THE SECULAR-STATE AND MATHAS AND TEMPLES

By T. G. Aravamuthan, M.A., B.L.

1. The Negation of the Principle of the Secular State

THE establishment of a secular state in this country is the purpose to which we are all directing our efforts. It is the vision which has led us on these fifty years at least and it is what was striven for by Gandhiji, one of the greatest men of religion of all time, and it is what he died for. But in this corner of the country the principle is being negatived by those who claim to be Gandhiji’s disciples.

The Government of the Madras Province is engaged in pushing through the legislature an enactment enabling the state to take over the administration of Hindu Temples and Mathas and the endowments attached to them. The incongruity,–the irony,–of the secular state guaranteeing private property and securing it against public control and yet controlling the properties of religious institutions which, so far as the secular state is concerned, are private,–pertaining as they do, not to the generality of the citizens of the state, but to different religious groups of its citizens,–is evidently lost on the Government. For any but a theocratic state to administer religious institutions is an endeavour that is not only opposed to principle but is also fraught with grave mischief to both people and state. This is all the more so when the control is sought to be confined to the institutions of only one of the religions of the land,–the Hindu. The danger of the state becoming Hinduised through the inevitable intimacy of the new relationship between the state and Hindu institutions is one that cannot but raise anxious forebodings in the minds of Muslims and Christians. Nor can the converse probability of the other religious groups in the state,–the Muslim and the Christian,–and of the non-religious elements in the state, and even its irreligious elements, seeking to gain control over Hindu institutions and endowments infuse confidence in Hindus in the successful functioning of the secular state. The state cannot remain secular for long if it seeks to embroil itself in the affairs of the religion of even a small minority of its citizens. It dooms itself irretrievably when it plunges in the abysses, of the religious affairs of the most populous group of its citizens. In the end, both state and religion will be lost: the state becomes infested with religion while religion becomes secularised.

That the administration of Hindu religious institutions and their foundations is sadly in need of complete overhaul is not in dispute. Indeed, the situation is worse than is even supected. The maladministration has grown in dimensions and in degree, especially in recent years. Not only are the endowments to temples now in the unrestrained control of persons whose outlook is purely secular,–even antipathetic to the spirit of the institutions which the endowments were intended to support,–but they are also administered with little regard to economy. The endowments to Mathas are in most cases applied to purposes which would have shocked the pious founders. If the magnitude of the mismanagement of the temples is only sensed vaguely by the public and if none of it is known to the public in detail it is because nothing about any of them is, under the aegis of the Hindu Religious Endowments Board, now controlling these institutions, allowed to be published and because all avenues to information are closed. The Soviet ‘iron curtain’ is child’s play beside this curtain of bureaucratic secrecy. The grossness of the maladministration of the endowments to temples goes veiled under devices such as accounts and vouchers and audit and supervision, but the results of none of them are allowed to reach the public. No one of the public knows whether all the rituals are performed or are performed duly. The safeguard of control by a Statutory Board is an illusion. The utter ineptitude of the administration of the temples and even the perversion of the institutions to purposes opposed to those for which they were founded is artfully concealed by attempts to represent criticism as interested or as proceeding from sectional motives.

If we have always to be on the guard against the state enlarging its functions and against its machinery getting a grip over the lives of the people it is all the more imperative that in this phase of our development we shall have to be highly critical of attempts at enlarging the scope of the state’s intervention in our lives. We are in the midst of an unprecedented lowering of standards of probity and capacity, due initially to the needs of winning the war against the Axis, but persisting through the uncertainties of the aftermath and now threatening to become a permanent characteristic through the determination of everyone who can pose as a hero of the War against Britain to turn into hard and immediate cash the myth of his near-martyrdom and to the opportunities which, in these circumstances, the man on the prowl has to build up for himself a pile irrespective of how he comes by it. These institutions are peculiarly liable to suffer from this decay in standards of conduct.

