Role of Local Committees and Courts

The 1843 policy of handing over responsibility for the religious side of the temple to independent managers was of lesser significance to the government, but was very important to those in the localities most immediately affected by the change. Indeed the policy was severely criticized later in the century as irresponsible and shortsighted. The argument was that withdrawal created a “new class of managers” who then went on to claim hereditary status. Not only were these claims fraudulent and not based on local custom and usage, they made trustees out of persons without any particular interest in or dedication to their temples. New managers used their re1ative independence from government control to advance their personal fortunes, excessively spending and misappropriating temple funds.^[1] Arguments soon began to be heard for closer government control. Withdrawal,’ in other words, ironically created new demands for intervention. It brought new groups to power and excluded others, with both sides looking to the government’s policy as the major influence on their positions.

Growing pressure to resolve these and other difficulties led to a new piece of legislation, the Religious Endowment Act of 1863 (Act XX of 1863), which superseded the remaining portions of the old 1817 Regulation. The most important departure, at least in intent, was the elimination of the Board of Revenue’s primary jurisdiction. This was, accomplished through a twofold approach. Some of the BOR’s historical jurisdiction was handed over to local governments, and some to the judiciary. The centerpiece was a system of local “area committees,” the members of which held office for life and were normally chosen by election. The committees were responsible for what came to be called the “non-hereditary temples” in their particular districts: i.e., temples whose trustees had “traditionally” been nominated or chosen by the government. Area committees had many of the responsibilities formerly exercised by revenue officers, such as appointing trustees, ensuring order among temple personnel and taking care that temple funds were not mismanaged or misappropriated. Area committees did not have jurisdiction, however, over “hereditary temples”: i.e., temples whose ‘managers had not previously been selected by government officers. These temples were relatively free from any direct outside control, although their trustees could be sued in the courts for alleged mismanagement.^[2]

The local area committees prefigured Lord Ripon’s more extensive local self -government measures a decade later and, like them, resulted in new groups mobilizing and entering the political arena. Internal temple alignments and relations between temples and society were again thrown into uncertainty, temple—state relations became more complex, and new pressures converged on those exercising the state’s authority.^[3]

The second tier set up by Act XX was the jurisdiction of the courts. In part, the courts’ authority was focused on problems expected to occur in the “hereditary temples.” In cases of disputed hereditary succession, for example, the court could, on appeal, appoint an interim manager until the disputants had settled their rights in a regular civil suit. But the court’s actual jurisdiction was broader and included non-hereditary temples also. For example, the court could demand that specific duties be performed by the trustee or priest of any temple, or even by a member of an area committee. Directly or indirectly, then, the court was in a position to exercise some control over all types of temples.^[4]

The court’s jurisdiction was not entirely new. The earlier policy of withdrawal, as Governor Elphinstone had argued, had been limited to the “executive” side of government; the “judicial” side always retained its jurisdiction. The significance of Act XX lies in the fact that, in formalizing this role, it laid the foundation for a rapid expansion in the scope and detail of the court’s jurisdiction. By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the court was preeminent. Initially it was an awkward jurisdiction and difficult to use effectively. Suits had to be initiated by outside allegations of malfeasance, breach of trust or neglect of duty before the court could intervene, and these suits were rarely completely successful since the defendant usually controlled the financial accounts and land records which were the subject of the dispute.^[5]

In 1887 a new section was added to the Civil Procedure Code which effectively transformed the courts into the state’s central agency in temple matters. Under new section 539 , the Attorney-General, acting on his own initiative, was empowered to bring suit to prevent temple mismanagement in both hereditary and non-hereditary temples. This was tantamount to acknowledging once again, as Regulation VII of 1817 had acknowledged, the state’s direct interest in and responsibility for temple administration. The most significant feature of section 539 dealt with what were called temple “schemes.” A court was empowered to settle a “scheme of administration” on a temple if the court deemed that no other short-range remedy was possible.^[6]

This step had far-reaching implications. A “scheme” typically prescribed in detail the way in which a temple was to be administered. It could specify the respective duties and privileges of different temple functionaries, the uses to which temple funds were to be put, and even the kinds of rituals to be conducted. The court was effectively in a position to chart a temple’s future development, economically. Administratively and religiously.

