Introduction
This article analyses early twentieth-century debates on philanthropy between various Hindu associations and political formations in north India that sought to regulate and redirect the wealth of Vaishnava, Shakta, and Shaiva maths (monastic establishments) in order to establish an ephemeral socio-religious and political imaginary called the ‘Hindu public’. Maths in the United Provinces belonged to different sampraday, or religious traditions of teaching and transmission from monastic teachers (gurus and sanyasis) to disciples. By 1920, these institutions were targeted by Hindu political organizations espousing a Hindu ‘nationalist’ political consciousness, led by the Hindu Mahasabha (hereafter Mahasabha), and influential socio-religious associations with political visions, notably the Arya Samaj and ‘moderate’ orthodox Hindus (Sanatanis) who claimed they were custodians of ‘traditional’ religion. In this period, members of monastic orders were already in the eye of the storm. They were perceived as having ‘fallen’ from grace for abandoning the spiritual, ethical, and moral discipline of asceticism, and they were held responsible for the decline of religion. As part of this critique, gurus and sanyasis were castigated for ‘misusing’ gifts given to them by donors as dana (socio-religious gifts given for the sake of spiritual benefit). The Mahasabha and its ‘reformist’ allies also criticized monastic orders for refusing to participate in philanthropic projects enabling its sangathan (unity) campaign to create an ‘integrated’ and militant Hindu political community to protect its interests from ‘external’ threats, notably Muslims.
My narrative focuses on how gurus, their sectarian associations, and an important strand of middle class orthodox Hindus opposed math reform and criticisms of monasticism. Especially significant is the role of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandala (hereafter Mahamandala) of Banaras, an orthodox Hindu association led by ascetics. Between 1924 and 1931, the Mahamandala and its monastic supporters successfully blocked efforts by the United Provinces Religious and Charitable Endowments Committee to transform the legal status of maths in the United Provinces from that of private, autonomous religious corporations into public charitable endowments accountable to an amorphous ‘Hindu public’, by substantially reworking the United Provinces Religious and Charitable Endowments Acts. Through their objections to math reform, the Mahamandala and its allies interrogated the Mahasabha's enunciation of Hindu sangathan. Significantly, such engagements with dana and Hindu sangathan occurred alongside parallel projects undertaken by many gurus to reinvigorate religion, monastic orders, and alternative socio-religious publics through philanthropy. These projects included the Mahamandala's effort to foster an orthodox ‘Hindu nation’ led by Brahmins and monastic orders, the activities of guru-based associations to unify, reform, and revitalize different sampraday, and the modest charities of smaller maths. The goals, membership, and ambitions of these philanthropic schemes varied. Against this backdrop, debates on the use and abuse of dana by maths before and after 1947 indicate that the definition and boundaries of the ‘Hindu public’ to be regenerated through math wealth remained plural and contested. Broadly, my examination of the campaign for math reform and its aftermath points to the uneasy relationship between monasticism and a fractured Hindu political consciousness from the early twentieth century.
Before British rule, Shaiva (Dasnami and Nathyogi), Vaishnava, and Shakta maths in north India played an important role in institutionalizing various sampraday.Footnote 1 Maths encompassing single temples had heads called mahants (heads of monastic institutions) who ordained chelas (disciples) through diksha (initiation). They also included larger institutions called asthans or gaddis (thrones/seats) connected to wide-reaching devotional, economic, and political networks. Maths were conspicuous in major pilgrimage centres such as Ayodhya, Banaras, Allahabad, and Mathura, and in smaller towns. Monastic teachers and members of monastic orders, variously called gurus, gosains, sadhus, sanyasis, and pirs, and their maths, were recipients of dana, of which ‘religious gifts’ (ishta) comprised a small part. Dana was a complex set of exchanges and strategies of giving inflected with plural ritual, political, and cultural meanings.Footnote 2 Further, dana belonged to a larger corpus of individual and institutionalized exchanges, which together formed a ‘gift economy’ that was organically linked to markets and state-formation.Footnote 3 By the eighteenth century it was usual for devotees to give personalized gifts as bhent (offerings) or guru dakshina (gift to the guru) to charismatic leaders attached to maths and temples. Gurus in many traditions were regarded as siddhas (semi-divine beings) with extraordinary powers and religious knowledge.Footnote 4 Additionally, princely polities and elites granted revenue-free lands to ascetic orders, mosques, and the tombs of Sufi pirs (saints) as expressions of power and a mode of statecraft.Footnote 5 Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries prominent gurus were enriched by patrons in recognition of their role as rajgurus (preceptors of princes) and commanders of military akharas (armed regiments of ascetic orders). As maths were multi-faceted religious, political, military, and economic institutions, the gifts they received had unpredictable material and social lives.Footnote 6
Under British rule, maths and akharas reconfigured their position as significant socio-religious centres, landholders, financial institutions, and political stakeholders embedded in local and trans-local networks. The East India Company sedentarized monastic orders, disbanded akhara armies, and resumed properties. Despite these dislocations, monastic institutions continued to benefit from the largesse of devotees, including princes, big landlords, the middle classes, and intermediate castes. For all patrons dana emerged as a significant political and cultural field replete with opportunities to refashion their cultural and political capital and identities, and to participate in civil society projects articulated through the language and idiom of religion. In the process, dana alternately contributed to their upward social mobility or compensated for their declining political power. Consequently, there was a rise in ‘sacred’ gifts to maths throughout the United Provinces.Footnote 7 As the Ramanandis emerged as the dominant Vaishnava order in north India by the eighteenth century, their maths and akharas benefited the most from their expanded devotional base to the detriment of other Vaishnava traditions. Although Shaiva and Shakta religious traditions were marginalized in north India, their institutions continued to benefit from dana.Footnote 8 Mahants from all sampraday amalgamated monies within their financial portfolios in ways that blurred boundaries between dana and wealth generated from other sources.
