https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/demand-for-freeing-temples-from-hrce-dept-is-nonsense/article34561361.ece
The new Finance Minister, Thiru. PTRP Thyagarajan, of the new government that was sworn in to power only last week in Chennai appears in person to be a man of God. He sports a bold smear of scarlet, holy vermilion on the forehead of his young, intelligent and handsome face.
He says his grandfather Thiru.PT Rajan, though a founding father of the pre-Independence erstwhile Justice Party in Tamil Nadu, (which for the information of those unfamiliar with TN political history, later transmogrified into EVR Naicker’s Dravida Kazhagam, a pseudo-ideological and quasi-political outfit that thrives today in Tamil Nadu under the patronage of the DMK), was a temple-going Hindu who in fact contributed enormously to the preservation and prosperity of the Ayyappan temple at Sabarimala and the Meenaakshi temple in Madurai. Also, that it was Thiru.PT Rajan, as Chief Minister of colonial-era Madras Presidency, who enacted the HRCE Act and institutionalized it into the government-authority (the HRCE Commissioner, a Government-appointed bureaucrat) that it has become today, holding sway over the administration and regulation of some 45,000 temples spread across far and wide in the State, especially those which do not happen to be held in the hands of private religious and charitable trusts or of hereditary Hindu religious “mutts” or “aadheenams” etc.
Thiru. PTRP Thyagarajan is a suave, highly educated man having graduated from an American University and having worked as an international investment banker too. As the new Finance Minister one would have thought his most urgent priorities to which he would give his first and sole attention would be the precarious state of the government’s financial health.
One would have thought that a matter such as HRCE and running of Hindu temples of the state would be left to Thiru. Sekhar Babu, who has been designated as Minister, HRCE to give it the attention it deserves all in good time and for good reasons. To see the Finance Minister jump into the fray so quickly on behalf of his Cabinet colleague holding the relevant portfolio does appear rather unusual if not unwarranted.
Why is Thiru. Thyagarajan so incensed with the matter of HRCE and Hindu temples in Tamil Nadu? After all, his party has won a landslide victory in the elections. There is a clear people’s mandate given to the DMK on the strength of the promises made in its Election Manifesto… And we all know one of the promises listed therein is that the elected Government will extend handsome financial support to Hindu temples in TN by way of:
“financial assistance of Rs.25000/- to Rs.100,000/- for people going on pilgrimage to major Hindu temples”.
“allowing people from all castes to become priests… leading to the immediate appointment of 215 people”, and
“salary and pension of village priests to be increased (?)”
Instead of focusing on and telling us all how, when and where his Party’s specific election promises made with regard to HRCE matters are going to be met, it is intriguing to see Thiru. Thyagarajan go rather ballistic about a certain issue — i.e. of “freeing Hindu temples from HRCE control” — that never really was up, in the first place, either front or center on the political theatre-stage during the election campaign 2021.
It was an issue only on the far fringes of political discourse and debate. Not even the BJP or its alliance partners really made much fuss or ado about it. It was given hardly any prominence in the public space except perhaps in some quarters or corners of the social media. It also got a little bit of non-descript attention in a section of the TN print-press (notably, The Hindu) , when some so-called “constitutional law” experts penned a few eloquent Op-Eds in defense of why the HRCE Commission should not let go of its hold on Hindu temples and why the Act itself serves very valuable constitutional purpose in terms of social justice and caste-affirmative action.
Under the circumstances, it is really disturbing to see the Finance Minster so early in the tenure of the new government come out publicly with all guns blazing talking so intemperately about the matter as though it were a public concern equal in gravity and urgency as perhaps the ongoing Covid crisis even!
It makes one wonder if by doing so Thiru. Thyagarajan is employing a rather ingenious way to graduate from the political “light-weight league” to which he clearly at present belongs within the Party echelons to the higher (and “inner”?) circles of the Kazhagam’s political “heavy-weight category”?
