The Emergence of Modern Hinduism

5 The Polemics of Conflicting Modernities The conventional character of Ramalinga’s 1867 publication did not mean that it was uncontroversial. Indeed, Ramalinga’s claim that he belonged in the lineage of revered Shaiva poet-saints, and that his poems constituted a new addition to Shaiva canon, were antithetical to new considerations of religious authority that were coming to define reform Hinduism. Cosmopolitan leaders viewed canon as closed and complete, and they rejected new bids for inclusion. Ramalinga’s claim that his poems announced a new revelation challenged this view and led to an acrimonious dispute over Shaiva canon and authority. A close analysis of this conflict gives us insight not only into Tamil Shaiva debates but also into contrasting styles of religious leadership and practice that characterized transformations of religion in colonial India. The tensions between Ramalinga’s vision of Shaivism and that of emerging reform positions, which were allied with established Shaiva institutions, came to a head in the years following the publication of Tiruvaruṭpā. In 1869, the Tamil Shaiva leader Arumuga Navalar published a critical response to Ramalinga’s vol- ume. A heated dispute followed that lasted for decades. In his polemic, Navalar punned that Ramalinga’s verses were “maruṭpā,” verses that confused and deluded, not “aruṭpā,” verses of divine grace. Their conflict was not just one between two very prominent, and very different, Shaiva leaders. It also highlights the chasm between two influential and contrasting visions of Tamil Shaivism that were char- acteristic of broader redefinitions of religious tradition and authority in South Asia. This dispute gives a fascinating glimpse into the tensions between, on the one hand, new criteria of authority developed in colonial contexts and, on the other, notions of authority that were more closely grounded in precolonial traditions. 97 98 chapter 5 While scholarly work on Ramalinga has been fairly thin, there have been many excellent studies of Navalar in the past three decades, in both English and Tamil.1 As with Hindu reform leaders more generally, the scholarly interest in Navalar results from his engagement with Western discourses and agendas. He was a cosmopolitan figure who learned from, and then opposed, missionaries, and he drew on Western ideas and models in his efforts to reframe Shaivism. It is Navalar, therefore, who has been called “the father of the Tamil renaissance”2 and “the leading activist in Saivism . until his death in 1879.”3 R. Balachandran asserts that “Navalar was responsible for the modernization of Saivism in Tamilnadu.”4 I argue here that Ramalinga has as much a claim to these titles and achievements as Navalar. Indeed, Ramalinga would inspire perhaps the greatest intellectual leader in Tamil Shaivism in the twentieth century, Maraimalai Adigal.5 Ramalinga came to serve as an influential figure for Tamil nationalists in the twentieth century. He is well known among Indian Tamils today, his popularity cutting across caste and class, while Navalar is little known except among scholars. Even if Ramalinga was on the margins of colonial cosmopolitanism, he was not marginal to the thousands of Tamils who followed him in his lifetime and after, nor should he be simply a footnote in studies of the emergence of modern Hinduism. My goal in this chapter is to consider together the two contrasting visions of Shaivism advocated by Ramalinga and Navalar, in order to clarify the crucial differences between them. The fact that both figures played pivotal roles in the transformations of Tamil Shaivism from their time to today suggests that genealogies of the emergence of modern Hinduism need to take greater account of both of their projects, as well as the innovations of other Hindu leaders working on the margins of colonial cosmopolitanism. REVISING TRADITION IN COLONIAL INDIA As we have seen in prior chapters, Ramalinga developed his vision of Shaivism through creative engagement with Shaiva devotional and siddha traditions. This contrasts with cosmopolitan reformers who drew on Western models and ideas in developing new notions of Hindu tradition. David Washbrook notes that “Indian ‘tradition’ had been re-defined and structured into society under colonial rule, apparently to a far greater extent than ‘modernity’ ever had been.”6 While economic relationships, social status, property, and other forms of power were marked by competition and fluidity in precolonial India, the colonial state sought to stabi- lize or “fix” these variables through new regimes of taxation, property ownership, law, and polities. Legal authority shifted from one of “dynamic and contestatory processes . to the static principles of ancient precedent, hereditary succession and caste hierarchy.”7 The bases of authority themselves shifted in colonial contexts, where written sources took precedence over oral ones. According to Washbrook, local elites, Polemics of Conflicting Modernities 99 especially brahmans, sought to redefine tradition in ways that served their economic and social interests. They adhered to a new “rhetoric of right” that