From the British Raj to Constitutional India: State Control over Hindu Temples and the Limits of Secular Governance

Abstract

Who is the owner of the temple? Is it the god, the believers or the government who is confined for it is only to "supervise"? By this time it must be obvious to the readers that this paper is picking on a fight they have probably been skimming past in their recent newspaper headlines—from Madras Regulation of 1817 onwards, two hundred odd years of uninterrupted continuity have allowed an apparatus that was supposed to be based on secular superintendence to subtly transform itself, by so many steps that only the most rigorous scrutiny could detect, into something that bears much closer resemblance to an encroachment in disguise than to a disinterested stewardship. What the courts have continued to do from Shirur Mutt to Sabarimala is to draw and re-draw the same line between ‘secular administration' and ‘essential religious practice' but never really be able to determine where it falls. In fact, if India is compared to America or Britain or even to France or Sri Lanka or Waqf boards and church trusts in India, Hindu temples are like the odd one out in their own country. Total withdrawal and endless control are not the demands of this paper; it asks for sunset clauses, real transparency and the boards are really led by the denomination—it never was meant to be a problem to good governance that a temple was sacred or a citizen free under the Constitution.