Hereditary and/or traditional rights of control over temple wealth and administration
All through the years during the period 1970s through 2000, the community of the “ubaya-vedaantins” plunged rapidly into a social morass.
The language of their ancient traditions, Sanskrit, was in its death-throes if not already dead.
The ancient social-contract of “varna-ashrama-dharma” in which, once upon a time, they as a communitarian unit had always been an essential and integral stakeholder, had been declared “unconstitutional” and stood banned.
In the resultant psychological trauma suffered collectively, the community at large — at least those members who could be said to constitute the “Class-B type of Sri Vaishnavas” — chose to respond to the challenge of the times through the expedient of “flight rather than fight”.
At least two whole generations of young Sri Vaishnavas joined the waves of large-scale migration — or rather fleeing — out of their traditional rural environs, and temple-based ecospheres there. They transmigrated, so to say, to the burgeoning new urban middle-class in the cities that were supposedly a larger caste-agnostic milieu of India. There they pursued modern education, gained comparably more lucrative employment in secular professions and careers and enjoyed relatively much higher materialistic standards of living than ever experienced before.
This migratory trend took place from c.1950s through the end of c.1970s. Thereafter began, in the early c.1990s and 2000s — when the “global IT revolution” peaked — yet another wave of immigration of a young generation of entire Sri Vaishnava families, who in quest of personal fortunes and “better standards of life and living”, expatriated themselves internationally — to faraway countries, mainly America, and in lesser numbers, to UK, Australia and the Arabian Gulf Countries.
Thus, migration, modern education and diasporic expatriation were all factors that combined to greatly diminish the Sri Vaishnava population and reduced it to the status of a rump-community rapidly losing its traditional moorings. And its traditional identity suddenly began to undergo a most fundamental transformation.
For countless centuries in the past, from being an elite, proud community that was highly venerated by the rest of society for its exemplar life of “high thinking and simple living”, for its dedication to Vedic philosophical learning and austere scholarly pursuits, for its spiritual practice of the ‘dharma-saastras“, and for its rather cloistered but socially important vocations of priesthood and curatorship of temple-institutions… the new generation of “ubaya-vedantins” reconciling itself to changing times, went meekly to “join the crowd” to become no different from it. Nonetheless, having chosen to meld into the mainstream of society’s flow, the Sri Vaishnavas strove very hard to become part of the new socially-mobile urban neo-bourgeoisie of Tamil Nadu. Shuffling off their traditional ways of life, they converted themselves fully into a new societal role i.e. that of the priesthood of professionals — as lawyers, scientists, doctors, IT workers, chartered accountants, bankers, mercantilists, stock-brokers, insurance-underwriters and journalists… the crème de la crème amongst them joined the ICS and IAS to become powerful bureaucrats and a notable few others also as big-time industrialists and entrepreneurs.
Within a short span of just three generations, a very large and predominant section of the community, described in Part-36 as the “Class-B type of Sri Vaishnavas” —- after nearly 1000-long years since Sri Ramanujacharya had first laid out probably what he had imagined would be his undying legacy for posterity, viz. the tradition of “ubaya-vedaanta” and its unique ways of life, customs and life-style — had to perforce jettison it. There was no other way to cope with the trauma and social pressures that had descended upon them. In c. 50-60 years post-Indian Independence, most of Ramanujacharya’s flock went from being religious pundits to emerge as professional pundits in the modern, secular society.
It was thus that some of the Class-B Sri Vaishnavas came to rise quite high in society. They became quite renowned, in fact, for outstanding accomplishments in respective and chosen fields of endeavor. (An interesting list of such eminent Sri Vaishnavas can be accessed on this link http://kishen-matchmaking.blogspot.com/2008/01/two-is-of-south-india.html?m=1 ). For most of them however, their professional and secular identities simply erased, replaced or overlapped their traditional identity which ceased to have any more relevance or meaning. They prided themselves far more on their new professional identities than the traditional. Embracing what was commonly described as a cosmopolitan world-view, a few Sri Vaishnavas who had wholly westernized themselves, felt greatly relieved, even liberated, that their generation had burnt bridges with the past, disentangled or disengaged itself from degenerating historical roots and had managed to shake off the millstone of a millennial old cultural inheritance hanging around the neck of their souls.
