Good Hindus be temple priests, forget caste

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Good Hindus be temple priests, forget caste: Empowering Karunanidhi

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By S.R. Ramanujan

 

Can the establishment succeed in imposing reforms in religious

institutions? Is it in keeping with the secular nature of the

establishment? Is it ethical to single out a particular religion for

such reforms? Is there a mandate for it? Is it one of the priorities

of the administration especially when the solemn promises made during

the run-up to the polls are so many that one full term of 5 years is

not enough for implementation?

 

The atheist Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Muthuvel Karunanidhi will

have no answer to these questions when he has ordered, within days of

his taking over the reins of the administration in the conservative

state of Tamil Nadu, that the priesthood in all the 36,000-odd

temples of the state will be open to "qualified" people of all

castes.

 

The order appears to be noble in its professed intentions in removing

social inequities, especially in the majority community that is

hopelessly divided on castelines. It is also quite logical to think

that such a move would help fostering unity and social upliftment of

the castes oppressed for centuries. It can also be argued that the

caste system, scourge of Hindu society, may also go away in one

stroke, if not in stages.

 

Before we formulate any opinion on this, we must go back in history

to the birth of Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu because the present

Chief Minister claims to carry forward the Dravidian Agenda, whose

standard bearer was the late EV Ramaswamy Naickar, known as "Periyar"

to his followers. The basic feature of the movement was anti-Brahmin

and it was apparent in the "Non-Brahmin Manifesto" released in 1916.

 

There are 34,420 religious institutions in the state that have an

annual income of less than Rs 10,000/-. The priests of these temples

must be in a state of penury and it is not as if the priests

belonging to the forward caste have any privileged status in society.

It is also doubtful whether Karuna's move will have takers among

other castes since they gain nothing socially or economically.

Therefore, Kalaignar's intentions become suspect. Inheriting an anti-

Brahmin legacy, he would like to target the major temples like

Madurai, Rameswaram, Kanyakumari, Kanchipuram, Chidambaram,

Srirangam, etc, where Brahmin hegemony rules the roost. Having

successfully driven out the middle-class Brahmins out of the state,

he is aiming at the lower middle class priests who stand out as

symbols of Brahminism and thus sow the seed for caste conflict. Caste

quotas have reached saturation levels in Tamil Nadu and it wont't

help him any longer to divide the society for votes.

 

The basic reality that Karunanidhi has to understand is that any

religious reform has to come from within. It cannot be imposed by

outside forces, more so, the establishment. It is in the interest of

Hindu religion that it buries the caste hierarchy. Caste, besides a

social blot, has done great damage to the community and it is this

caste system that a rationalist Karunanidhi too exploits for his

political power. He should remember that no executive order made

millions of Hindus, irrespective of caste, to embrace Mata

Amritanandamayee, a fisherwomen with no formal education and no

initiation into Vedic rituals. Bangaru Adigal of Melmaruvathoor near

Chennai is no twice-born puritan by birth. People accepted him as a

spiritual guide. Any social reform like widow marriage, abolition of

Sati, etc came from within, thanks to the reformers like Rajaram

Mohan Roy, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Veeresalingam, Basavanna,

Narayana Guru and many more. Therefore, it should be left to the

religious leaders to come out with reforms in temple worship keeping

in tune with the changing times. They should follow what they preach;

that is, God does not discriminate against His own creation.

 

Morever, it is repugnant to a secular state to poke its nose into the

religious affairs of a particular community. There are flaws in every

religion and it is not the job of the state to attempt reforms in

matters of religious beliefs. For instance, can a secular state

insist that Shias and Sunnis should forget their differences and come

together or they should throw open the place of worship to everyone

without gender discrimination. There are some feeble voices from

amongst Muslim women against triple talaqs and any such reform has to

evolve from within. Forced reforms can happen only in a totalitarian

state and not in a secular democracy.

 

Though there is no statistical data to support, there is mushroom

growth of small temples in the state in the recent past, not to speak

of renovation of major temples at a considerable cost. The number of

devotees who visit the temples has grown manifold. The revenue to the

temples must have also gone up though the old data suggests that

there are only 153 temples in the state with an annual income of more

than 10 lakh rupees. Ayyappa cult is much more prominent in Tamil

Nadu than in Kerala. What is more, even the DMK leaders visit

temples, wear Rudraksha malas, and put on thilaks which forced the

leader Karunanidhi to chide them for violating the Dravidian spirit.

Of course, while doing so, he must have forgotten the fact that his

own family channel spreads superstitious beliefs through its soaps.

 

When the Dravidian movement itself is a colossal failure, and

political power alone is its present raison d'etre, it is not without

reason that Karunanidhi, one of the very few left over soldiers of

the Dravidian Agenda, would think of reforms in temple worship. It is

not social empowerment that could be uppermost in his mind. It is his

sinister design of setting one caste against the other with a view to

keep them perpetually at war with one another. All for the sake of

sustainable power politics. And temple priesthood came handy for him.

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