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Gurus and Gifting: Dana, the math reform campaign, and competing visions of Hindu sangathan in twentieth-century India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

MALAVIKA KASTURI
MALAVIKA KASTURI*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Email: malavika.kasturi@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

From the early twentieth century, Hindu socio-religious and political bodies debated the use that maths (monastic establishments) made of their wealth, amassed in large part through dana (socio religious gifts). From the early nineteenth century, Anglo Hindu law on inheritance, and thereafter the Religious and Charitable Endowments Acts, had enabled the autonomy of maths by classifying them as private religious corporations, not charitable endowments. This article suggests that the math reform campaign between 1920 and 1940 in north India was impelled by the preoccupations of heterogeneous Hindu political and socio-religious organizations with dana and its potential to fund cultural and political projects regenerating an imagined Hindu socio-religious community. Specifically, the Hindu Mahasabha yoked dana to its Hindu sangathan (unity) campaign to strategically craft an integrated ‘Hindu public’ transcending sampraday (religious traditions) to protect its interests from ‘external enemies’. My discussion probes how the Hindu Mahasabha and its ‘reformist’ allies urged the conversion of maths into public charitable trusts, or endowments accountable to an ephemeral ‘Hindu public’ and the regulation of their expenditure. Monastic orders, guru-based associations like the Bharat Dharma Mahamandala, and the majority of orthodox Hindus successfully opposed this campaign, defending the interests of maths and sampraday before and after independence. In so doing, they challenged Hindu sangathan by articulating alternative visions of the socio-religious publics and communities to be revitalized through philanthropy. Through this discussion, the article charts the uneasy relationship between monasticism and an emerging Hindu nationalist cultural and political consciousness that remained fractured and internally contested.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Special Issue 1: Charity and Philanthropy in South Asia , January 2018 , pp. 99 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Sumathi Ramaswamy, Filippo Osella, and the anonymous referees of Modern Asian Studies for their invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi funded the research conducted for this article.

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31 Ibid.

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36 United Provinces Government Gazette, 13 January 1934 (Allahabad: United Provinces Government Press, 1934), p. 70.

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58 Ibid.

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97 RECR, p. 1.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid., p. 50.

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102 RECR, p. 6.

103 Notes for Drawing up Objections to the Bihar Religious Endowments Bill (1938) in the Form of a Memorial of Mahant Harihar Giri, Mahant of Buddha Gaya, to His Excellency the Governor of the Province of Bihar, undated, SF 12, M. S. Aney Papers, NMML.

104 Petition to Viceroy of India, (Lord Chelmsford) from Krishna Gopal Das, Udasi Samaj, Bara Panchaiti, 25 February 1920, HD, Judicial-B, April 1920, No 319, NAI.

105 PAI/2/2/1925; PAI/25/8/1928.

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107 RECR, p. 123.

108 Ibid., pp. 91, 102, 208.

109 Ibid., p. 123.

110 Ibid., pp. 110A–114A.

111 Swami Dayananda, BDMM, to Harihar Swaroop Sharma, 17 December 1929, SF 5A, HHSSP, NMML.

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115 Kasturi, ‘Producing Hindu Publics’, chapter on Swami Karpatri and the Dharm Sangh.

119 Petition of Shri Dharm Sangh Shikshamandal, to Local Government, 15 May 1950, in Mahal Bhadauni Case 39 of 1955, Banaras Collectorate Civil Cases Record Room.

116 Memorandum of Association of Shri Bharat Dharm Sangh Shikshamandal, enclosed in the Petition of Ramnarain Tripathi, Chottelal Kanoria et al, Members of Dharm Sangh, undated, in ibid.

117 D. Gold, ‘Continuities as Gurus Change’, in The Guru in South Asia, pp. 240–52; J. Nair, ‘A Matha Court in Karnataka and the Demand for Legality’, New Delhi: NMML Occasional Paper, History and Society, New Series, 75, 2014. On the Vishva Hindu Parishad see Katju, M., The Vishva Hindu Parishad and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

118 Brijlal Tripathy, Principal, Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya, Dakshinamurti math, Banaras, interviewed on 28 February 2015.

119 Swami Ranchor Ashram, Mahant, Machlibandar math, Banaras, Kotwal Kashi interviewed on 28 February 2015.

120 Yogi Chetainath. Mahamantri, Akhil Bharatavarshiya Avadhuta Bhesh Barah Panth Yogi Mahasabha, Haridwar, interviewed on 6 January 2015. Also see www.guruvilasnathji.com/about-us/ (accessed on 13 February 2018).

121 For information on these institutions I am indebted to Narendra Giri, Mahant, Baghambari math, Allahabad, interviewed on 23 March 2015 and Viswanathanand Puri, Librarian, Dakshinamurti math, Banaras, interviewed on 28 February 2015.

122 Interview with Pratab Rao, Principal, Maharana Pratab Mahavidyalaya, Jungle Ghusad, Gorakhpur, 2 April 2015. For the math's charitable institutions see http://www.gorakhnathmandir.in/chitksha.html, [accessed on 28 December 2016]. On the Gorakhnath math, see S. Chaturvedi, ‘Religion, Culture and Power: A Study of Everyday Politics in Gorakhpur’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, Centre For Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University 2016); M. Kasturi, ‘Negotiating the Sacred in Twentieth Century Gorakhpur, the Nath Yogis, the Gorakhnath Math and Contested Urban Space', in Urban Spaces in India, ed. P. Datta and N. Gupta (New Delhi: Secretary of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, in press), pp. 189–206; Kasturi, ‘Producing Hindu Publics’, chapter on Baba Digvijaynath and the Gorakhnath math.