CHAPTER 9 RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND CONCORD : INDIA, HINDUTVA AND HISTORY
CHAPTER 9: RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND CONCORD
Conflict
South India has long been a land of diverse peoples
and religions. We have seen in previous chapters that from very ancient times
different races, religions and cultures have met here. There have been waves of
newcomers through migration, trade and conquest for thousands of years.
Inevitably, this created a history of religious and sectarian conflict, rivalry,
division and differences.
The Vedas speak of the Aryas and the Dasyus as warring
peoples. The Dasyus are referred to as having different religious beliefs to
the Aryas. The Ramayana speaks of forest-dwelling Rakshasas who disturbed the
yagyas of the Rishis.
Mahavir and Gautam Buddha founded new religions in the
6th century BC that directly challenged the Vedic tradition. They in
turn came from established ascetic traditions that had been questioning the Vedas
for a long time.
Jains hold Mahavir to be the last of twenty-four
enlightened souls or “thirthankaras”. It is the life and teachings of all twenty-four
tirthankaras that together form Jainism.
The doctrine of the “Middle Path” that the Buddha
famously evolved, came from his experience with the established ascetic cults
of his time.
These cults adopted extreme privations and austerities
as a method for gaining spiritual awakening. The Buddha is said to have repudiated
these methods after spending some years practicing with them. He said that the
answer lay in striking a “Middle Path” between the extreme penance of these ascetic
cults and the luxurious worldly life of the prince that he had renounced.
Despite some common ideas such as “karma” and rebirth,
Buddhist and Jain thinking contradicted Hindu beliefs and social arrangements
in many ways, most particularly in that they did not believe in a god, but in
the enlightenment of the soul. Another example of difference is that the Hindu
system places Brahmins at the top of the caste hierarchy, whereas Buddhism
generally placed Brahmins below the Kshatriyas (259).
Even a cursory familiarity with Hindu mythology and
scriptures reveals a tension between the appeal of ascetism, which is in the
foreground in Buddhism and Jainism, and the duty to participate in the world,
especially the life-stage of the householder, of Hinduism. The insistence that
a man must have a wife into order to hold a yagya is an example of the emphasis
in Hinduism of a world-binding as opposed to a renunciatory ethos.
In the Tamil Brahmin marriage ceremony among the Aiyars (Shaivites), there is a ritual where the groom on first entering the bride’s home makes a play of announcing his wish to renounce the world and “go to Kashi”. Kashi is meant to be the abode of the ascetic Hindu god Shiva, and a metaphor for renunciation.
The groom then walks away to be followed by the bride’s menfolk who persuade him to return with the promise that he can pursue his search for enlightenment after completing the householder-stage of life.
This is all done in a jovial atmosphere, but it hints
at a time when the Hindu world had to contend with the widespread popularity of
asceticism and renunciation, especially among young men, which would have
severely depleted society and posed many problems for its everyday functioning.
Even the legends of the Buddha and Mahavir indicate this tension around the appeal of asceticism. The prince, Siddhartha Gautama, who
went on to become the Buddha, experienced the spiritual crisis that led to his
search for enlightenment on first confronting death and disease from which his
father had shielded him all his life, owing to a prophesy that his beloved son
would one day renounce the world.
There are legends, quite likely told to the young as a
teaching, that Mahavir renounced the world only after his parents had died.
We read in previous chapters of the hostility and
competition between Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism (260). The Meenakshi temple in
Madurai has depictions of the impalement of 8000 Jain monks said to have been
carried out by Sundara Pandya who converted from Jainism to Shaivism. Till
today, the festivals of the Meenakshi temple include the celebration of this legend
(261).
MS Ramawsami Ayyangar and B Seshagiri Rao say that a
12th century Tamil work called the Periya Purana (or “Tirutondar
Puranam”) by Sekkizar, poet and minister of Kulottunga Chola II, has
descriptions of the persecution of Jains and their conversion to Shaivism (262).
This is the same Kulottunga Chola II whom we read about in Chapter 8 who is
said to have been a Shaivite zealot who persecuted the Vaishnavites.