The only question in issue is not whether reform is needed but how it ought to be effected. That those who have no preconceptions are honestly persuading themselves that the state must indeed take over the control of these institutions shows that their vision has come to be limited by the vicious experiments of the past three quarters of a century which have been, in various degrees, taking effective administration from the hands of the people who are interested in these institutions and vesting it in a Hindu bureaucracy despising the Hindu public.

The proposals put forward by the Government will organise ecclesiastical administration and control in a manner to which no parallel may be found in any other country in which the state has the least pretence to be secular. The authors of the proposals have yet to tell us how when the people of this Province are fit enough to govern not only themselves but also Dravidastan and even to do better than the rest of India, the great majority of them, the Hindus, are yet unfit to manage even petty religious institutions. Not the least reason is offered for not attempting to enable the Hindus to administer these institutions nor for obstinately insisting on the secular state taking up a task which not only is foreign to it but must also be obnoxious to it. Nor even does this Government pause and consider the significance of the phenomenon of support for its proposals coming mostly from those who scoff at these institutions or who seek to divert their funds from religions uses. This Government has only to thank itself if a puzzled public suspects its bonafides in persisting in state-control which, in the circumstances, is all too strange a solution.

2. Vesting Control in the People

Temples and Mathas cannot flourish unless they have the fullest support of those people who have faith in them. Control by a secular state may secure the vouchering of the expenses out of the present endowments, but it can secure little more: the images will be graced with voucher-malas instead of ‘Vada-malas’ and all else may cease. The temples will be preserved as ancient monuments and the temples and mathas will be run as shows from the dead past. In the heyday of their prosperity and influence they were administered by the people and not by the state in which they were organised. The great temples of Tirumalai, Chidambaram, Srirangam, Madurai and Rameswaram, for instance, with endowments and incomes much more ample than they now enjoy, were not administered by the state,–not even by the kings. It is no credit to this age which claims great advances in the people’s enlightenment, public spirit, probity and efficiency that it should despair of administration by the people proving honest and efficient and should hasten to transfer the burden to the state.

The administrative machinery of the past has broken down through the weakening of the forces which have animated Hindu social and religious life. The state then, whether represented by a petty chieftain or by a powerful emperor, was, in effect, the embodiment of a homogeneous society animated by a common spirit and fully expressive of the purposes of that society. Even that state did not take up the management of these institutions. Our Government, however, representing a state which is the political expression of heterogeneous and multi-willed sections which are being egged on by political adventurers to antagonise each other is desperately anxious to take up not only the administration but also the direction of the purposes of these institutions.

We may not hope to re-introduce the old system of administration. It was so fashioned that it functioned without external stimulus or control, notwithstanding that it concerned itself with all the affairs of the institutions,–ritual, religion and social relations. It depended on a cleverly linked system of rights and duties. The activity of each institution was carved out into a number of spheres and the responsibility for each sphere was vested in a special authority which had also rights adequate enough to compensate it for the duties it undertook. The rights and the duties were so cleverly balanced and interlocked and the several spheres were so ingeniously made to overlap that those who ran the machine never allowed it to break down, at least because a failure in the duties spelt disaster to the rights. Every member of the administration felt passionately that any remissness on his part was a sin and every member of the public took it to be his personal duty to prevent hitches arising. The king or the chieftain was not slow to intervene if a breakdown was expected, but that intervention was only through men devoutly religious. The problems of administration raised now by these institutions are, however, ultimately the same as in the ages long past, for their fundamental purposes have undergone no change. But the temper of Hindu society has changed. The spirit of the age has to be reckoned with and machinery has to be devised which will do the same work as before but in a new atmosphere and to a new step and to a new tune.

