A Buddhist Ayodhya? The curious case of TN's Thalaivetti Muniyappan and secular discourse

(Swarajya, 15 August 2022) https://www.wayofbodhi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Thalaivetti_Muniappan_Buddha_Salem.jpg (from Wikimedia) During the Ayodhya controversy, the Eminent Historians and their supporters tried everything to counter the ever-mounting pile of evidence that there had been a Rama temple at the site. One stratagem was to claim the site had been (apart from vacant land, a secular building, a Shiva temple or whatever) a Buddhist place of worship. Actually, before the Islamic destruction, there had been quite a few Jaina and Buddhist places in Ayodhya, they were well-known, but the contentious site was not among them. Meanwhile, the archaeological excavations have confirmed that this was not a Buddhist site. But one failure is no reason for giving up. Indeed, now that the denial of Islamic temple destruction has lost all credibility, the attraction of turning Buddhism into a weapon for use in the secularist Jihad against Hinduism has only increased. Out of the blue, a press report appeared about a temple controversy most of us had never heard about, in the far-away Periyeri Village in the district of Salem, Tamil Nadu. The Madras High Court has decreed that the worshippers of Thalaivetti Muniyappan are to be deprived of their temple because the central Murti has been certified to have been a Buddha statue. So we learn in “Idol in Salem temple is of the Buddha, not Hindu deity: Madras High Court” (Prime Times, 2 August 2022); then confirmed in “Madras HC directs restoring temple in Salem to its original Buddhist character – Has an important precedent just been set?” (swarajmag.com, 3 August 2022); and “Tamil Nadu's Thalaivetti Muniyappan Temple is Buddhist site, says Madras HC; halts further pooja” (First Post, 5 August 2022). So, no puja for the deity will henceforth be allowed. On Court order, the temple is secularized and entrusted to the Archaeological Survey of India, in expectation of a planned transfer to a local Buddhist society, presumably the Buddha Trust. The verdict is the result of a case filed in 2011 by a local Buddhist, P. Ranganathan, now deceased. The Court had the state’s Archaeological Department take a close look at the Murti, and it found, after cleaning away the sandal paste and turmeric, that it had the so-called Mahālakṣaṇas, the marks distinguishing a Buddha from ordinary mortals, such as elongated earlobes. It was seated on a lotus in ardhapadmāsana (half lotus pose) with its hands in dhyana-mudrā (meditation hand-pose). The High Court concluded that “the assumption of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Department that it is a temple is no longer sustainable and the control must go into the hands of some other authority. (…) it will not be appropriate to permit the HR & CE Department to continue to treat this sculpture as Thalaivetti Muniappan. (…) treating the sculpture as that of Thalaivetti Muniappan would be against Buddhist doctrines.” Now, what to make of this? If you were to close a Shiva temple, you could cynically say to the deprived worshippers: “Go to another Shiva temple, there’s enough of them.” But Thalaivetti Muniyappan is a purely local deity. Closing his temple means depriving his worshippers of their focus of worship. Our knowledge of the law is a little vague, but is this even allowed to a Court of Law in a secular state? No question mark is needed when we look into this verdict in the light of the Places of Worship Act 1991, freezing the character of all places of worship as on 15 August 1947. The verdict flies in the face of this Act, it is blatantly illegal. And it opens the door to similar shifts: all the mosques that proudly show off their history of temple destruction by containing a part of the temple in their architecture (such as the already contentious Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi), could readily be forced to re-become Hindu, overnight. Back to this particular case. What exactly is the relation between Thalaivetti Muniyappan and the Buddha? We find more details in a Buddhist article about recovered Buddha statues in South India: “Ancient Buddha Statues of Salem and Dharmapuri” by Yogi Prabodha Jñana and Yogini Abhaya Devi (21 October 2020, published on the wayofbodhi.org website). It explains: “About a hundred years ago, someone found