The Periya Purana collected the stories of various
Shaivite saints. One such saint, the Brahmin Sambandar, was well known in the
Chola court of Tanjore. He was a bitter
opponent of Jainism. According to
Ayyangar and Rao, “every tenth verse of his soul-stirring songs was devoted to
anathematize the Jains (262A).” Sundara Pandya (also known as Kun Pandya and
Ninrasir Nedumara) ruled in Madurai, and his queen had been a Chola princess.
She and Sundara Pandya’s minister were both Shaivites.
Legend has it that they invited Sambandar to Madurai where he tried to impress the people by performing various miracles. This so riled the Jain ascetics of Madurai that they conspired to set fire to the place where Sambandar and his disciples were staying.
The plot was discovered and averted. Then the raja
fell ill. When he did not recover under the ministrations of Jain monks, his queen
invited Sambandar to attempt a cure. The raja recovered, and thus Sambandar won
his approval.
Sambandar asked the king to allow him to challenge the
Jains by subjecting their books to various ordeals by fire and water. The Jains
lost, were impaled as depicted in the Meenakshi temple, and the Pandya King
converted to Shaivism.
Ayyangar and Rao say that the famous Bhakti saint Appar’s
songs have a “vindictive spirit” against the Jains. Appar is said to have
converted to Shaivism from Jainism himself, and also to have converted the
famous Pallava Mahendravarman from Jainism to Shaivism. In his songs, Appar
claims that Jainism was ousted from Tamil country by the preaching of various alvars
and nayanars such as Sambandar, Tirumahisai and Tirumangai.
Sastri says that “outspoken hatred” against Jainism and Buddhism was the “chief characteristic” of the early centuries of the Tamil Bhakti era: “Challenges to public debate, competition in the performance of miracles, tests of the truth of doctrines by means of ordeal, became the order of the day (263).”
In one version of the legend of the impalement of 8000
Jain monks, this gory end is said to have followed their losing in debate to Sambandar.
He and a minister of the Pandyas, Manikka Vasagar, are said to have defeated the
Buddhists in debate as well. Another famous Bhakti saint, Sundara, is said to
have turned a Chera king into a Shaivite. Kumarila, a Smarta Brahmin, is said
to have attacked Buddhism in his work (264).
We have seen in previous chapters how for centuries the
Vedic and Agamic traditions were different, even opposed to each other. Some
scholars believe that the complete amalgamation of the Vedic and Agamika paths
had not occurred even by the time of Adi Shankaracharya, whose history is
described in Chapter 8.
They say that it was a saint called Yamunacharya who
founded the Vaisnava Vedanta or Vishishta Vedanta who said that the Vaishnavas
or “sattvika agamas” should be treated as on par with the Vedic tradition.
According to them it was only in the time of Ramanujacharya that the Vedanta
and Agama schools blended into each other (265). This blended tradition then
flowed north and “became the living Hinduism of the last thousand years (265A)”.
We have seen how the Tamil Bhakti movement emerged in a
conscious challenge to Buddhism and Jainism. We have seen the energetic
proselytization of Adi Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya and their followers. We
have traced the course of the rise and fall of the construction of idols and
temples by the competing religions of South India. We have seen the way
Buddhism withered away in South India, how Jainism fell from being the creed of
kings to the status of a tiny minority, and how Hinduism overtook every other
religion in South India by the second half of the first millennium.
Episodes of religious strife have occurred in South India
as elsewhere in the country throughout history. In the 17th century,
there was religious strife in Tamil country, especially in Marava lands along
the pearl-fishery coasts and in Ramnad, the kingdom of the Setupatis. This was
when Portuguese Jesuit missionaries arrived on the Tamil coast via the sea
trade and carried on a vigorous campaign of conversion to Christianity. This is
described in detail in Chapter 17.
Interestingly, there appears to have been no religious
strife between Hindus and Muslims in this period even though Muslims had been
coming to Tamil country and the wider Deccan since the 7th century
AD, if not earlier, via the Arab-dominated sea trade. Mosques began to be built
in Tamil country even before the arrival of the armies of the Delhi Sultanate to
the Deccan in the 14th century (see Chapter 12 for further
discussion).
Religious strife in India has historically existed not
just between religions, but also between different sects of the same religion.
For instance, the division between Shvetambara and Digambar Jains, which is
said to go back to the time of Chandragupta Maurya (266).
Till today, the Digambara and Shvetambara Jains are
bitterly divided on many issues, including the right to Jain temples. They find
it difficult to make common cause even as regards temples that both sects agree
have been appropriated by the Hindus!
