British justice and law courts, the caste tribunals have ceased to function. Except in the case of those who live in the cities and are rich and powerful enough to disregard the opinion of their caste, the Hindus as a whole are everywhere subject to the jurisdiction of the capricious and vague caste authorities.. “Most people in India are under a double government. There is the state controlling the civil activities of the people, and there is the caste-head- man or panchayat or Swami guiding the religious and social life even, in some cases, wielding the same powers as the Government. Government by caste is not often felt by us by reason of our acquaintance . with it in daily life; but all the same there are some castes, sub-castes is perhaps a better term, in which the control of the state is far less potent. For such offences as even assault, theft and adultery, the caste panchayat punishes the criminal, who very often finds it more difficult to escape the punishment. of the caste government than that of the state.”* .
In addition, there are Hindu Rajas who exercise their sovereign powers to preserve intact all the social and religious abominations with an enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism. It was only about four years ago that the two neighbor Hindu states of ‘Travancore and Cochin drifted almost into a state ~ of open hostilities because the Travancore ruler opened his temples to all Hindus, an act which raised him in the eyes of most Indians and even others to the eminence almost of an Asoka, and the Cochin ruler took up cudgels against all those who supported the innovation. But for the presence of the British power, the situation would have ripened , into another Mahabharata War. “The mailed fist of the caste demon is as threatening as ever after nearly two centuries of Christian rule.
*Page 133, Census of India (1911), by M. S. Kamath.
TEMPLES
In none of these discussions are we concerned with the faults of individuals, or with the mismanagement of those entrusted with work, or with the weaknesses and errors common to all human institutions. Such shortcomings are the common lot of all -humanity.. We are speaking .here of those characteristics and influences of public institutions which are deliberately fostered by men of light and responsibility as the very essence of the nation’s culture and greatness. We have already said enough about the origin and growth of the Hindu temples. To show what function they serve in modern Hindu society we shall describe one instance.
The Tirupati temple in the North Arcot District of South India is one of the most famous shrines of pilgrimage, and worshippers throng there from distant parts of the country. It is in receipt of an annual income of two to three lakhs of rupees, mainly derived from the offerings of the worshippers. It ‘is situated on the top of a high hill, and the gradual ascent to the summit covers a distance of seven miles of steps built one above the other with convenient halts and windings at intervals. The ascent has to be done on foot or in palanquins carried on the shoulders of men..
As soon as a pilgrim begins the climb, with his mind full of pious thoughts and his lips incessantly uttering the holy names of God, and praying for the successful termination of the meritorious trip up and down, the very first shock that he receives is the sight on either side of the road of wretched men, women and children, some blind, others lame’ or crippled, or deformed, yet others pretending to be fakirs and Sadhus, each one with a begging bowl or a piece of cloth spread on the ground for passers-by to throw their coins. Right and left they sit all
along the seven miles of steps and harass the pilgrims with heart-rending appeals for alms. Some of them follow the visitors, disregarding protests and refusals, ‘hanging at their heels and imploring in abject terms for the smallest coin, nay not even a coin but a shell representing a fraction of the smallest coin, the pie! Some give, some turn a deaf ear to all the implorings and harden their hearts against the sight of poverty and dirt, hypocrisy and meanness, disease and destitution, superstition and mockery which stare them in the face on this sacred path. All the miserable specimens of Hindu society who really deserve the pity and organized help, in one form or other, of religion and the state are there arrayed in their utmost wretchedness; and he should be a rare being indeed whose heart is not sickened by the vision of suffering or hardened by the continued suppression of all sympathetic feelings, by the time he reaches the summit. In fact, most-people keep the money they have to be given to the idol in the temple and pass the hundreds of beseeching hands on the way with no compunction whatsoever. In any other civilized country the first obligation of religion would be to stretch a helping hand to these brethren and raise them from their degradation. But in India, neither this temple with its huge income nor any other temple, has a word of consolation to give to these the rejected of men. The religion of temples recognizes no meritorious work other than worship of the idol. It has no provision to raise the down-trodden, educate the ignorant, succour the destitute, comfort the sinner or unite the distnited. It does not believe in giving or doing good, but exists * to receive and exact good things from its devotees.