Monastic orders utilized the special legal status accorded to their religious institutions and their revenue-free ‘religious’ property by British court judgments, precedents in Anglo-Hindu law on inheritance and succession and the Endowments Acts (1863–1920) to enhance their position. In particular, members of monastic institutions took advantage of the contradictions embedded in colonial law dealing with religious endowments. As I outline below, despite the colonial state's perception of religious charities and institutions as unproductive and lacking in ‘public utility’, the Endowments Acts’ definition of maths and akharas as autonomous, private, religious ‘corporations’ subject to ‘peculiar usages’ reinforced their independence from colonial legal intervention aimed at regulating charities to ensure they were ‘useful’. Unlike other public ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ endowments and charities, therefore, monastic institutions were not transformed into self-regulating trusts governed by committees answerable to courts, and were rarely subject to the intense scrutiny of colonial law.Footnote 9 Not surprisingly, the United Provinces Religious and Charitable Endowments Committee, constituted between 1924 and 1931, sought to transform wealthy monastic institutions into ‘public’ charitable endowments accountable to colonial courts and trust committees.
Initiatives for math reform comprise a neglected aspect of the Mahasabha's aggressive sangathan campaign seeking to unite a ‘divided’ Hindu community against imaginary Muslim aggressors. Towards this end, the Mahasabha projected itself as a platform to bring discordant voices and oppositional socio-religious organizations together. Its conception of a ‘Hindu public’ included achuts (untouchables), ‘converts’, and ‘sects’ such as Sanatanists, the Arya Samaj, the Brahmo Samaj, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs. Supported by the Arya Samaj and a section of the Indian National Congress led by Madan Mohan Malaviya, the Mahasabha in the United Provinces aimed to weld its Hindu political community together through strategic campaigns like math reform to control monastic properties. Through public sphere debates on monasticism and philanthropy between 1920 and 1931, the Mahasabha presented sampraday as an obstacle to Hindu sangathan. It strategically foregrounded sangathan in preference to Hindutva, the influential concept coined by V. D. Savarkar in 1923 to define the overarching political, ideological, territorial, and cultural basis of ‘Hinduness’. Nor did the Mahasabha invoke the exclusionary idea of Hindu rashtra (nation), outlined by the ideologues of the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (hereafter RSS).Footnote 10 The RSS was a parallel and independent volunteer organization founded in 1925, which elaborated and developed Savarkar's vision. Instead, during the math reform campaign, the Mahasabha relied purposely on the more nebulous, pliable notion of sangathan to appeal to a broader audience comprising religious traditions, ‘sects’, and castes.Footnote 11
Between 1920 and 1931 a sizeable section of orthodox Hindus and guru-based associations questioned, contested, and reframed the Mahasabha's engagement with Hindu sangathan and its political community. ‘Moderate’ orthodox Hindus associated with Madan Mohan Malaviya, one of the founding members of the Mahasabha, endorsed sangathan. Other Sanatanis feared that the sangathan campaign's expansive understanding of a ‘Hindu public’ shorn of sampraday, and its broad definition of who was a Hindu, threatened the ‘orthodox way of life’. For monastic orders, in particular, the Mahasabha's conception of a ‘Hindu public’ threatened monasticism. Gurus and members of maths defended the autonomy of their institutions, foregrounded their efforts to reinvigorate and unify their sampraday, and questioned Hindu sangathan from a number of different platforms, including sectarian associations.