Among Hindus of South India, hostility between Shaivite
Aiyars and Vaishnative Iyengars is the stuff of legend in Tamil country. In the
17th century Vaishnavite officials of the Vijayanagar kingdom are
said to have stopped worship at the Shiva temple of Chidambaram (267).
I recently learnt that in my own family an
Iyengar-Aiyar marriage in the 1970s was boycotted by some on the Iyengar side. My
Sikh mother and Hindu father had the same trouble when they married, with
relatives from both sides being upset, and some refusing to attend. My paternal
grandfather built a temple (temple building goes on and on) in Delhi, the
Ganesh Mandir on Baba Kharag Singh Marg, but its priests refused to marry my
parents owing to my mother being a Sikh. And so the saga of religious division
and prejudice goes on and on.
Concord
However, the religious multiplicity and changing
fortunes of the different faiths of South India is by no means a straightforward
story of conflict. In previous chapters, we have seen how royal houses across
South India gave protection and patronage to temples and priests of religions other
than their own. We have also seen a long history of inter-religious and
inter-sectarian marriage among the South Indian royals.
We have seen how feudatories, governors, commanders
and local rajas often followed a different creed to that of their overlords or
more powerful allies. We have seen how not just feudatories and local
chieftains or rajas, but even common citizens, such as merchants, had the
freedom to continue to commission rock-carvings, build temples and give
donations to monks of their faith, even when the reigning king espoused a
different religion.
Surveying the grants and donations to both Buddhist
monks and Brahmin priests in cave inscriptions of the Western Ghat by the
Shakas, Satvahanas, Maharathis and Mahabhojas, the historian RG Bhandarkar says
“Kings and princes thus appear to have patronised the followers of both the
religions, and in none of the inscriptions is there an indication of an open
hostility between them (268).”
There was a certain religious eclecticism even in the
families of the kings, with some members espousing a different faith to that of
the majority of the rest of the family. In Andhra country, even as the
Satvahana and Ishkavaku kings began to lean towards Hinduism, their queens,
mothers and sisters remained stanch Buddhists (269). The same can be seen among
the Jain dynasties of Karnataka country, as the kings began to lean towards
Hinduism.
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As discussed in previous chapters, though temples and
idols were attacked and broken during battle, this was as a show of might
against the kings who built them and not intended as an attack on any faith. There
was no concept of a state religion, and kings seem to have made it a point to protect,
cultivate and patronise the diverse creeds of their subjects. Bhandarkar notes
that the Chalukyas “like their predecessors in previous times, were tolerant
towards all religions (270).”
Though Shaivite and Vaishnava Bhakti was on the rise
everywhere in South India, Jains continued to be prominent in the royal courts
and the world of letters, as we will see in Chapter 10. There are examples of
Tamil courts continuing to support the remaining minority Buddhist community in
various ways. A Chola king assigned the revenue of a village to a Buddhist
vihara commissioned in his lands by the neighbouring Sri Lankan raja (274).
An inscription at the famous Jain centre of Shravana
Belagola in Karnataka says that Hoysala Vishnuvardhana, left Jainism owing to
the taunts of his favourite concubine and the arguments of Ramanujacharya. The
inscription goes on to say that Vishnuvardhana transferred various religious
grants from the Jains to Vaishnava temples and destroyed hundreds of Jain
“bastis” or temples (276).
However, a look at the history of Vishnuvardhana
paints a different picture. Even after this claimed “conversion”, we saw in previous
chapters, that he, his queen and feudatories built numerous Jain temples in his
lands, including in his capital of Dvarasamudra. In fact, there is a surge in
the building of Jain temples in Hoysala territories in the 11th
century. Feudatory rajas of the Hoysalas, local subordinate chiefs and village
headmen built, repaired and gave endowments to more Jain temples in this period
than ever before.
Chola Kulottunga III married a Chola princess to
Hoysala Veera Ballala II, who was the grandson of Vishnuvardhana. So even
though there is a tradition that holds that the Cholas were fanatical Shaivites
who persecuted the Vaishnavites, Kulottunga Chola III befriended the Hoysalas
and sent a daughter of his house to them, even after they are said to have
espoused Vaishnavism.