In efflux of time, the identity of a new Sri Vaishnava generation thus became a hybrid one…. a palimpsest where the traces of the original and traditional had to be effaced to quite a large extent to make room for the modern identity, professional and secular.
Such was the collective pain of trauma… a psychologically debilitating and disorienting one… that a whole generation of the “ubaya-vedaantins” suffered.
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The story of the “Class-A Sri Vaishnavas” is an even more harrowing one to relate.
There were a few thousands of such families amongst the “ubaya-vedaanta” community— like many other small other Brahmin sectarian and denominational communities such as Saivities, Saaktas and Smaartha-s too in the state of Tamil Nadu — who had chosen to stay put in their villages and their traditional homesteads. They remained persevering in their traditional roles and dedicated to vocations as Vedic pundits, scriptural (dharmasaastra) scholars and practitioners, temple “archakaa-s” (priests), “prachaaraks” (preachers) etc. As explained in Part-36 already, they could be described as the “last men standing” defiantly against the devastating storm of social changes that was blowing all around them, uprooting the established order and ushering in the new. They became a greatly disenfranchised, dispossessed and impoverished lot.
Under the onslaught of many a Constitutional legislation enacted after Indian Independence by State Governments as in Tamil Nadu, many socio-economic reforms were launched e.g. agricultural land-holdings, abolition of ryotwari and zamindari systems, the abolition of caste, the right of temple-entry for backward and tribal castes, regulation of temple affairs by the State etc. While quite a few of such reforms, such as the law granting Dalit rights to temple-entry, were indeed progressive and socially welcomed, there were many others that however were quite destructive of the delicate social-fabric of many local small and vulnerable communities such as, for example, the Class-A Sri Vaishnavas. They had their traditional sources and means of livelihood rudely expropriated away overnight. Their farmland holdings and wealth dwindled substantially. So did their incomes arising from other farm-based vocations. Many had to sell away their lands to barely survive or to just eke out hand-to-mouth living. Traditional cottage-industries too — like village-based cotton-textile and indigo weaving, pottery and other such rural arts and crafts — went into steep decline. Small Sri Vaishnava communities that were indirect economic stakeholders in them suffered grievous consequential losses. Throughout the 1960s and 1980s much of the fragile and rural temple-ecosphere across Tamil Nadu became crippled. Temples thus fell into terrible neglect and many became near-penurious and decrepit.
If ever one were asked to single out the most important reason for the dire socio-economic straits into which the “ubaya-vedaantins” of Class-A type — equally like other Brahmin sectarian or denominational communities in Tamil Nadu — were plunged, it would certainly be none other than the sustained intrusion and aggressive interference into the domain and affairs of Hindu temples by the State Government. Greatly emboldened and empowered to do so under Constitutional fiat, the State was guilty of brazen overreach and overzeal, warranting in fact the Courts of the land to often step in to restrain or contain it.
In any history book of the Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu, the chapter on how the State Government usurped — and to this day forcefully even maintains — effective control over temples would indeed read much like a chapter taken straight out of 18th century CE British colonial history. It would surely remind us all how the officers of the East India Company and the British Crown Viceroys went about systematically and cynically extracting if not extorting temple-commonwealth and revenues. As two young graduate history students recently wrote “British colonizers established a system of legal plunder, known to contemporaries as the “drain of wealth….. The British were merciless in imposing the drain….” https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
The story of how the State in the state of Tamil Nadu for over 50 years since independence also “established a system of legal plunder …. known as the “drain of wealth” and “mercilessly imposing” it upon temples and temple-centric Brahmin communities is a very long one… yes, of course… but it is still worth recounting in as brief and summary a manner as possible in the context of how it also impacted the “ubaya-vedaantins” of Sri Rangam and Kanchipuram.
The story starts with the State-enacted law and litigation relating to abolishing the rights of “archakas” — temple priests, curators and servitors —- and their hereditary and/or traditional rights of control over temple wealth and administration.
(to be continued)
Sudarshan Madabushi