Few are they, however, who read these pages who will have courage enough to believe that this is a season when it is wise to transfer these institutions to the mercies of popular control. The attitude of Hindu society to its age-old institutions has undergone a marked change in this part of the country: it is fashionable with many to hold up Hindu social organisation to opprobrium. But this is so, not because the value of Hinduism is not recognised but because its institutions are believed to stand in the way of social justice as understood in these days. We are only witnessing a shift in the emphasis on certain features of the Hindu social order. There is no such fundamental departure in the spirit as to warrant an apprehension that the change in public opinion will wreck or pervert these institutions. A failure to allow Hindu public opinion to revivify these institutions, adapting them to modern needs, may result in driving the public from them. Once we resuscitate faith and interest in the religious activities of the institutions the social frictions will cease to matter. The problem is not that of adjusting social differences but that of setting up and running machinery through which social and religious distempers will be healed.

From whichever angle we may canvass the problem we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that our state must abandon all thought of mixing itself up with these institutions. The secular state can have only that much of general supervision over their affairs as will prevent their becoming cancerous spots festering with a corruption that will endanger social order or security or morality. All other changes that may be needed in them to bring them in accord with such modern Hindu opinion as attaches importance to them and owes them allegiance must be left to be effected by the temple-and matha-minded section of Hindu society. The duty of the secular state is not to usurp the functions of these sections of Hindu society which are incorporated in it: on the other hand, the secular state must endeavour to enable these sections to order their institutions their own way. It must confine itself to its primary purpose of providing machinery for the Hindus interested in them ordering their affairs but ensuring that justice is done between the various groups and sections of its population in religious matters and that problems of the administration of religious institutions do not get transformed into those of peace and order. It must arm those who believe in these institutions with powers to shape them to their purposes, without the intermeddling of even those who are weak in their faith in them,–not to speak of those who are opposed to them.

Judged by this test the Bill now on the anvil is a violent invasion of the secular state into the region of religion and religious organisation.

3. The Bases of Re-organization

The main lines along which provision need now be made for the proper functioning of Mathas and Temples are not hard to discern if only we realise the futility and the folly of what is being sought to be done. These institutions are being parted from those who are interested in them: the secular affairs are sought to be regulated without reference to the religious affairs: the religious affairs are being subordinated tacitly to the secular ones: the administration and control of both lay and religious affairs are being vested in bureaucratic bodies. There is no realisation of the supreme needs of these institutions. They and their adherents have to be brought together and their funds must be made to subserve their purposes. Machinery has to be designed for looking after the temporalities and the spiritualities of these institutions and for ensuring that the spiritualities are fed and nourished and inspirited by the temporalities, and that the temporalities are, in turn, fed by those who believe in the validity of those spiritualities.

No code of administration generally applicable to Hindu religious institutions was framed in set terms in the days of their greatness, mainly because the principles were then so much a part of the mental make-up of the Hindu and they were so unquestioningly accepted that they needed no detailed formulation or express promulgation.

The social order which prescribed that the preceptor was to support the disciple during his pupilage and only reluctantly allowed him to accept gifts in return from the disciple could not have known either a disciple who questioned the preceptor about the propriety of his disposal of the offerings which he placed at his feet,–especially if the preceptor was a Mathadhipati who had come in the lineage of a series of distinguished teachers,–nor a preceptor who would have misapplied the offerings to purposes which the pupil would have recoiled from.

Temple administration is a theme which in effect was outside the scope of the Agamas, for, assuming both an understanding and a continuance of the social life and the political organization in which they were framed, they left unsaid many things on which, owing to changes in conditions and circumstances, we are now in need of light. For instance, the basic principle that most of the formalities of religious worship are all parallel to the formalities of a royal court is not found stated in any of the Agamas. The division of the divine services according to the watches of day and night, the differences in the music played at different hours and on different occasions, the waking the images at morn with music, the bathing them with eclat, the investing them with weapons and crowns, the decking them with ornaments, the making of offerings to them of food and the like, the burning of incense, the waving of lights, the wearing the uttariya by the worshipper round his waist, the ranging the worshippers in the order of precedence, the chanting of praises by accredited chanters, the announcing of the great presence, the receiving of offerings and the returning of presents, the distributing the oil of consecration and the water of the sacred bath, the distributing the prasadas of different kinds, the placing the lord’s feet on the crown of the devotee, the granting of audience in the great courtyard, the singing and the dancing by the corps of dasis, the progress through the great streets on ceremonial occasions on coursers or in rathas, the retiring to the bed-chamber,–these are but a few of the usages of temples similar to those of the royal court. Other usages also are not unknown: they are all additions to meet sectarian and sectional observances.