Important participants in these early twentieth-century debates included orthodox Hindu associations, which were socio-religious and political formations distinct from the Arya Samaj. However, common to both the Arya Samaj and ‘traditional’ orthodox Hindus was the belief in societal and religious regeneration through the revival of a mythic Hindu past. Both also represented Hinduism as rational, standardized, and homogenous, but with a difference. From the mid-nineteenth century, the Arya Samaj reviled the Brahmanical orthodox Hindus as obscurantists and ‘traditionalists’ intent on opposing its efforts to replace a corrupt belief system with a pristine Vedic dharm (religion).Footnote 12 Rejecting this charge, Sanatanis claimed they were the custodians of a spiritual philosophy and religion rooted in sanatana dharma (the eternal religion). For Sanatanis, key aspects of orthodox Hinduism included a commitment to gurus, varying engagements with bhakti (devotionalism) that was either saguna (the belief that that God had attributes) or nirguna (belief that God was formless), murti puja (worship of deities), rituals, and a Brahmanical interpretation of varnasramadharma (a social and moral order predicated on caste). Importantly, orthodox Hindu associations remained a disaggregated political and socio-religious formation suffused in pan-Vaishnava idioms and religiosity, with notable exceptions like the Mahamandala. Successful Sanatani periodicals like Kalyan published by the Gita Press of Gorakhpur represented sanatana dharma as a seamless discourse. But orthodox Hinduism was riven by internal tensions with respect to its relationship with gurus and sampraday, and by extension its core tenets and lived practices.Footnote 13
The Mahamandala was the outcome of the ambivalent if transformative engagement between monastic orders and ‘modern’ Hindu socio-religious and political bodies.Footnote 14 By the late nineteenth century, upper caste Vaishnava and some Shaiva gurus and gosains supported Din Dayal Sharma's Bharat Dharma Mahamandal (1887), the largest orthodox Hindu association in north India. Vaishnavism initially informed the Mahamandal's interpretation of sanatana dharma. Gurus perceived the Mahamandal as more accommodating to religious traditions than the Arya Samaj, which criticized all monastic orders as propagators of ‘idolatry’ and ‘superstition’.Footnote 15 While charismatic leaders were given space and voice within the Mahamandal, they did not set its agenda. Matters changed in 1901, when Swami Gyanananda, a Shakta guru, and his chelas (disciples) and devotees controversially ousted Din Dayal Sharma from the association. Gyanananda was supported in this enterprise by key Dasnami gurus and monastic orders. The new organization was renamed the Shri Bharat Dharma Mahamandala and relocated from Mathura to Banaras.Footnote 16 The Mahamandala's engagements with philanthropy occurred in a political field inhabited by new local and regional guru-based associations affiliated with different Shaiva and Vaishnava religious traditions and maths. With the help of generous gifts from devotees, these associations reconstituted their devotional publics through the circulation and reception of shared texts, beliefs, and tenets, and new forms of civic and political engagement.Footnote 17 I suggest below that gurus such as Swami Gyanananda remained robust religious, political, and cultural actors in public sphere activities in British India. Like other early twentieth-century charismatic leaders, Swami Gyanananda renegotiated his individual, religious, and political subjectivity in conversation with a wide range of interlocutors. He represented himself as a rational ‘modern’ guru in tune with the times, while simultaneously remaining an object of veneration, a siddha, and a manifestation of the divine.Footnote 18
Gurus and the Mahamandala objected to the indictment of monasticism in discussions of philanthropy castigating gift-giving to ‘fallen sanyasis’.Footnote 19 Such discussions occurred in a context in which donors made dharmic gifts to specified sets of beneficiaries to revitalize the moral fibre and sangathan of numerous jatis (communities), samajs (societies), and ‘publics’. Reformists compared ‘vagrant’ sadhus and ‘dissolute’ and rich mahants misusing dana unfavourably with the ‘selfless’ monks from the Ramakrishna Math. The latter were celebrated as social, spiritual, and political activists who repudiated sectarian affiliations and loyalties, focusing instead on sewa (service) to the general public through institutionalized forms of charity.Footnote 20 Other sanyasis were blamed for their selfishness, immorality, and weak religious fervour, and for ignoring dana's potential for crafting a unified Hindu political consciousness and community. Charismatic leaders and their devotees viewed these criticisms as attacks upon their sanctity, their sampraday, and their own engagements with philanthropy. During the polarizing math reform campaign, monastic orders and the Mahamandala opposed external efforts to regulate and redirect math and akhara monies, and to discipline the morals of mahants and gurus through populist campaigns and legal initiatives.