this broken Buddha statue with its body and head separated. The statue also had its nose broken. Someone affixed the head to the body but not in a proper way. The affixed figure looked odd, with its head slanting to the left. The nose that was added to the statue didn’t come out well. The outcome looked a little wrathful, unlike the usual Buddha statues. The eyes were also later painted in a wrathful way. So people consider it as some fierce local god and worship him that way with animal sacrifice. Thalaivetti means with a cut head.” And Muniyappan is a Tamil way of saying: Muni Baba. This is not some mischievous Brahminical cover-up from Ambedkarite mythology, but a very open reference to a well-known Muni: Siddhartha Gautama, the Shakya-muni (“hermit of the Shakya nation”), after his Awakening also called the Buddha (“awakened one”). So this deity is “the Muni with a cut head”. After his material recomposition, he looked wrathful, different from the standard Buddha, so he got a somewhat distinct persona. That’s how it goes in polytheist cultures, like that of these Tamil villagers. This is something the secularists in the media, the Courts and the Dravidianist parties won’t understand. Illiterate in religious matters, through their English-language textbooks they borrow some basic concepts from the Christian worldview. There, the word “religion” means a box-type division of the ideological landscape, excluding any other. Thus, when the Heathen Frankish king Clovis converted to Christianity in 496, his baptism father commanded him: “Now burn what you worshipped.” No compromise or half-way stance is possible, you have to burn all bridges with your former religion. This view was unknown to, of all people, the Buddha, who recommended the continuation of the existing sacred sites, festivals and pilgrimages, and who integrated the Vedic gods and Rishis in his discourse. (The very first “conversion” to Buddhism, and where the converts were to “burn what they worshipped”, was BR Ambedkar’s in 1956; though most of his followers continued to have a variety of Hindu gods on their house-altar.) But it was this view of religion that informed the unforgiving Christian and Muslim policy of iconoclasm: annihilate all reminders of Paganism. Thus, the Islamic destruction of Buddhist monuments from Bamiyan to Nalanda originated in the conviction that the true religion could not tolerate any expression of a rival religion. That attitude, well-attested in Muslim history vis-à-vis Hinduism (including Buddhism), is then projected by the secularists onto Hinduism, or more precisely “Brahmanism”, vis-à-vis Buddhism. After all, “all religions are basically the same”, as even many unthinking Hindus will parrot after them. Well, no, that breezy equation does not stand up to scrutiny. Thus, when the Muslim armies appeared in Nalanda Buddhist University, it was all over in no time; this after 17 centuries when the Buddhist institutions had flourish unperturbed under Hindu rule for 17 centuries. Is that no difference? Let’s listen to another passage in this Buddhist article: In the nearby town of Thiyaganur, the villagers worship a “majestic Buddha statue of 6ft height recovered from a field. We found it placed inside a beautiful meditation hall made by the collective effort of the villagers. A farmer donated the land, and the villagers pooled in money to build the meditation hall in 2013. They also constructed a lotus seat inside and installed the Buddha on that. Here, the Buddha is regarded according to his teachings and not as a God. This new home for the ancient statue exemplifies how to preserve ancient statues most beneficially.” Look, that is how Hindus treat icons: they don’t break them, they worship them. They don’t even ask questions about its identity, and the difference between the formal name “Buddha” and the descriptive name “Thalaivetti Muniyappan” is inconsequential to them. It is nonetheless on this flimsy difference that the whole verdict depends. It is now secularist discourse (and the Court verdict is entirely part of it) to claim that the Islamic treatment of other people’s gods merely follows an existing Hindu practice, equally intolerant. If so, then it shouldn’t be difficult to find numerous cases of Muslims installing statues of Shiva, Krishna or indeed the Buddha for worship. Any takers?
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Iconoclasm in Kerala too

