Colonialism In Our Museum Exhibits: A Case Study Of A Chariot

I stand before the ‘thaer’ or rath — the chariot.

It is a wooden chariot — like any other chariot from any other Hindu temple. Compared to the huge chariots of some temples, this chariot is modest by size, but in terms of the wooden carvings and designs, it is very much as divine and as exquisite as any other.

Only, the description does not say that.

The chariot I was standing before is an exhibit at the Government Museum, Kanyakumari. The description kept along with the chariot is in English, filled with typographical errors.

However, it states something quite amusing:

So it says that this may look like a Hindu sacred chariot, but it is not as Hindu as it looks. It is different.

It is more 'humanistic' than Divine, more 'secular' than sacred. It has no place for 'supra-human divinities'. In other words, it is more protestant in a non-Hindu way.

But as I go around the chariot and look closely at the wooden sculptures, they say a diametrically opposite story.

I see sage Narada. I see a sage holding a Shiva linga. The sage holding the Shiva linga has a beautiful turban-like crown and a Vaishnavaite-looking sacred mark on his forehead.

Then, there are Garudas with subdued serpents as ornaments.

A Garuda is flanked by the Yalis — the Hindu dragons, thus underscoring the special importance of Garuda:

There are also sculptures of Parashurama, and Sri Krishna stealing the dresses of Gopis — a scene from Srimada Bhagavatam itself:

All the above facts about the exhibit show it to be as Hindu as any other Hindu temple chariot.

Yet, why is such a statement accompanying the exhibit kept there?

The seemingly simple lines here betray deep prejudices and colonial stereotypes of hatred, which are getting perpetuated to this day.

The ‘Iyya Vazhi’ (Way of/shown by Iyya’.) is a vibrant socio-religious movement which emerged in South Travancore in the 19th century.

It was started by Iyya Vaikundar (1809-1851), the spiritual name of Muthukutty Swamy, who is venerated by his followers as the 'Avatar of Narayana'.

The movement organised the people irrespective of jatis into an effective spiritual community disseminating the message of freedom, spiritual oneness, and fight against injustice — both socio-economic degradation and proselytising.

Of late, there has been a movement to declare Iyyavazhi as a separate religion. While the immediate reason is the fear of the temple being taken over by HR&CE as well as the lure of minority concessions, the larger motive is the anti-Hindu paradigm advocated by the colonial-evangelist movement.

To understand the entire problem in context, one has to look back into history: almost 150 years.

The East India Company had, by then, become the real ruler of Travancore. The economic exploitation by East India Company was done with the princely State as the proxy.

The resulting degradation of the society was exploited by institutions like London Mission Society (LMS) and Society for the Propagation of Gospels (SPG).

Here are a few instances:

On the one hand, the British Regent compelled the Travancore government to pay the British Rs 800,000 annually as protectorate, forcing the princely State to levy new taxes, like for example, palm tree tax, which in 1807 CE alone, fetched Rs 18,523.

Further, to pay the East India Company-demanded annual protectorate, communities like Ezhavas, Channars, Cherumars, Chambavas and Pulayas were made to pay individual head tax for every one in the age of 16 to 60.

And under this tax, Rs 163,000 was collected annually. In this, the government exempted the powerful landed communities: Nayyars, Vellalas, Muslims and Kanmala communities.

In the early decades of the 19th century, then the Travancore regent, Col. Manroe, made quite a few concessions for the converted Shanars.

On the other hand, he lowered the market price of foodgrains. But he refused to proportionately lower the taxes the paddy producers had to pay.

Such acts, designed to make intra-community relations deteriorate, created an environment that made evangelism possible.

A section of society was made to believe that the native religion, culture and state were subjugating them, while the colonial and evangelical masters were here to 'liberate' them.

The power imbalance in intra-community relations in the Travancore society, which were dictated by local politics and socio-economic dynamics, got blamed on Hindu Dharma — now characterised as the 'heathen religion of idolatry' designed by priests to 'exploit' people.