conferred authority on the basis of antiquity and textual documentation. This redefinition was characterized by stricter conformity to brahmanical norms, greater social stratification, greater authority of texts, and a notion that tradition is permanent and unchanging. What emerged was a “neo-colonial constructed ‘tradition’ of . Anglo-Brahminised ‘Hinduism,’ ” within which claims for tradition were framed as existing in a static state from “time immemorial.”8 Likewise, elements of past tradition that did not conform to these criteria were increasingly marginal to central considerations of power. Washbrook reads these efforts as acts of resis- tance, in which Indian elites made claims to social and economic power, often at the expense of the colonial state. Of course, at the same time these were also acts of oppression, in which elite Indians consolidated their wealth and status at the expense of those who did not enjoy the privilege of a textual corpus stacked in the favor of upper castes. The process of this redefinition of tradition was diffuse and entailed a variety of sites of contestation. Lata Mani has shown how debates about sati in the early decades of the nineteenth century occupied a range of actors, including reformers, conservative Hindus, and colonial administrators.9 Despite their varied positions, they largely agreed that any argument in favor of, or opposed to, the banning of sati needed to be made on the basis of scriptural evidence. In cosmopolitan set- tings, these debates enhanced the status of brahmanical texts at the expense of everyday, customary practices. Rammohan Roy argued that “original” texts should guide the debate on sati, as ancient scripture could serve as “the only safe rule to guard against endless corruptions, absurdities, and human caprices.”10 For Roy, Dayananda Saraswati, and other cosmopolitan reformers, Hindu traditions had been compromised by centuries of revision and interpolation, and so they advocated textual fundamentalism in seeking an authentic, unified Hindu tradition.11 Mani notes that this emphasis on textual authority was not, however, a return to earlier notions of tradition but was “a modern discourse on tradition . one in which both ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ as we know them are contemporaneously produced.”12 As Robert Yelle notes, it was also a Protestant discourse, one that took shape in the Reformation in opposition to Catholic ritual and idolatry.13 Law played a particularly important role in the emergence of these new notions of tradition. These legal contexts highlight the role of the colonial state in recon- figurations of Hindu tradition, usually in line with brahmanical ideals. Rosane Rocher notes that the bias toward textual authority was inscribed in Anglo-Hindu law at its conception. This judgment of canon as the sole authority was consis- tent with Protestant conceptions of sola scriptura, and it also reflected European views that Indian civilization had decayed from a prior golden age.14 Davis and Lubin note that another of the effects of the imposition of colonial law was the redefinition of Hinduism as a unified tradition. “Aided by Indian social reform 100 chapter 5 movements, colonial law helped to create a homogenous, unitary conception of Hinduism within which internal differences were hard torecognize. ”15 Practices that did not conform to high-caste ideals, such as hook-swinging rituals in South India, were consigned to the realm of custom, rather than religion, with its lower level of legal authority.16 This imperative to articulate a unified Hinduism can be traced to the beginnings of Anglo-Hindu law, which strove for “consistency” and “uniformity.”17 These new notions of tradition took hold in cosmopolitan contexts. In the courts, the colonial state determined the criteria by which claims could be legiti- mated. Nicholas Dirks notes that European administrators and Orientalist scholars sought to build an archive of knowledge about Indian castes and customs, which also contributed to these processes of traditionalization. “Regulation and knowledge thus collaborated in the fixing of tradition, by which I mean both the stabiliz- ing and the repairing of a canonic sense of what had always been done.”18 Christian leaders also played a vital role in this process, formulating a unified Hinduism based in brahmanical texts.19 Indigenous actors were crucial in advancing these processes. Indian litigants exploited the biases of Anglo-Hindu law to secure property claims.20 Pandits played a crucial role in providing evidence for courts, and they also were vital to the development of Orientalist knowledge.21 Donald Davis and Timothy Lubin suggest “that modern Hinduism emerged through the force of government legal power and educated Hindu opinion operating in tandem to ‘reform’ Hindu institutions and practices.”22 They are certainly right to point to the Indian engagement with European institutions and ideals as central to this cosmopolitan redefinition of tradition, even if we can question their equation of this process with the emergence of modern Hinduism.

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