On May 13, 1946, the Privy Council, the highest court of British India, which sat in London, was called upon to decide a matter of utmost importance. Even as preparations were being made for a future independent India through a Cabinet Mission Plan, a Privy Council bench of three eminent British judges decided an intricate question -- whether Thenkalai Iyengars or Vadakalai Iyengars had the right to lead daily prayers at the Tirupati Tirumala temple!
I am not making this up. A bench of Lord MacMillan, Lord Du Parq and Sir John Beaumont pored over Hindu religious texts and historical documents to finally award a “win” to the Thenkalai Iyengars, giving them the exclusive right to lead prayers at the temple.
Disputes between Thenkalai and Vadakalai Iyengars have continued post-Independence. The Madras High Court, at the height of the Emergency in 1976, was called upon to decide whether the temple elephant of the Devaraja Swami Temple in Kanchipuram ought to bear a Thenkalai or Vadakalai caste mark (namam)!
These are only two instances but reading through case law of the last 150 years shows a profusion of bitter disputes over Hindu temples, their property, management, wealth, control, etc., that have ended up in the highest court. Such disputes have raged not just between Hindu groups but also between different factions of the Syrian Orthodox Church, the management committee of Ajmer Dargah, etc., and have afflicted every religion in India.
All of this came to mind when I read the recent “campaign” among a certain section of upper-caste Hindus to have temples in Tamil Nadu “returned” to devotees. The withering response to this demand came from Tamil Nadu Finance Minister P Thiagarajan who dismissed it as “nonsense”. Governments have had to intervene to run temples and other religious institutions more often than not because of the gross mismanagement and constant infighting that plagued these institutions if it weren’t cases of outright misappropriation and theft of temple property. Devotees themselves appealed to governments, pre-and post-Independence, to intervene and save these temples from the ‘trustees.’
The debate over the management of Hindu religious institutions is also a good way to understand the scope of the “right to religion” under the Constitution -- specifically, Articles 25 and 26. While Art. 25 protects an individual’s freedom to hold religious beliefs and carry out practices (subject to restrictions by law), Art. 26 protects the right of “religious denominations” to manage their own affairs.
After the Constitution came into force, government interventions into the management of Hindu religious institutions were challenged in court and one of the first was the Shirur Mutt case. Here, a dispute over the management of the Shirur Mutt in Udupi resulted in the Hindu Religious Endowments Board of the Madras government (which then had jurisdiction over Udupi) issuing a notice to the Matadhipati of Shirur Mutt asking why the temple’s management shouldn’t be taken over by the government, given the mismanagement of its affairs.
In response, the Matadhipati challenged the constitutional validity of the 1951 Madras law that allowed such a takeover. The Madras High Court agreed with the Matadhipati, striking down large parts of the law as being in violation of Article 26. The government then approached the Supreme Court. A seven-judge bench of the SC delivered a landmark judgement that still holds good on the interpretation of Article 26. In analysing the scope of Article 26, the court said:
“The administration of its property by a religious denomination has thus been placed on a different footing from the right to manage its own affairs in matters of religion. The latter is a fundamental right which no legislature can take away, whereas the former can be regulated by laws which the legislature can validly impose. It is clear, therefore, that questions merely relating to administration of properties belonging to a religious group or institution are not matters of religion to which clause (b) of the Article applies.”
Managing the property of a religious institution thus has to be done in accordance with the law and is not an aspect of the religion itself. While largely upholding the constitutional validity of the Madras law, the SC did strike down those specific sections of the law that it thought interfered with religious rights. The court thus struck a balance between the right of religious denominations to manage their own religious affairs and institutions and the government’s right to stop mismanagement in the public interest.
Religious institutions don’t just provide religious services, they are also custodians of enormous amounts of wealth and wield influence among local communities. As such, they make for tempting targets for unscrupulous schemers. One should be wary when demands that the government “hand over” temples to “devotees” are made. There are many charlatans around.
(The author is the co-founder, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, uses his legal training to make the case that Harry Potter is science fiction and Star Wars is fantasy. Alok.P.Kumar)