The colonial missionaries and then the colonised social historians, right through the Nehruvian and Dravidian decades of designed cultural illiteracy, have continued this propaganda religiously and slavishly.

It was in such a situation of the 19th century Travancore that the Iyya Vaikundar movement arose.

Vaikundar was, perhaps, the first Hindu critique of colonialism and the vested interests of social stagnation which colonialism was breeding in India.

He called the former — 'Ven-Neesan’, white-skinned evil-doers and the latter ‘Kali Neesan’ — the evil-doers of Kali Yuga. He stated that the former had destroyed nations and now was destroying the social fabric, affecting the livelihoods of the communities like Chantoor (Chanar, Nadar).

He associated these two with the 'Asuric' characters from Hindu ithihasas and purana tradition: Ravana, Duryodhana and Sura Padman (Skanda Purana).

This is a very innovative critique of colonialism, related evangelism and social-stagnation.

Epigraphy scholar S.Ramachandran and community historian Ganesa Nadar explains:

Vaikundar advocated strong vegetarianism, insisted on cow protection and condemned proselytizing by Protestant evangelists, Catholic Church and Islamists.

He predicted more than 150 years ago that the exclusive drive for global domination between Islam and Christianity would result in their mutual destruction.

He also stated that India as a whole would become independent and flower into a 'Dharma Yuga' and the flag he gave was the saffron flag with a white Vaishnavaite mark in the middle.

The missionaries who were having a field day amidst the Nadars of South Travancore were stopped in their tracks by this movement.

Iyya Vaikundar was arrested by the Travancore prince and the seer was subjected to torture.

In the present narrative, the arrest was made because so-called caste Hindus instigated the monarchy or the king himself got afraid.

A good example of this narrative fixing is the academic work done by Dr. G. Patrick of the Department of Christian Studies, Madras University. He states:

Strategically Dr. Patrick adds the following in the footnote:

The above attempt appears to be an exercise in academic sleight of hand.

Actually, the then missionary reports quite clearly stated that the reason and the pressure for the arrest came from East India Company administrators.

The notorious evangelist, Robert Caldwell, wrote in his 1844 report of 'a worker of lying wonders' who was 'a Shanar of the name of Mootoocootty'.

He calls the spiritual path as 'a distorted heathenish imitation of Christianity'. Here we see the evangelical imperialistic impulse to dismember every Hindu social and spiritual movement from the Sanatana spiritual stream.

He shows the natural Christian contemptousness. Their prayer to him sounds as 'screaming and dancing.' He identifies Iyya Vaikundar and his followers, as 'the most active and eager opponents.'

Then, Caldwell goes on to claim of Iyya Vaikundar thus:

One should note here that Iyya Vaikundar had asked his followers to work for the overthrow of the British.

Further, it is quite fascinating to see that through the Dharmic discourse, couched in Puranic language, Iyya Vaikundar had correctly identified the root cause of then socio-economic malaise as the heavy taxation imposed by the British East India Company through the Travancore State.

It is a understanding far more correct and more holistic than the most of the university-educated British Indologists then and the JNU educated leftists now.

He was, perhaps, preparing for a civil disobedience movement. Caldwell also had made it clear that it was the anti-British stand of Vaikundar which invited action against him.

Yet another report too states:

The above mission reporter was indulging in wishful thinking when he wrote that the movement ‘gradually died away.’

After Iyya Vaikundar left his physical form for Vaikunda, the movement continues to be reported by the Missionaries as a great impediment to their proselytizing activities.

Not just men, but women and also widows had become epicenters of Iyyavazhi. A missionary report dated 1858 records:

Every feature, structural, ritualistic and spiritual, has been, since 1850s to this day, well rooted in Hindu spiritual tradition. Let us consider some of the prominent features:

The different Vahanas or mounts for ceremonial royal procession of Deity (here aniconic Vaikundar) during festivals shows how deeply Hindu the Iyyavazhi movement is.

For daily ritual rounds that the Deity (Vaikundar) takes, a Vahana is decked with saffron flags. Then during festival, Vaikundar comes in different Vahanas. One of them is modelled after a temple Gopuram.