But the rationale of all this is being forgotten. The disappearance of royalty in this part of the country about two centuries back, the shortness of our memories, the decay in traditional culture, the imputing them to merely sectional reasons, and the proneness to invent new reasons for securing recognition for rights and honours from a system of law which set up strange standards, have in this Province obliterated from the Hindu mind almost every trace of the rationale of observances such as these in temples.

These principles and usages are so fundamental to these institutions that nothing should be done that will invalidate them, though many will deem it wise that opportunity is not denied for the gradual adoption of new usages to suit new circumstances when the conscience of those owing allegiance to these institutions permits them.

Hindus have never owned allegiance in faith to any one common head, secular or spiritual. Divided into numerous religious groups and wisely exercising a wide tolerance, they had no occasion to look for a common head. There never was a central lay or spiritual authority to which all Hindu religious institutions were subordinate in regard to any of their activities, though the state, being then Hindu, exercised a general supervision through deeply devout authorities to prevent scandalous maladministration. The individuality of the institutions of the several sects and sections has grown up through the ages and should be preserved, and yet the sects and sections should all be drawn together to set up and maintain high standards of administration and to combine in forwarding the cause of religion.

Many of these institutions are sectional. The worshippers in each such temple or the disciples of each such matha belong to only one community or just a few, though in theory those temples and mathas may be open to all Hindus. Many are sectarian in the rituals and in the observances and usages, though they do not preclude of other sects from worshipping in them, provided they do not claim to participate in certain of the observances and usages. Many of them are worshipped in by devotees irrespective of the gods to which they are dedicated, while others are not places of general worship. Quite a large number are founded according to the Agamas while an even large number are based on local or communal usages. Naturally, these institutions cannot be organised on the pattern of one archetype and the organization has to vary with the composition of the group, the character of the sect, the nature of the rituals and the arrangements made for the conduct of certain of the observances. These differences have to be preserved and allowed to express themselves in the organization of the institutions concerned. If any attempt at eliminating them is considered desirable it should be effected in stages by the public itself as public opinion grows, allowing of the more conservative members of the sections and the sects reconciling themselves to the changes.

It has not to be forgotten that the large endowments which direct hungry eyes to these institutions have grown through the ages from the gifts of innumerable devotees who dedicated the properties without any notion that the fundamental principles and usages of these institutions will not continue to be observed. Nor has it to be forgotten that the fame of these institutions has grown through the consecrated devotion of generations of devotees who have rendered honorary services in them in the full belief that the system of rituals and observances which they had participated in is of eternal validity and will continue to be observed in the ages to come. If, hereafter, too, any endowments are made and any services are rendered in these institutions it will be only in the belief that the spirit of the past broods over and sanctifies and blesses the future, for donors who have no such faith will render their support, not to temples and mathas, but to such charities as their ‘modern’ mentality might incline them to. There can be no transformations in the rituals and observances and no application of the endowments to other purposes than those for which they were founded though there should be no bar placed on the ordered growth of modifications in consonance with the fundamental principles to suit changing conditions.

Every temple and matha should, therefore, be administered in conformity, not with notions of what we decide to be proper either in our ignorance of the abiding principles of the religion or in the burning enthusiasm of our zeal to rectify what we may feel to be its infirmities, but with the wishes of those who have over centuries been lavish with their properties and services, and made the institutions what they were in the days of their glory. Should any enthusiast, in the amplitude of his greater wisdom or of superior enlightenment, hold otherwise it is for him to found new institutions and to endow them with ample funds in justification of his faith and his enlightenment. He may not intrude his notions into institutions which, owing none of their spirit or resources to him, derive their greatness from the sacrifices of those of another way of thinking and embody a different spirit.

