in Modern India
explains that the constitutional mandate enables law to perform an
arbitral role. Legal measures do not have to be confined to ascertaining
a preordained religious sphere. Where reforms are needed, the state can
implement them. In this context, even rights provided by Article 26 are
not unfettered.
Comments
Post a Comment