The pilgrim reaches the top with the small bundle of coins and other offerings meant for the idol, and which he devoutly refused to untie to relieve the suffering he saw on the way, and moves through the crowded temple street filled with men and women, bargaining with fruit-vendors, flower girls, vegetable merchants and other traders who line the road on either side, suggesting the vicinity of a market rather than of a place of worship, until he reaches the temple and perhaps throws himself prostrate before the shrine. He has fulfilled the ambition of a life-time; he has carried out the pious ~ wish of a deceased grandfather to deliver his small bundle of offering to the god of Tirupati. His -devotional submissiveness, his innocent faith, his blissful surrender to the deity of his heart, the holy consolation he receives on thinking of the most meritorious act he has just done—all these express the profound religious fervor common to all Hindus. Well directed under the guidance of religious organizations meant for their uplift, these deep feelings . would be the means of the nation’s unity, strength, self-sacrificing power, success and glory. But alas the religion of idolatry stands for heartless exploitation.
The pligrim must pay if he wants to see the idol; the incense he offers will not be burnt unless he deposits a fee for it; for every trifling act of worship he has to pay down hard cash. The shrine looks like a Jew’s money-shop. Officers sit surrounded by treasure ‘chests, account books and receipt bundles; the holy precincts resound with the clink of coins thrown into the chest or counted down before the manager; the Brahman priests are busy with their idolatrous ceremonies of washing and clothing and decorating the image and feeding it with varied dishes, inside the dark interior suggestive of witchcraft rather than of divine worship; occasional ringing of bells and the beating of drums and blowing of horns serve to drown the buzz and noise of the busy trade; the iron bars which surround the immediate presence of the deity, with uniformed sentries watching at the entrance to prevent anyone entering without ticket, reminds us of a cinema house. Day in and day out the same irreligious trade of collecting money and other offering from the devotees goes on. There is not a redeeming feature; nothing to console the sad heart, nothing to enlighten the superstitious, nothing to guide the ignorant, nothing to inspire the thoughtful, nothing to strengthen the faithful, nothing to purify the wicked, nothing to elevate the fallen. God sits enthroned on his inaccessible throne bedecked with gold and jewels, surrounded by flatterers and hypocrites, exacting the homages and riches of miserable humanity with the stony-hearted indifference of a greedy tyrant. Such is the organised religion of the nation even to-day—a system of vile exploitation. No doubt faith gets its reward; the true devotee ‘may receive his consolation, but not because of the temples or what is done there, but in spite of their disgusting deceptions. The small village temples, which number hundreds of thousands in this vast country and are the nurseries of the nation’s culture and ideals, are appropriate feeders to the large ones. If you go to any ordinary village and ask the first person you meet to show you the dirtiest locality there, if he is honest and. sharp-witted, he will take you to the temples, for in most cases these edifices in their dilapidated appearance, the condition of the precincts and the state of the interior are monuments of neglect, decay and dirty habits. The compound wall has crumbled down in many places and straying cattle can go in and go out; street urchins use the convenient enclosure for their hide-and-seek game or mud-throwing exploits. The plastered walls, if there be any remaining, are filled with filthy figures and writings inscribed by shameless youngsters and sometimes by. Grown-up vagabonds to exhibit their moral aberration. The small yard will for months remain unswept, overgrown with shrubs and sprinkled with cowdung and other rubbish. No- body cares to visit the temple except on festive days. Of course the Brahman priest keeps his attendance every day, which is evidenced by the mark he puts on the forehead of the idol. Even the holy of holies will be filled with dust and dirt and stinking with the foul odour of bats and rats and cockroaches. Ugly and terrific looking images remind us of the bloody sacrifices which they used to enjoy in olden days, but of which they are deprived now. Even when the daily worship is being conducted by the priest, men and women, if there are any present, sit and talk as if in their shops without the least show of reverence, and children make themselves merry by climbing on the pillars and ringing the bells. There is not a moment of calm or thoughtfulness when the people meet for worship. They break their coconuts, give the priest his share, make a
round of the shrine, bow to the darkness where the : idol is, and retrace their steps to their respective homes with as little pretensions to devotions or respect for god as if they had gone to borrow a pinch of snuff or buy a cigarette. More than a century ago, Abbe Dubois wrote thus: “There is a well: known Hindu pro- verb which says, a temple mouse fears not the gods! This exactly applies to the Brahmans who enter their temples without showing the slightest sign of serious thought or respect for the divinities who are enshrined therein. Indeed they often choose these particular places to quarrel and fight in. Even while performing their numerous religious fooleries, their behavior shows no indication of fervour ‘or real devotion.”* These remarks are letter by letter
*Page 299, Abbe Dubois.