From these general considerations follow a number of conclusions of which two may be referred to by way of example. Firstly, those Hindus who do not believe in temples and mathas and those who have no regard for their principles, observances and usages can have no right to participate in their administration or to shape their policy. Secondly, the character which a temple or a matha has acquired in the course of the centuries should be preserved: it is the established customs, practices and usages of each institution that should prevail and should determine how its affairs should be administered.

The need for guaranteeing the established customs, usages, observances, rights, honours, and the like has been recognised in theory, existing legislation leaving them unaffected, but adequate machinery for ascertaining what they are and for enforcing them when ascertained has been lacking. They are as good as negatived in many cases. It is of the first importance that judicial ascertainment and effective enforcement should be provided for.

The matters that arise in these religious institutions are divisible into four groups,-the secular, the religious, the social and the mixed. Social matters are not likely to give rise to much of friction, for most points in regard to them are well settled by usages and customs. New difficulties may be expected to be settled by a process of give and take, once the administration is vested in persons and bodies responsive to public opinion. The differences that may be whipped up to create social distempers will prove so complex that rash experiments will be brought to an early halt. The conscience of Hindu society may be trusted to assert itself over wild plans and projects. It should therefore be enough to provide machinery for only the other three groups of problems.

4. A Project of Re-organization

With these principles and their corollaries and implications in mind there should be no difficulty in framing legislation for the proper administration of these institutions and their endowments. An attempt is made below to suggest a framework of organisations which, it is believed; conforms to the principles outlined above.¹

The scheme is by no means a complicated one. The complexity of the organisation of religious activities in the West in their innumerable forms being unknown to us in this country, we are apt to consider any comprehensive proposal for religious organisation in this country to be complicated, not realising that our problems are even more involved than those of western religious sections and sects.

Mathas are usually sectarian institutions, and often sectional too. They offer, therefore, few difficulties in organization. If the position of the Mathadhipati vis a vis the disciples and the endowments is settled, the rest will automatically adjust itself.

Howsoever a Mathadhipati may be appointed according to the usages of his Matha, he must be liable to removal if the disciples are dissatisfied with him, expressing their wishes through, for instance, a Committee of Disciples or through a general vote in which, say, a sixty per cent majority is needed, or a combination of both. The Mathadhipati should have exclusive authority to admit such one as he chooses to discipleship but a removal therefrom should be liable to approval by a Committee of Disciples. Any disciple may at any time forswear discipleship. A fair percentage of the income of each Matha from all sources should be assigned to the Mathadhipati for being spent by him in his absolute discretion and the balance should be administered through a Committee of Disciples in which the Mathadhipati is represented. All the endowments of the Matha should be under the administration of that Committee. Doctrine and other matters of religion including propaganda, should be decided on by the Mathadhipati in collaboration with a Committee of disciples of learning, devotion and character, of whom one half will be nominated by him and the other half by the disciples. Matters that are intermediate between, or a mixture of, secular and religious matters should be decided on by a joint Committee of Secular and Religious Committees. Frequent meetings of disciples at the different centres where they may be in strength and convocations of all the disciples at a central place whenever occasion may arise should be insisted upon.

Temples being more complex institutions than Mathas, their administration and control are bound to be more complicated.