This astute investment-banker’s calculation could be that to prove his ideological credentials are indeed as “hard-core”, or as pure “dyed-in-Periyaar wool”, as that of any other worthy senior in the Party-establishment; and to give it the all-too-necessary comfort it needs to not have any misgivings over having appointed him Finance Minister; and that it can be sure that it has placed its bet on him not only on the strength of his domain-expertise but also on his “Draavida panbu” more than anything else, he needs to demonstrate that he is willing to live down publicly the “temple-going” antecedents and once upon a time “non-secular” image of his family and his forebears.
All this reasoning might sound perhaps a bit like far-fetched “mind-reading” or even “psycho-babbling” on my part.. but then I really am unable to imagine how else is any reasonable person to explain the vicious, vociferous spleen that Thiru. Thyagarajan has been venting while fulminating against meek and barely audible voices that we know were heard only here and there… and now and then… about “liberating Hindu temples from HRCE” during the entire election campaigns last month.
In widely circulated social media video-clips we came across, and now upon reading the interview with him the Hindu has published today (May 15) , we find the TN Finance Minister asking ebulliently “TO WHOM SHOULD THE HR&CE COMMISSION RETURN CONTROL OF TEMPLES?! To the “paarpaans“?!
The term “paarpaan” is a term generally used to derogate all Tambrahms, whether orthodox, progressive, modern or liberal; it is derived from colonial-period Tamil history. It was coined to enable construction and propagation of an enduring and very powerful societal narrative that came to be prevalent across all Tamil Nadu. It is intended to stereotype and stigmatize them all as the chief villains of society, responsible for all social ills, discrimination and oppression of castes. For several decades now, it has wonderfully served so many Tamil regional parties and outfits as fecund political-platform.
In asking such inflammatory questions in such an aggressive, rhetorical manner out there in the public domain — unbecoming of the sobriety and dignified demeanor one would ordinarily expect from a serving State Cabinet Minister who has a both a PhD and a pedigree — what purpose is being served Thiru. Thyagarajan?
Now, as we all will remember, the only “celebrity voice” that was raised for the cause of this damp-squib, traction-less election-issue was never that of any tall political figure in Tamil Nadu, nor that of any influential head of an orthodox religious Mutt of any denomination. The only celebrity who raised his voice and managed to attract a wee bit of attention and some space to talk about it on one or two English-speaking national TV-Channels was this “new-age”, “rock-star” spiritual-guru, Sathguru Jaggi Vasudev of the ISHA FOUNDATION. Minister Thyagarajan now trolls and trashes him in public and in language bordering on the unparliamentary if not foul.
“He is a charlatan!”, he says about Jaggi… the same guru whose vast sprawling Ashram near Coimbatore, it must be remembered, was in fact inaugurated by the DMK patriarch, Thiru. M. Karunanidhi, then Chief Minister of TN!
So, therefore given all the above facts and drama above, the inevitable question that must be asked of ourselves can only be this:
Why is a second-line if not exactly “light-weight”, “vermilion-smeared” politician in the DMK like Thiru. Thyagarajan, with first-class academic and professional credentials in public finance and economics from New York State University, going about needlessly braying and hollering about an HR&CE issue that is nowhere near the top of the list of burning-issues or priorities of the day for the State Government?! And that too so early in his career as a newly appointed first-time Cabinet Minister?
Just because in 1936 his grandfather Thiru. PT Rajan piloted the setting up of the HRCE Authority in TN… does that make the statutory body some kind of personal fiefdom whose turf, remit and integrity the grandson is now duty-bound to protect and defend stoutly? Is this some kind of a turf war between Sathguru Jaggi Vasudev and Thiru. Thyagarajan?
Or, does the answer simply lie in one that any ordinary observer of TN politics might quite easily be led to suspect is the real one? :
That the most appropriate way for a relative “Johnny who’s come lately” into the fold of the Periyarist family-papacy, and eager to quickly earn its full trust and confidence, is to take the other oath of office than the Constitutional one administered to him by the Governor of the State — the one that is indeed far more solemn, far more sacramental and which, by passage in time while he remains in office, this ambitious investment-banker is soon about to realise, that he surely and willy-nilly will have to abide by .. and abide in … to the very utmost in the la la land of “Draavidam” in which he now finds himself — the great oath taken against the “paarpaan“.
Sudarshan Madabushi