Section 539 was borrowed in part from an English law known as Romilly’s Act. Sir John Romilly was a Benthamite member of the Second Law Commission (1856) whose report incorporated many Utilitarian ideas. Among these was a disregard for the Whig doctrine of separating “judicial” and “executive” powers.^[7] It is no surprise, then, that Section 339 constituted a marked of he judiciary’s jurisdiction.

Two decades later, in 1908. Section 539 was revised into Sections 92 and 93 of the Civil Procedure Code. Judicial intervention was made still easier. Persons without specific personal interest were permitted to initiate suits. Previously, the plaintiff had legal standing only through financial or religious relation to the temple. Also, it was not necessary that the suit be based on prima facie evidence. It was enough that “the direction of the court is deemed necessary” in some way.^[8] Clearly, there were few, if any limits, to judicial intervention.

This does not mean that there was a sudden or dramatic decline in temple mismanagement. But it did mean that, after 1908, the Government of India firmly resisted any further expansion of the state’s powers. The Government of India pointed over and over again to the very real power and discretion the courts now exercised. As it wrote in 1912: “The successful termination of the Tirupati temple case proves the possibilities inherent in the existing powers of the civil courts. It has always, the Government of believes, been the weak point in the case of the Madras reformers that they have been inclined to ignore these great potentialities”.^[9]

The Government of India also had a ready explanation of why,.despite the broad powers of the court, effective oversight of the temples had not been achieved. It was not because of inadequate legislation, but of a “lack of public spiritedness” on the part of native Indians. As it wrote in 1899, in a typical dispatch; “The Government of India is not satisfied that there is anything to show that. Given the public spirit necessary to put the machinery in motion, the law could not be effectively enforced against peccant trustees of temples. These circumstances, the Government of India do not consider that the need for legislation has been established.^[10]

Those who were pressing for a tightening up of temple administration, the government went on, assumed that temples were somehow analogous to churches in the West, an assumption with which the government disagreed:“A laxity in the management of religious endowments which might appear to be scandalous to Englishmen or to natives of India imbued with our ideas, would almost certainly be regarded in an entirely different light by the great body, of Hindu worshippers. who look upon an offering to a priest of Brahman as a religious act”.^[11]

Whether because they were “imbued with” English ideas or for other reasons, an increasingly vocal group of Indians in public life continued to press for an even more active, direct and once again genuinely “executive” presence in temple affairs. Their efforts achieved success in the form of the Hindu Religious Endowment Board. established by the H.R.E. Act of 1925.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Trevelyan, Ernest, J., Hindu Law as Administered in British India, Calcutta, 1912, p. 551.

[2]:

Chandra Mudaliar,, The Secular State and Religious Institutions in India: A Study of the Administration of Hindu Public Trusts in Madras, Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1974, pp. 16-32.

[3]:

Charles Tilly, ‘Reflections on the History of European State Making,’ in Charles Tilly, (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton, 1975, pp. 31-38.

[4]:

Trevelyan, Ernest, J., op.cit., pp.552-563.

[5]:

Venkatarama Aiyer, T.L., Mulla on the Code of Civil Procedure Act V of 1908. Bombay, 1965-1967, pp. 407-408.

[6]:

Trevelyan, Ernest, J., op.cit., pp. 511, 545-548; Venkatarama Aiyer, T.L., op.cit., pp. 387-398.

[7]:

Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India, London, 1959, p. 63.

[8]:

Trevelyan, Ernest, J., op.cit., p. 561; Venkatarama Aiyer, T.L., op.cit., pp. 400-406.

[9]:

G.O.No. 627, Public Department, 28 May 1912, TNA.

[10]:

G.O.No. 223, Public Department, 2 March 1900, T.N.A.

[11]:

Ibid. This general view is reflected more recently by Duncan, J., Derrett, M., in his “The reform of Hindu religious endowments,” in Donald E. Smith, (ed.), South Asian Politics and Religion, Princeton, 1966, pp. 311-336. However, several Madras residents sought to disabuse the Government of India of this conception of the Madras Hindu community. The GOI’s view, they argued, was based on facts which might he true of north India. but not of the south: “Every attempt hitherto made had the cordial support and concurrence of the Government of Madras, but we were not fortunate enough to receive the support of the Government of India, as their views have been largely coloured by the prejudices of the people of Bengal where in most of the institutions the superintendent or the Mahont as he is called is taken as possessing vested personal interests inexplicably involved in the affairs of the religious institutions. The state of things in this Presidency is absolutely different” (G.O. No.627, Public Department, 28 May 1912, T.N.A.).