 

Iconoclasm in Kerala too

 

(MyIndMyGlory, 25 Aug. 2020)

 

In 1990, the late Sita Ram Goel, historian-publisher from Delhi, in his book Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them, compiled a list of some 1862 temple sites where the temple had been destroyed by Islamic iconoclasm, often to be replaced with a mosque. Those are 1862 falsifiable claims, as a scientific hypothesis requires, and none of them has been refuted in the intervening 30 years.

 

The list was by no means exhaustive. Likewise, historian Meenakshi Jain's 2019 book Flight of Deities, listing murtis being spirited away by worshippers in the nick of time to protect them from approaching armies of iconoclasts, is very far from complete. Books as hefty as hers on India as a whole wait to be written on each of India's provinces. Now, a start has been made listing and discussing demolished temples in Kerala. 

 

In Goel's list, Kerala was really underserved, with only a mosque in Kollam and a Palghat fort of Tipu Sultan mentioned in which temple materials were used. (Hindu Temples vol.1, p.133). Kerala was not the hotbed on Hindu-Muslim conflict, rather well-off compared to North India, that bore the brunt of the repeated waves of Muslim conquests and iconoclasm. The periods of temple destruction there are mainly the occupation by Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan (late 18th century) and the Moplah Rebellion (1921). 

 

 

Finally

 

Now, the 157-page book Destroyed Temples of Kerala, vol.1 (so, more volumes are coming), by Tirur Dinesh, speaks of "thousands" of "destroyed Hindu temples" (back cover) in the far southwestern part of India alone. He zooms in on one case each in 25 chapters, where a "case" or "incident" of iconoclasm usually means more than one temple, or a major temple with a number of dependent smaller temples. (Even in Richard Eaton's list of "80" cases of iconoclasm, nowadays cited for authority by the secularists as "the number of destroyed temples", the ca. 1000 temples destroyed in Varanasi by the Ghurid army count as a single "case".) Nor does a single demolished temple mean that it was demolished only once.

 

Thus, "Chokkoor Sreerama Kshethra was demolished during the time of Tipu's invasion and again during the Moplah riots (...).Tipu's army entered through the Thamarassery mountain pass, killed as many Hindus as they could, terming them as Kafirs, destroyed the temples all the way and spared only those Hindus who were willing to accept Islam. They demolished nearby temples like Kulikkapra Siva Temple, Kuzhikalaattu Siva Temple, Pongattur Subrahmanya Temple near to Manipuram, etc., and reached Chokkoor Srirama Temple." (p.59-60) The several demolitions of all these temples altogether form one case, here one chapter.

 

            Dinesh has personally visited all the sites and provides original photographs. Every site has a different story, which he relates in detail, often after painstaking original research. The mythical origin of the temple is also exploredUnlike Goel's bald enumeration followed only by the general ideological context, this list provides ample local context.

 

In some cases, the temple demolition does not date back to historical episodes like the Moplah Rebellion, but took place within living memory, with eye-witnesses still around to be interviewed. The Iringavoor Siva Temple was the victim of a bomb attack on 31 July 1985. The perpetrators were local Muslims descended from Hindus forcibly converted by Tipu Sultan. The Islamic ideology that motivates iconoclasm, that motivated Hyder and Tipu and the Moplahs to it, is still alive and unchanged. But the good part of this story is that this temple is presently being revived. (p.43 ff.)

 

Where the demolished temples were not replaced with mosques, which are immunized and perpetuated by the Places of Worship Act 1991, the ruins often become the germ of a new temple. Thus, the Malaparambu Maattummal Narasimhamoorthy Temple had already gone through convoluted proceedings (including the return to Hinduism of some Muslims and the menacing resentment of the local Muslims for that) to set up a trust, revive the temple and renovate it, when “in 2005 the temple was released to the trust. Following this they started the renovation process and found the Narasimha’s idol as 6 pieces. (…) The fund to build [the Sanctum] Sanctorum was raised from the native Hindus.” (p.110)

 

Other devotees are now preparing for a revival of the Paruthikkottamanna Mahadeva Temple, after excavating it from the forest that had covered it over in the past two centuries in 2013: “The believers hope that they will overcome hurdles, and well-wishers will financially back them up for the renovation.” (p.138) In some cases, the author himself partakes in these revival efforts. At any rate, this way he manages to end sordid stories of temple destruction on a constructive note.