Those who are interested in a temple are of different classes,–those who are worshippers, those who also contribute to the funds and those who render religious ‘services’. These three classes should be organized separately into groups for each temple, for each local area, each district or other convenient region and for the whole Province. The worshippers in a temple are naturally an important group and their voice has to be heeded to. Those who contribute funds to that temple are those who generally keep the temple going,–whether the contributions be in the shape of lump donations or of petty offerings of money or of offerings for archanas or of the performance of festivals or Ubhayams or other services. In this class must be included the descendants of those whose ancestors have endowed foundations for the services in the temple. These should be put into a second group in regard to that temple. The contributors of services in that temple form a group including those who officiate as priests, as chanters of hymns,–the Prabandha, the Veda and the Tirup-Padiyam, or instance–as Pauranikas, and as volunteers offering their services in any of the religious activities of the temple. These are generally ill-paid for their services,–where they are paid at all,–and it is mainly their devotion that keeps them at their posts. It is principally on this group that the burden of the ritual and the religious services in temples falls and it is they who can ensure that they are competently and regularly rendered. That in the smaller temples they are usually too few in numbers to serve as checks on one another is no reason for placing the responsibility for the due discharge of the services on others who could, in the circumstances, be none other than lay authorities ignorant of ritual or observances. We cannot but trust to these and they have generally devotion enough to justify the trust. Usually there are enough laymen in each local area who know enough to detect infractions and if only their cooperation is secured,–as will be secured if re-organization proceeds on the lines sketched here,–there will be adequate checks on the possible vagaries of the actual officiants. The representatives of the group of worshippers and of the group of contributors of funds should together have the control of the secular administration of the temple. Representatives of the group of contributors of service should have the control of the rituals and observances in the temple. All these representatives together should have the administration of the mixed matters of the temple. These representatives will be elected for a term of, say, one year, by those on two corresponding electoral rolls for each temple. Some mode of election securing ‘proportional representation’ at each stage is essential.

Lest, however, the more enterprising among the local representatives misuse their position in the temple and lest the rancour of local factions affect the even tenor of the administration, it is of the utmost importance that the local representatives in each temple should have associated with them a set of persons similarly interested, but nominated by a larger group, such as that for the district or region or the section.

It goes without saying that in the case of the great temples the representatives of the larger territorial divisions should have powers enough to ensure that the administration is carried on, not for the benefit of the local interests alone, but for the benefit of all believing Hindus all over the region or the Province or even the whole of India, according to the importance of each temple. In those temples where there are numerous sources of income and expenditure, and various rituals and festivals, there should be small committees which will have the supervision of the collection and the disbursement of each such major activity.

Where a number of temples are situated in a local area, the representatives comprising the several committees of the several temples should be formed into a grand committee for the local area for purposes of co-ordination of efforts. They should be free to form sub-groups in accordance with the several sects and the sections to which their institutions belong. The local areas may vary in extent depending on the number of institutions which may conveniently be grouped together. The several classes of representatives in a local area, or of institutions of sections, where they are so grouped together, should elect district committee or regional committees and these should together, in their turn, elect the Provincial Committees,–one for secular purposes and another for religious purposes, at every stage. These two, at every stage, should together form the Grand Committee for mixed purposes, at each stage. Membership of the higher Committees should not be confined to members of the lower Committees and it should always be possible to provide places for distinguished persons who may not care to offer themselves for election. This provision may even be expanded to make good a defect that appears on the surface. The bulk of Hindus in this Province are not disciples of Mathas and, yet, if this scheme is adopted, the representatives of Mathas will have a voice in the administration of the institutions while those Hindus who are not attached to Mathas will go without any influence on their management. or their policy. This is not as it should be, for these preceptors and these disciples form important sections of the Hindu community. This should not be difficult to get over. Every non-Matha preceptor,– Acharya-Purusha or Desika,–who has a certain number of disciples can be allowed to be represented in the committees for religious purposes by nominees of his own and of his disciples, by an adaptation of the method suggested for the Mathas. These committees should be in session as often as may be necessary. Ordinarily they should function, when not in session, through standing committees. The members of the Grand Committees for each area or section should every year elect a panel of Presidents from among those qualified to be members of the relevant Committee for religious purposes and the members of the panel should, say, in quarterly rotation hold the Presidentship of the Grand Committee. These dignitaries,–the members of the several committees,–should be shown such honours as may be decided on in the course of the years.

Every higher Committee should supervise the activities of every Committee below it, –inspecting the affairs of each institution within its jurisdiction and supervising the administration. Every decision of a lower Committee should be liable to be revised by the corresponding higher Committee.