Then there are also Hanuman and Garuda vahanas — in tune with the Vaishnava tradition. Then there is also a Hamsa-vahana.

With all these elements, Iyyavazhi combines all the forms of Hindu Dharma then known.

While colonialism and its integral component — evangelism — essentialised Sanatana Dharma by the characteristics of social stagnation then prevalent in the South Travancore State, Iyyavazhi demonstrated the dynamic nature of Dharma by creating a Puranic framework for understanding society, its dynamics and colonialism as well as evangelism.

Though Vaikundar was well aware of Christian and Islamic prophetic traditions, he chose the Dharmic tradition of Avatar and Yugas as categories to understand the societal problems and emancipate the people.

For the missionaries, they have to explain how the supposedly superior Christianity, with the support of the entire Empire, was stopped in its tracks by what they considered as a small pagan cult.

As we have seen, the tone was set by none other than Robert Caldwell, the Godfather of Dravidianist racism.

Seven years after his Vaikunda-departure In 1864, another mission report spoke of Iyyavazhi as 'a modern sect greatly on the increase.'

In the 'Report of the Kottaram Mission District for the year 1871', one finds mission evangelist, one Mr. Nathaniel, lament the continued increase of Iyyavazhi in several places around the mission.

Santhapuram missionary district mission report of the year 1864 states this:

They started setting the narrative that Iyyavazhi was radically different from Hindu Dharma.

Samuel Mateer, a fanatical missionary writing in 1871 spoke of Iyyavazhi as 'a curious phenomenon in the religious history of Travancore' and as an absurd medley of Hinduism and Demonolatry, with a slight tinge of Christian element.'

Labelling it a 'superstition', he called Iyya 'a poor Palmyra climber who laid claim to be an incarnation of Vishnu'.

Then, he acknowledged that 'this singular people display considerable zeal in the defence and propagation of' their religion which he again characterised as 'destructive errors.' (Samuel Mateer, '”The Land of Charity:" A Descriptive Account of Travancore and Its People, with Especial Reference to Missionary Labour', Snow & Co., 1871, pp.222-3)

By 1874 they — the missionaries — even gave the Sampradaya a new name:

Thus they tried to show the movement as a distortion of Christianity to hide their own defeat.

Right from the colonial proselytizers to present day mentally colonized Nehruvian-Marxist historians, the Iyyavazhi movement is problematic for their extremely distorted even diseased narrative of Hindu social history.

The colonial-evangelical narrative is that the people of so-called low castes were exploited by the rulers and priests through caste system for millennia and the missionaries came as their liberators.

This is the dominant narrative even today. The recent controversy over Nadar community in the CBSE syllabus springs from this blinkered view of history.

For the leftist-Nehruvian-Dravidianist historians, politicians, Hinduism should be shown only as incapable of reformation and as fundamentally flawed.

But here is a phenomenon that is more rooted and more holistic than any framework for history any Nehruvian or Marxist had come up with, not to mention the abjectly pro-colonial pseudo-rationalism of the Dravidianists.

So they too try to either completely erase the movement from the history or distort it as a new religion unrelated to Hindu Dharma, but influenced by Christianity.

So, those lines in the museum exhibit contain within it this century and a half old bias against Hindu Dharma and radiates the divide-and-convert policy of proselytizers.

How easily these falsehoods are inserted into our mass psyche even in the face of bright light of truth is indeed a worrisome phenomenon!

Sources:

• The socio-economic data in the article comes from the book by Sri Ganesan Nadar & Sri S.Ramachandran: ‘Shoulder Cloth Rebellion: Unknown facts and known lies’, (SISHRI, 2011,Tamil).
• Photos of various Vahanams of Vaikundar from: ‘Iyyavin Vahana Pavani’, (Tamizh) V. Radhakrishnan, Vijayaraj Publications, Kanyakumari
• Most of the mission reports taken from the PhD thesis of Dr. G. Patrick of the Department of Christian Studies, Madras University.]