 

 

Why iconoclasm?

 

Why did these things happen, and sometimes not happen? To start with the former: Islam teaches and commands iconoclasm, with Mohammed himself having set the example, most emblematically with the destruction of the 360 idols in the Kaaba. That was the general rule to which Hyder, Tipu and the Moplah Khilafatists adhered. 

 

But the latter case, non-iconoclasm, has its part of the truth as well. There is a secularist argument that Tipu Sultan actually patronized Hindu temples. The argument suffers from the usual secularist flaw of wilfully confusing an exception with the rule, but yes, next to numerous temple destructions, there are a few such cases. The reason was that "Tipu blindly believed in astrology. (...) Astrologers attributed the continuous defeats met by Tipu to the demolition of temples and suggested the renovation of temples as the only remedial measure. His donations to the temples were a result of this advice." (p.8) 

 

So, the cases where he patronized idol temples do not prove that next to a fanatical iconoclastic Islam there is also a pluralistic Islam (even wrongly extolled as “the real Islam”), as secularists would like you to believe. They only prove that next to Islam, Tipu also held another belief, viz. in astrology. When his belief in astrology, rendered acute by setbacks on the battlefield, did not intervene and Islam had free reign, he was an unmitigated fanatic eager to convert Hindus forcibly and destroy their temples. His letters down to the inscription on his sword testify to this Islamic zeal. As do the mute witnesses: the ruins of Hindu temples and the mosques he built with their debris.

 

 

Points for improvement

 

A few times the wording in this book is not precise enough, either because the author is a bit careless in doing justice to the evidence available, or because the evidence is still really deficient. Thus, the Chamravattom Kannanoor Pisharath temple "was last demolished at the time of the Moplah riots" (p.39), factual enough, but many temples were demolished several times in India's long history. So earlier, it was "believed to be destroyed at the time of Tipu's invasion" (p.38, emphasis added). In a scholarly book of facts, the word "belief" detracts from the power of persuasion; it should be avoided. To be sure, it may reflect a real state of affairs, where a scenario is probable but not altogether certain, there really exist several more options between totally yes and totally no. Still, in the present war with the anti-Hindu forces, anything less than full certainty, even including an honest admission of mere probability, will be exploited by your enemies.

 

And while we are formulating a bit of criticism, a trivial but non-negligeable point is the language of this book. Proofreading by a native speaker or at least someone fluent in English and in the standard transcription of both Sanskrit and Malayalam would not have been a luxury. For a temple mentioned above, we note the variant spellings Srirama and Sreerama, neither of them standard. The definite article "the", non-existent in the Indian (and the immense majority of the world's) languages, is one of the grammatical difficulties in English. In most Semitic, by extension Greek, Germanic and Celtic, and by further extension the Romance languages, it also exists but its use is more predictable; in English it is quite irregular and idiomatic. It makes little difference for a correct comprehension, but not mastering it just looks bad, e.g. here: "The most sacred place of South India, Brahma temple among these, was demolished by Mysore army" (i.e. by Hyder Ali; p.94). It shouldn't have been too much trouble to change this to "the Brahma temple" and "the Mysore army". For most readers, stunted language indicates stunted thinking, and thus detracts from the author's credibility.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The list of what was actually done to the Hindus is getting longer, and more volumes inventorizing this chapter of Indian history are sure to follow. Every part of India could produce such a volume. We must be grateful to Tirur Dinesh for breaking the ice in localizing and deepening the line of research pioneered by SR Goel.

 

 

Tirur Dinesh: Destroyed Temples of Kerala, vol.1, Trasadasyu Publ., Trivandrum 2020, 157 pp., ISBN 978-81-939299-2-6, Rs.350.

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