These facts also raise doubts as to whether “conversion” overstates what occurred with Vishnuvardhana at the time. Rather than a straightforward story of conversion, a more complex picture emerges of a raja trying to negotiate his way through the changing religious preferences of his people, and having to accommodate new creeds, while at the same time demonstrating solidarity with the older ones.
Perhaps his accommodation of Ramanujacharya and granting permission for the building of a Vishnu temple at Melakote were misinterpreted. Perhaps the episode of Vishnuvardhana and Ramanujacharya is better understood as the Hoysala raja’s being impressed with the famous and popular acharya.
Alternatively, perhaps Sri Vaishnavism had begun to rise among Vishnuvardhana’s subjects, as it was rising in neighbouring Cholamandalam, and the Hoysala raja believed that it was politic to demonstrate his acceptance of the rising new creed by building a temple dedicated to it. Or, the Hoysalas may have courted Ramanujacharya as at that time they had a common adversary in Kulottunga Chola.
There are numerous possibilities, and the truth probably lies somewhere in between.
So the memory of Vishnuvardhana’s conversion as
inscribed at Shravana Belagola, or the legends of Chola persecution of
Vaishnavism cannot be taken at face value. Even when rajas are accused by one
or other community of religious prejudice, their actual deeds and words many
reveal a different picture.
There is even a legend of 8000 Jains in Pandya Madurai
that is the very opposite of the gory tale of impalement. This legend is
connected with the writing of “Naladiyar”, an early work in Tamil by a Jain. It
is said that 8000 Jains left their lands during a famine, and came to stay in
Madurai. By the time the famine ended, the Pandya king had grown so fond of
these Jains that he refused them permission to leave. One night, the Jain munis
stole away, each leaving a verse of poetry under their seats. Piqued, the king
had them thrown in the river, but four hundred of them came floating back, and
together they formed the famous composition of Naladiyar (277).
Inscriptions show that even the so-called Shaivite
zealot Kulottonga Chola generously patronised the Jain Vardhaman Temple in
Tirupattikunram (131B).
Perhaps the best way to reconcile all of these contradictory
stories of impalement-sanctuary, hostility-affection, erasure-preservation,
rejection-absorption and so on, whether legendary or factual, is that for every
hostile communal sentiment in India, there is an equal and opposite friendly
one.
In the spirit of concord, I should mention from my
personal history, that by the time I grew to adulthood, Hindu priests were not
objecting to inter-marriage; and they raised no objection to conducting my
wedding to my Sikh husband.
Even the priests of my grandfather’s temple relented,
and conducted the ritual re-enactment of my parents’ wedding on my father’s 80th
birthday in the Tamil convention, a ceremony which my mother had particularly
wanted to have performed. As in the case of the Satvahanas and Gangas, it is
the women who continue to set the tone, and keep the family connected with
their origins.
The Role of Kings, Artists and Thinkers
Again and again, in times of religious turmoil in
ancient and medieval South India, you see the rajas stepping in to act as mediators
and conciliators between all communities.
The Sanskrit plays “Bhagavad-Ajjukam”
and “Mattavilasa Prahasana”, of the “converted” Pallava King Mahendravarman,
may be seen as an example of such an endeavour (278). Both plays are attributed
to him, but I believe after reading them that they are more likely to have been
commissioned rather than written by him. Both plays are farces. Some experts
believe that they may have been the first farces of classical Sanskrit theatre,
this genre having been confined to the folk theatre before this (278A).
In Mattavilasa Prahasana the protagonists are a pair
of wayward drunks – a boyfriend and girlfriend type of couple. The humour in
the play is constructed around their encounters with various Buddhist, Jain and
Shaivite ascetics. The story is resolved by a lunatic who claims to have found
a begging bowl in the form of a skull (as was then used by ascetics) with a stray
dog.
The play has a “Waiting for Godot” feel about it, with
no plot other than what I have described. The purpose of the play is clearly to
satirise ascetics of all creeds by showing how their sayings and practices
could as well come from the mouths of drunks and madmen.
The point is made all the more clearly in
Bhagavad-Ajjukam, where the humour is constructed around the swapping of the
souls of a courtesan and an ascetic. Again, the play satirises asceticism and
orthodoxy by showing how the typical expressions of a fastidious ascetic could
equally be spoken by a lady of the night!
