“The first expedition of the English East India Company (EEIC) to India was led by William Hawkyns, who landed in Surat on 24 August 1608 CE.... And thus began endless bloody wars between Islam and British Imperialism on India’s soil…. Many wars followed in the following two hundred and fifty years that ultimately gave the British control of most of India. Beginning in the 1740s CE, the company fought at least one major war a decade until about 1850. The Anglo-Mysore Wars (1766–1799) were fought all over southern India, the Anglo-Maratha Wars (1772–1818) over central India, and the final Sikh Wars (1845–1849) over the Punjab of northern India……
The EEIC ruled India until 1858 CE, when the Indian Rebellion (now known as the First War of Indian Independence) led the British government to take over control of the country…..
The British government effectively abolished the EEIC in 1858, taking away all its administrative and taxing powers. The Crown assumed thus full control of all its territories and armed forces…..
Thus began the British Raj and the direct British colonial rule over India which continued until India was given its independence in 1947.” (James Hancock: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2048/the-english-and-dutch-east-india-companies-invasio/ )
Under the British Raj, the Indian spirit became enslaved, humiliated and crushed in every imaginable way. The colonial ruler’s attitude to India was captured in one infamous passage in the book written by James Mill “History of British India” in 1817 CE: “….. (The Indian nation is) tainted with the vices of insincerity; dissembling, treacherous, mendacious, to an excess which surpasses even the usual measure of uncultivated society….. disposed to excessive exaggeration with regard to every thing relating to themselves….cowardly and unfeeling…. in the highest degree conceited of themselves, and full of affected contempt for others….in the physical sense, disgustingly unclean in their persons and houses.…”.
Elsewhere, James Mill condemned all Indian culture as “barren, perverse and objectionable.” And he wrote of Indians: “under the glossed exterior of the Hindu, lies a general disposition to deceit and perfidy. [And] the same insincerity, mendacity, and perfidy; the same indifference to the feelings of others; the same prostitution and venality are conspicuous in both [Hindus and Muslims]“
Under British colonial rule and its utter disdain and contempt for all that was Indian civilization, educated Indians even began loathing themselves as an inferior race and people…. (Winston Churchill, later Prime Minister of Britain, once remarked publicly: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”.
*****************************
The period between 1608 and 1947 CE may be called the blackest chapter in the history of the Decline of “ubaya-vedaantha” too…. The zeitgeist of the times led to the impoverishment of this deeply religious community of South India…. not just its material conditions of existence and sustenance… it also severely traumatized its collective spirit and self-belief and self-confidence.
For centuries “ubaya-vedaantham” had flourished as a rich, creative and productive cultural tradition of a small priestly community who helped shape, preserve and nurture Vedic social mores, values and identities in the Tamil country. It aided the political class of kings and nobles too in preserving the integrity of their empires and fiefdoms. This they had been able to assiduously accomplish through the single institution called the temple…. and by which they came to wield enormous influence over social and community life in all its diversity all across southern India.
The ethos of the Sri Vaishnava community — as we have seen — was wholly based upon and centered around great Vishnu temples of grand, awe-inspiring architecture that the Vijayanagar Empire had erected, protected and devotedly patronized. Thanks to several generations in a long, unbroken lineage of a priestly class of profound Vedantic philosophers and theologians — achaaryas and gurus such as Ramanujacharya, Vedanta Desika, Manavaala Maamuni and others — the temples such as Sri Rangam, Tirumala, Kanchipuram and Melkote Tirunarayanapuram, themselves grew to become magnificent living cultural icons of what was a vibrantly Hindu Vedic way of life. And it was all largely thanks to rich treasures of vast religious literature (such as the “4000 divya-prabhandams” of the twelve holy mystic saints, the Azhwaars), to liturgical Agamic practices, to the ecumenical orders such as the “kovil ozhukkus” which, together with other Vedic sacramental protocols got seamlessly blended or welded within the “bhakthi” movement of the ordinary native masses. Besides the impact on religious life — what is known as “paaramaarthikam” in Sanskrit— the Sri Vaishnava traditions also inspired people to achieve a great deal in many secular creative endeavors too — or “vyavahaarikam” — such as in music, arts, crafts, dramaturgy, poesy, crafts, yoga sciences like ayurveda, shilpa-saastra, vaastu saastra etc. All of these did flourish for a long time in Sri Vaishnava history and life.
The blackest chapter in the history of “ubaya-vedaantham” — from 1740 CE to 1858 CE — however witnessed the gradual but sure decline of all the above traditions. It was caused when great social upheavals followed continual bloody wars, mentioned above. They simply sapped the spirit of the Sri Vaishnavas, draining it away of all its élan, spiriting away all energies and resources from their temples — about 100-odd of them in number dotting the land at large but largely concentrated, however, inside Tamil country between Kanchipuram and Sri Rangam.
The same period saw too the passing away of many empires and rulers (as already described in the previous Parts) into the dark and misty oblivion of History… It also witnessed death and destruction, untold sufferings in terms of famines, drought, disease, pestilence, unjust taxation, extortion, expropriation, disruption… The temples of the Sri Vaishnavas experienced during the same time gross interference into temple affairs (e.g. the “Bruce Code” recasting the Ramanujacharya codes of “kovil ozhukkus” etc. described in Part-27) and the desecration of it through all manner of other injustices, serious and unobtrusive..
New tyrants succeeded old ones, who then simply upended and devastated the lives, customs, values and the traditional priesthood-ethos of the community which (again as we have seen in previous Parts) was already riven from within by its own self-destructive sectarian schisms and squabbling viz.: the Tenkalai versus the Vadakalai turf-war in all temples across Tamil Nadu, both vying for power and control over their rapidly diminishing common wealth, resources such as land, property, precious movable assets, revenue-streams, political patronage and social influence.
The “blackest period” in the history of the “ubaya-vedaantin-s” certainly laid the ground and the pace for the eventual Fall of their tradition that ensued in all of southern India in the post-Independence era…. But then here we are getting slightly ahead of ourselves….
It is important first to pause a little while to focus briefly on the profound and seismic social changes that overcame, rocked, overwhelmed and utterly demoralized the Sri Vaishnava community towards the end of this black period. The changes were many and would indeed make for the perfect subject, in fact, for a modern historian or sociologist to undertake full-fledged, comprehensive research work into. But for the limited purpose of this outline here of that historical period, it is not possible to attempt any more than merely a bare and minimal account of what caused such tremendous social upheavals leading ultimately to the fall of the “ubaya-vedaantin-s”. The causes can be studied under these broad groups:
A. Language
B. Education
C. Migration
C. Cultural alienation
D. Wealth dispossession
(to be continued)
Sudarshan Madabushi