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CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES RELIGION UNDER BUREAUCRACY A list of the books in the series will be found at the end of the volume RELIGION UNDER BUREAUCRACY Policy and administration for Hindu temples in south India FRANKLIN A. PRESLER Department of Political Science Kalamazoo College The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521321778 © Cambridge University Press 1987 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1987 This digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Presler, Franklin A. Religion under bureaucracy. (Cambridge South Asian studies) Bibliography. Includes index. 1. Hinduism and state. 2. Temples, Hindu - India, South. 3. Hinduism - India, South - Government. I. Title. II. Series. BL1153.7.S68P74 1987 294.5'35'068 86-17546 ISBN 978-0-521-32177-8 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-05367-9 paperback CONTENTS Preface Notes on sources, abbreviations and transliteration 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 page vii ix Introduction: studying religion-state relations The temple connection in the nineteenth century Governance: the necessity for order Governance: trustees and the courts Economy: the problem of controlling land Economy: the temple's weakness as landlord Religion: purifying and organizing Hinduism Religion: controlling the priesthood Conclusion 1 15 36 57 73 93 110 134 155 Bibliography Index 166 173 To Henry Hughes Presler and Marion Anders Presler PREFACE This book is an analysis of the relations of state, religion and politics in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It represents research and reflection at various times over the period of a decade, and a growing conviction that religion-state relations need to be studied from a comparative and historical point of view. The central focus is the important position Hindu temples occupy in modern Tamil Nadu politics, and the state's role in regulating and shaping them. Temples are significant in a multitude of ways in south Indian society and economy, and throughout the modern era have attracted the attention of governments and politicians. From the perspective of religion-state relations, the study also explores aspects of change and development in twentieth-century Indian politics. The government's official policies toward religion provide a fruitful context from which to view, for example, the relation of political parties to sources of patronage and conflict, the effect of centralized "rational" administration on local practice and privilege, the consequences of bureaucratization for democratic politics, and the legacy of traditional theories of legitimacy in the "secular" state. The present volume is a revised and much shortened version of my doctoral dissertation of the same title. The initial fieldwork in Tamil Nadu was carried out in 1973-74 and was supported by the Foreign Area Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council. I was helped by many individuals, among whom I would especially like to mention: Chaturvedi Badrinath, IAS, former Commissioner, Tamil Nadu Archives; Thiru A. Uttandaraman and Thiru Sarangapani Mudaliar, former Commissioners, HRCE; Thiru K.A. Govindarajan, HRCE; Thiru Kunrakudi Adigalar, Deviga Peravai; Thiru Swaminatha Gurukkal, South India Archaka Sangham; and Professor Chandra Mudaliar, Madras University. I was affiliated during that year with Madurai University. I am deeply grateful to Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph for their support and interest over the years, beginning with my graduate study at the University of Chicago. The depth of their vii Preface scholarship and the richness of their intellectual insight have shaped fundamentally my understanding of what political studies can be. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt to Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge, who were also doing dissertation research in 1973-74 and whose analyses inform this work significantly. For encouragement and insight offered at various stages I want also to thank Bernard S. Cohn, Leonard Binder, A.K. Ramanujan, Robert Frykenberg, David Washbrook, Edward Dimock, Maureen Patterson, Nicholas Dirks and Rakhahari Chattopadhyay. A grant from Kalamazoo College enabled me to make a brief trip to Madras in 1981 in order to update some of the earlier research. The final revisions were undertaken during the summer of 1983 in the stimulating environment of a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar, held at Columbia University under the direction of Ainslie Embree, on "Religion, Nationalism and Conflict: The South Asian Experience." My colleague David Barclay painstakingly read through the entire manuscript and offered many helpful suggestions. Portions of chapters 4 and 8 have appeared in articles entitled "The Structure and Consequences of Temple Policy in Tamil Nadu, 1967-81", in Pacific Affairs 56 (Summer 1983), and "The Legitimation of Religious Policy in Tamil Nadu", in Bardwell Smith, ed., Religion and the Legitimation of Power in South Asia (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1978). During the entire period I have been supported and helped in innumerable ways by Paula Presler. She has shared with me the joys and pains of doing research, and has gone over seemingly countless revisions of the manuscript. Although I am not sure she would agree, the book in many ways belongs as much to her as to me. vni NOTES ON SOURCES, ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLITERATION All government records cited are in the Tamil Nadu Archives, Madras. The following abbreviations are used in the citations: BOR Cons. E&PH G.O. L&M PH Proc. Board of Revenue Consultations Education and Public Health Government Order Local and Municipal Public Health Proceedings Government Order citations include the following: number of Government Order; department; date. Consultations and Proceedings citations usually include the following: volume; date; page. In some of the mid-nineteenth-century documents, however, the citations are irregular; such cases are made clear in the text. Tamil words and names are given in the form used in the government documents on which much of this research is based, although, in some cases, original spellings have been changed in the interests of overall consistency. The spelling of towns and districts is in accordance with contemporary usage. There are no diacritical marks. IX Madras habalipuram Pondicherry Erode. Srirangam Trichur ) ' TiruchirapalliPaln i idambaram T A M I L • Kumbakonam • ThanjavuJ Pudukhottai Trivandn (C) Map A Boundaries of Madras Presidency, 1947 (based on J.E. Schwartzberg, ed., A Historical Atlas of South Asia. Chicago and London, 1978) Map B Southern India, 1975 (based on Schwartzberg, ed., A Historical Atlas of South Asia) The geographical jurisdiction of the department has shifted over the years. The original HRE Board had jurisdiction over the entire Madras Presidency, but this changed as state boundaries were redrawn along linguistic lines in the years following Independence. The HRCE today has jurisdiction only over temples in Tamil Nadu (known as Madras State until 1969). Separate although basically similar government departments exist in the other south Indian states. Map C Southern India, 1975 (based on The Times Atlas of the World, 1975)