The administrative problems of Mathas and Temples not being fundamentally different, certain provisions may be common to both.

A representative at any level should be liable to be debarred from serving as such, temporarily or permanently, for misconduct found by a higher authority and should be liable to be surcharged on the decree of the tribunals mentioned below. Every decision or act of everyone of these authorities without jurisdiction, which is not set aside by the immediately higher authority within a month or so, should, be liable to be quashed by the civil courts of the country. All accounts and all papers,–except those that may relate to the title to properties or to matters of equal gravity,–should be open to general inspection. Every institution should publish full periodical reports of its accounts and activities.

A ministerial staff for each institution is absolutely indispensable but its function should be merely that of carrying out the routine administration subject to the several authorities of the institutions and the directions of higher authorities. This ministerial establishment of each matha and temple, except the personal staff of Mathadhipatis, should be recruited and ultimately controlled by the All-Province organization, while the immediate control should be in each institution.

For the adjudication of disputes regarding customs, usages, observances, honours, rights and the like there should be a series of ‘ecclesiastical’ tribunals bound to adjudicate according to the established customs et cetera of the respective institutions, and otherwise, according to ‘ecclesiastical’ law. Disputes on such matters as purely civil obligations arising in these institutions, disputes regarding elections and the like, will naturally continue to be within the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts of the land. Those ecclesiastical tribunals that exercise original jurisdiction should be held at convenient local centres, and appellate jurisdiction must vest in an ecclesiastical High Court the decisions of which will be final, except on issues raising pure matters of civil law, in regard to which an appeal should lie to the High Court of the Province. The judges of the ecclesiastical courts should have been engaged in active practice in the ‘civil’ courts and should have a special knowledge of what may in these institutions correspond to ecclesiastical law and practice. The judges of the ecclesiastical High Court should be appointed by the Governor of the Province on the advice of the two seniormost temple-matha-believing judges of the High Court of the Province and the two top-most members of the Provincial Council of representatives for religious affairs. These tribunals should have adequate powers and machinery to enforce their decisions.

The proceedings of all these authorities should be in the light of full publicity. The decisions of the ecclesiastical High Court should be ‘reported’ and be treated as binding precedents.

These are mere outlines, which are roughly sketched for consideration by all those interested in these institutions. The picture that emerges may not be as clear as a draftsman of a statute requires but it is clear enough to enable the reader to appreciate what is aimed at. The controlling bodies will be as varied as the institutions themselves,–with variations of every grade in the worshipping groups, the rituals, the observances, the festivals, the resources, the zones of appeal,–and yet they will stand knit together in an attempt to evoke what is best in these institutions and to utilise them for the rejuvenation of Hinduism. The scheme is indeed something which, while creating a body that will effectively serve its immediate purpose, will at the same time help to evolve the new Hinduism that many are hoping for.

¹ In March 1940 I had occasion, in conversation, to mention a few of these ideas to Sir T. G. Rutherford, C.S.I., C.I.E., who, as ‘Adviser’ to the Governor of Madras, had then before him a Bill on the subject which, during the tenure of office of the ‘Congress Ministry’ of 1938-39, had been prepared by Dr. T. S. S. Rajan, Minister for the subject, and was considering the advisability of publishing it so as to prepare the ground for the ‘Popular Ministry’ inevitable on the war coming to a close. On his desire that I would set my ideas down in a Memorandum for him I drafted two plans,–a simple one dealing with only the major problems and a full one marking a radical departure, but both of them based on the principles urged here. He preferred the simpler scheme, as was but natural in one not a Hindu. The ‘Adviser’s advertisement’ abandoned ultimately the idea of seeking public opinion on Dr. Rajan’s Bill. It is this Bill which, in substance is the measure now before the Madras Legislature. The scheme presented by me here is a version of the fuller of the two plans which I had placed before Sir T. G. Rutherford.

Back