This Op-Ed below published in the Swarajya, really rattled my conscience.
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/thangalaan-a-phenomenon-and-a-warning
As a Sri Vaishnava myself, this is the very first time I am hearing of these two unknown, unheard, unsung heroes of social change who, according to Neelakandan, represented the best traditions of Sri Vaishnavism and its world-view: M.C.Madurai Pillai and Bhuminayagam Ramanujadasar !
Aravindan Neelakandan has shown up the present day Sri Vaishnavas for what they truly have become : a rather narrow-minded people, more anxious about self-preservation and self-serving than spreading the message or gospel which the social conscience of a Sri Ramanuja or a Tiruppaan Azhwar in their own time sought to propagate — just as perhaps a movie like “Thangalaan” seeks to spread its own message now …
Indeed Neelakandan hits and then drives a nail right through the social smugness of the modern-day Sri Vaishnava’s head when he writes this below :
“And what are Savarna Hindus right now heatedly discussing?
It is whether Sri Rama was a contemporary of Triceratops or velociraptors or Stegotetrabelodons. We do not care for the atrocities heaped on Scheduled Communities.
Worse, we do not even speak about how true Dharma has performed the emancipation of marginalised communities who were impoverished by colonialism and oppressed by our own heartless social stagnation.
Imagine us to be there at the time when Ravana abducted Sita. We would have silently ignored the abduction and would have discussed heatedly what vegetable is Dharmic for Sambar in the afternoon. Because we see truth being abducted right in front of us. Truth of the power of Dharma. We see history being professionally distorted. And we have more important things to discuss like whether Rama walked with dinosaurs or not.”
(M/s Dushyant Sridhar, Srirangam Rangarajan & Jayashree Saranathan, hope you are all listening?!)
Touché!, Aravindan Neelakandan-ji ! Thank you for holding up the mirror to our Sri Vaishnava bourgeois faces and forcing us to confront our own flaws, foibles and failures. It ought to make us all wonder where in the last 1000-odd years since Sri Ramanujacharya has our catholicity of social outlook gone away? Why has it been replaced by a self-satisfied, self-congratulatory sectarian and insular world-view? Why are we Sri Vaishnavas no longer held in high regard as moral role-models, social conscience-keepers and spiritual savants as we, once upon a time long ago, indeed were…. and also as a collective and integral part of Tamil society?
Whether Neelakandan’s trenchant social Op-Ed commentary above on Sri Vaishnavas — or, for that matter the movie “Thangalaan” itself — is going to change the dented self-image and desiccated self-esteem of present-day Sri Vaishnavas is of course an altogether different matter. That’s for the followers, adherents and pundits of Sri “Ramanuja Siddhaantham” to ponder over…
BTW, Aravindan Neelakandan it was who was kind enough to pen a delightful Preface for my book, “A Tale of Two Cities : A history of the Sri Vaishnavas of Tamil Nadu that was never written” (2023) ). https://amzn.in/d/9dfQL3S
There is a Chapter in my book where I had rued over the guilt that the Sri Vaishnavas of Tamil Nadu ought to be charged with but then have, throughout history, been rather insouciant and blasé about.
The Chapter is about how they have gone about constructing the social narratives about themselves, their hoary history, culture, their great moral role-models or exemplars, their temples, literature, philosophy…. If one reads those narratives today, there is hardly anything to be found that could be said to be credible and truly arresting narrative on such matters that really matter. Nothing socially purposeful got recorded in the ancient “sthala purana” of their many “divya desam” temples which number 106 in this country. As a result, the “sthala purana” of the Sri Vaishnava temples and community remained stuck within the time-warp of religious mythology.
Below are two extracts from the relevant Chapters from my book for which Aravindan Neelalandan had kindly written a Preface:
Chapter 27: “The community (of Sri Vaishnavas) however is overly fond of preserving and cherishing the respective “sthala puraanas” of its famed temples. The “sthala-puraanas” are Mythology more than History in the academic sense. They tell the story of the origins of a temple, the “rishis” who consecrated it, the kings who were its benefactors, the saints and Azhwars who worshipped there and sketchy legends about its surviving the ravages of time.
“Both the Tenkalais and Vadakalais, through the centuries after Sri Ramanuja’s time, expended their collective energies on creating fanciful versions of temple “sthala puraanas” mainly to buttress their respective sectarian narratives. Had they instead used even only half their energies that went into preserving carefully the mythologies of the “sthala-puraana” in also, at the same time, keeping records of true facts of history to continually keep updating them with accounts of more recent and current affairs and chronicling contemporary conditions of the temples, the same “sthala-puraanas” might have surely served a far higher social purpose as valuable historical documents”.
Chapter 55: “Acharyas and Jeeyars (would be doing a great service if they were to) commission the gigantic mission-mode task of writing modern, contemporaneous “sthala-puranas” for each of the 100-odd Sri Vaishnava temples in as many Indian languages and English as possible. While the “puranic” (mythological) accounts of the temples are retained intact, the modern “sthala puranas” shall strive to record and chronicle as accurately as possible the entire secular history/historiography of the temple i.e. how it was originally built, who sponsored and built it, the chronology of its successive administrators, important historical and political events that impacted on the upkeep and administration of the temple, details of temple wealth, and of the origins of such wealth, the various highs and low points in the history of the temple… and how and why it has to come to bear its present state and condition of existence….”
If only the Sri Vaishnavas had had the imagination and the collective will to use the medium of temple “sthala-puranas” to tell the story of their long and chequered journey through the historical journey of the ten centuries since Sri Ramanujacharya; and if only too they had also faithfully chronicled therein detailed accounts of history and of their own several not insignificant contributions to the larger societal changes, progress … and for the cause of the advancement of India’s vast poor and disempowered masses, especially in Tamil Nadu … maybe today, who knows, the M.C.Madurai Pillai-s and Bhuminayagam Ramanujadasar-s would not be utterly obscure or forgotten non-entities of Sri Ramanuja sampradaayam but instead have been celebrated as one among its proud modern icons.
Sudarshan Madabushi
r3tardedness. its so cool to mock tradition. brainless comments. brainless tamilians that mock vaishnavas. the movie is stupid and cheap. and its not the first time fickle minded commie south indians have mocked vaishnavism in movies, literature etc. be it buddhism shaivism or any other ism thats weaponized against vaishnavism. You claim them to be victims yet vaishnavas have been persecuted by shaivas muslims buddhists and dravidian terrorists. curse you and vaishnav haters like you.