12 - Temples and conflict: the changing context of worship

Summary

Mine honour is my life, both grow in one;

Take honour from me, and my life is done;

Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;

In that I live, and for that will I die.

Shakespeare, Richard II, I.i

The centrality of temples in Pudukkottai's history is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the conflicts that developed over issues related to temples. These issues involved rights and privileges concerning worship, honors, festivals, temple management, and service in temples. In this chapter I will give examples of some of these disputes, demonstrating the kinds of structural cleavages and ideological issues that were crystallized and activated by dispute and conflict in and over temples. In examining these cases, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the petitions, counter-petitions, evaluations, and judgements were generated in a particular bureaucratic context, far different from previous contexts in which these disputes, themselves vital components of the old regime political system, were resolved directly by the Raja, the Cervaikarar, the nattampalam, or the ampalam, depending on the level and nature of conflict.

We have seen that disputes of this type were omnipresent and often crucial in the old regime. For example, the great war between the Konatu and Kanatu Vellalars began largely as a dispute over temple honors.