true of the temples of the present day also, perhaps with the additional force that the irreverence is manifest among the worshippers also.. The learned Frenchman also wrote: “To have any connection with a courtesan or with an unmarried person is not – considered a form of wickedness in the eyes of the Brahmans, These men, who look upon the violation of any trivial custom as a heinous sin, see no harm in the most outrageous and licentious excesses. It was practically for their use that the dancers and prostitutes who are attached to the service of the temples were originally entertained, and they may often. be heard to intone the following scandalous line: Vesya darsanam punyam, papa nasanam! which means, Looking upon a prostitute is a virtue which takes away sin.”* Dancing girls have been dismissed from some of the temples in recent years, otherwise the priestly mentality is not much different to-day from what it was when the above lines were written.
That it maintains a priest is the highest claim that can be made for a village temple. Otherwise, it is an unmitigated nuisance, an eye-sore to all right thinking men, an unadulterated mockery, disfigurement of true religion, and the original sin. of Hindu- ism which makes every child born in the community a sinner. These debasing structures disgrace the country from one end to the other. Just a few temples may set a better example, arrange a few lectures or readings or feed a few travellers. Those are exceptions. On the other hand there are others where bloody sacrifices are regularly performed, intoxicating drinks are offered to the deity and drunk by the priest and the worshippers. In connection with the annual festival of some of these, liquor pots are taken in procession with bands and music.’ On one occasion about six years ago stich a
*Page213, Abbe Dubois.
procession occasioned a conflict between the Hindus and the Muhammadans in Malabar, when the latter objected to liquor pots being deified and carried. in front of their mosques. This dispute soon spread into the nearest town and for two years- caused serious rioting resulting in many deaths. But we need not treat these as a national institution, though many millions of Hindus are served only by such houses of heinous priestcraft.
We are not concerned with the merits or de- merits of idolatry. If each worshipper were allowed to keep his idol and worship it himself, he would soon discover what nonsense it all is. But apart from that what purpose does the organised religion of public temples serve in the national life, except to perpetuate the degradation of the masses, to facilitate their exploitation by priests, to accentuate caste differences, waste the wealth and devotion of the people-for unmeaning ceremonies, defeat all the good objects of religion, increase superstition and immorality, create party dissension in every village and worst of all by their provocative devilishness to estrange the feelings of the followers of other religions. And yet the Hindu nation would fight and die for their temples.
MUTTS OF SANNYASINS (MONASTERIES)
We come now to the third representative institution of Hindu civilisation, the latest and the noblest development of Hindu spirituality, the place where all the best that India has inherited from her saints and divine persons is said to be preserved in their pristine purity, the one glorious flight of Hindu inspiration, which the orthodox still maintain no other civilisation in the world has ever attained. We mean the institution of Sannyasins or Monks—persons who have renounced all material cares and dedicated themselves to God-realisation. As has been already stated, we are not concerned with the lives of the Rishis or saints who have in all centuries lighted up the primordial darkness of our life, and some of whom may be in our midst even now. All reverence to them! Our study is confined to institutions and not individuals, for they are the more or less permanent repositories of our culture and they alone really have a hand in shaping the nation’s destiny in normal times. Great men come, give their message, do their work and depart to other worlds in a few years. The institutions remain and exert their influence for many decades and even centuries over successive generations, either for good or evil. National life is reflected in these, and not in the heavenly stars which shed their light over all humanity.
What does Sannyas stand for in the ordinarily accepted usage of the word? We need not think of the few reformed orders like the Sree Rama krishna Mission, The Arya Samaj Sadhus or the Sree Narayana Dharma Sangham, which are modern missionary societies rather than orthodox monasteries. Moreover, we have dealt with them in another chapter. Here we shall confine our statements to the Sannyasins of the orthodox type who form the vast majority of Hindu monks and whose influence on popular life is second only to that of the temples. The minimum qualifications expected of a Sannyasin are ordinarily (1) Renunciation of all domestic ties, (2) Renunciation of sexual desires,.(3) Renunciation of private property, (4) Renunciation of caste, idolatry and other rituals prescribed for householders, and (5) Dedication of life to self-culture and spiritual. illumination. The monasteries fall into three important groups: (a) The first group consists of the. latest Ashrams established by sages of great repute whose spiritual achievements are taken for granted. These are the purest types. (b) To the second group belong the Mutts of the ancient Acharyas.
