12 - Conclusion

Summary

What are the conclusions to be drawn from this study of south Indian religion, of ‘convert’ groups and their relationships with the wider society? First, religion cannot be studied in isolation if we are to achieve any useful understanding of south Asian society and its changing cultural traditions. Throughout India the domains of religion and politics have been intextricably intertwined. Royal subjects have readily re-identified themselves as disciples and worshippers of the warrior and king turned saint, tutelary or power divinity. For all subjects and worshippers, royal power and the forces of the supernatural formed part of the same continuum of accessible but awesome power and energy. It follows then that south India's political history, that is both the development of indigenous states and kingdoms and the expansion of European colonial power, can be properly explored only by relating the development of shrines, divinities and cult traditions to the story of new regimes and ruling lineages.

It was seen here that the region's most successful regimes, those which achieved some measure of legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of their subjects, were those which used techniques of conspicuous piety and patronage to map their new domains onto an expanding sacred landscape of shrines, pilgrimage places and other repositories of sacred power and energy. Such strategies were pursued by would-be rulers such as the Tamil and Telugu poligars, the Malayali rajas of Travancore, the ‘rebel commandant’ Yusuf Khan and the professedly ‘Islamic’ nawabs of Arcot.