The Tamil epic Manimekalai of the Sangam poet Sattanar
also has humorous scenes poking fun at the austerities of ascetics. Manimekalai
is about the travails of a beautiful woman in her journey to espouse Buddhist
asceticism with the plot involving a young prince who is infatuated with her
and tries to dissuade her from this path.
These works could be taken to indicate an experience
of sectarian divide, rivalry or conflict in South India, but the story may not
stop there. Ayyangar and Rao say that Sattanar was a “staunch Buddhist” and
though you might have expected him not to have given an ideal representation of
Jainism, in fact “enlightened Jain opinion is, that excepting Dharmastikaya,
every other point of the Jain system is fairly represented (279).”
Ayyangar and Rao say that: “Judging from the account
of society as depicted in Manimekalai, the Tamil sovereigns appear to have been
generally tolerant to all the foreign faiths in the country. Thus, on the
occasion of the annual festival held in the city of [Pumpuhar] in honour of
Indra, the king asked all preachers of virtue belonging to all religious sects
to ascend the public halls of debate and preach their respective doctrines to
the people (280).”
The study of Pallava Mahendravarman as a “convert” to
Shaivism, does not do justice to his legacy. Having read the plays commissioned
by him, I am doubtful whether he was a “convert” or even particularly concerned
with orthodox religion of any kind. He was a statesman, thinker, artist and
aesthete.
Mattavilasa Prahasana, Bhagavad-Ajjukam and Manimekalai
may be seen as attempts by gifted rulers, thinkers
and artists to redeem if not resolve sectarian tensions through the arts; to
lighten hostilities with humour; and to soften disagreements by bringing out
the human element of renunciation and asceticism.
An example of religious tolerance in courtly Karnataka was the notion of the “chatuhsamayah”, which meant respect for all the four creeds of the time. An inscription of 1151 AD in Tumkur expresses this as (280A):
“Jayanti
yasyavadatopi Bharati
Vibhutayas
tirtha kritopi naihrite
Shivaya
dhatre sugataya Vishnave
Jinaya
tasmai sakalatmane namah.”
Meaning:
“Salutations
to the one who is the essence of all,
Who is victorious even when silent,
Whose splendour sanctifies the sacred places,
Who is Shiva, the Creator,
Who is the Buddha, the Preserver,
Who is Vishnu, the Destroyer,
And who is Jina, the Supreme Soul.”
The courtly ethos of religious tolerance continued
even in the Vijayanagar kingdom in the 14th century. Once, when
Jains complained to king Bukka Raya of persecution by Vaishnavites, he issued this
decree to be engraved in stone, and installed in all the temples of the land:
“As long as the Sun and Moon endure, the Vaishnava Samaya will continue to
protect the Jain Darsana. The Vaishnavas cannot (be allowed to) look upon the
Jains as in a single respect different (281).”
So while the age-old religious diversity of India has often led to episodes of communal strife, it has also inspired passionate advocates of communal harmony since ancient times. We see an eloquent and energetic advocacy of the spirit of communal harmony in Emperor Ashoka’s famous edicts (282):
“Let
every sect find a home in the lands of Piyadasi King Ashoka
For
they all fundamentally aspire to good conduct and good thinking.”
“Devanampiyo
King Ashoka holds
neither charity nor prayer as important
As that people should conduct themselves in accordance with the
essential message of their creed.”
“There
are many ways of bringing harmony among different groups
But
none so important as that each should guard his speech.
Speak
with moderation, whether in praise of your own sect,
Or
in criticism of another’s.
This
is the best way to honour your own sect.”
“Each
one of you must seek out numerous ways of honouring the sects of others.”
“All
thinking persons should be broad of knowledge and take pains to understand the
beliefs of others
Seek
agreement with those of other beliefs
Cultivate
an attitude of friendliness and openness to all.”
The same appeal to openness and accommodation is found
in the Maha Upanishad’s famous “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” shloka, and the Rig
Veda’s “Ekam Sat” shloka (283):
“Who is yours, and who is not
Such reckoning is for the small-minded.
For the generous, the whole world is one family.”
Maha
Upanishad
“They
call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna,
Agni,
Garuda, Yama, Vayu.
The
truth is one, though the learned
Describe
it differently.”
Rig
Veda
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