This article explicates its argument in three interconnected sections. First, it scrutinizes how mahants appropriated the language of colonial law to strengthen the autonomy of maths as discrete ‘private’ religious institutions, assert their individual rights to math wealth, and engage selectively with charity. Second, it analyses the role of dana in the enunciation of the Mahamandala's orthodox Hindu civil society vision driven by sampraday and sanatana dharma. Third, it probes how concerns with Hindu sangathan drove and limited the math reform campaign and shaped the way gurus and maths have engaged with philanthropy in more recent times. This article suggests that dana encompassed a range of shifting political, cultural, and ritual meanings. More broadly, its discussion of philanthropy foregrounds how monastic orders, the Mahamandala, and orthodox Hindus contested Hindu sangathan and a seemingly homogeneous Hindu political consciousness preoccupied with defining ‘Hinduness’ and the Hindu ‘political community’.
Mahants, math wealth, and colonial law
Although the East India Company resumed revenue-free lands gifted to maths in the United Provinces, monastic orders benefited from an expansion in patronage and devotionalism. Maths and akharas reconstituted their positions as religious and financial institutions in local and trans-local networks under colonialism. Mahants successfully utilized the position given to them first by East India Company revenue law, which treated maths and their monies as revenue-free charities established for pious purposes, and also by Anglo-Hindu law on inheritance, which recognized that monastic orders followed unique customs relating to the ownership and devolution of property. Importantly, in the United Provinces colonial court judgments and precedents on succession within monastic orders bolstered the exclusive power of mahants over math wealth, including their claims that such monies were personal property. Thereafter, the United Provinces Religious Endowments Acts (1863–1920) reiterated the autonomy of maths and akharas to manage and regulate their wealth. The Endowments Acts troublingly separated ‘secular’ charities directed towards public benefit from ‘religious’ endowments. Maths and akharas deployed to their advantage the distinction made by the Endowments Acts between ‘public’ religious endowments (‘owned’ by idols and a public constituted by worshippers) and private institutions like religious ‘corporations’ belonging to monastic orders like maths and akharas, subject to their own special customs, practices, and regulatory regimes. Mahants successfully navigated the Endowments Acts to their advantage to ensure that monastic institutions remained self-regulated bodies, largely bypassing the trust committees and judicial schemes of management bedevilling other religious endowments.
Maths were wealthy institutions. Nineteenth-century gift deeds drawn up by monastic orders indicate that their bhandaras (reserves, store, or fund of wealth) comprised jewellery, cash, gold plate, houses, land, and commercial properties and investments.Footnote 21 The Hanumangarhi math in Ayodhya, belonging to the Ramanandis, was enriched by offerings of pilgrims and gifts of revenue-free lands to mahants and bairagis. Footnote 22 Money given to gosains associated with Vaishnava, Shakta, and Shaiva maths was transformed into dhan (wealth) as it was invested in complex financial portfolios. For example, many Shaiva maths belonging to Dasnami sanyasis in the Banaras Division operated as kothis (banking houses) lending money to zamindars. Such maths bought, sold, and exchanged their shares in encumbered estates amongst themselves, and litigated in civil and revenue courts.Footnote 23 Maths were also part of robust trading networks in jewellery, spices, and drugs as far afield as Nepal.Footnote 24 Often, they were closely linked to prosperous parent akharas whose legal status under British rule was largely that of private registered associations.Footnote 25
Colonial courts placed great emphasis on mahants’ wills and ikrarnamas (deeds of gift) as testamentary documents that established the ‘peculiar’ usages of maths and akharas on succession and ownership of property. In maths attached to akharas, mahants had more limited powers. In 1899 colonial courts, ruling against the right of the Dasnami mahants of gaddi Baba Baghambari in Allahabad to execute ‘personal’ promissory notes to the parent akhara, relied upon an ikrarnama executed by one of its erstwhile mahants. In 1886, Mahant Bhola Gir had directed that after his death his four disciples would become co-managers of the Baghambari gaddi. He instructed that his khas chela (chief disciple) Nepal Gir would become the gaddinashin, or mahant. His remaining two chelas would be entered as managers of particular shares in math properties in the revenue papers. To obviate misunderstanding, he underscored that neither the mahant nor chelas could partition or transfer properties belonging to the gaddi, as they were not meant for ‘any person or any particular individual’.Footnote 26
By contrast, the wills of the mahants of the Dasnami math and kothi of Uttam Gir in Banaras demonstrate their gradual shift from ‘shared’ to individual strategies of ownership of math properties. In 1813, one Gangit Gir controversially invoked a document written by his guru, Chaitanya Gir, the owner and founder of this eighteenth century math and kothi. He claimed it designated him ‘the owner and in possession of the entire estate up to this time without the participation of anyone else’ after giving gifts to his guru bhais (brother disciples). Subsequently, in 1828 Gangit Gir divided his banking business between the two khas chelas of his two deceased disciples, one Gauri Gir, the manager of his commercial affairs and Pem Gir.Footnote 27 Gangit Gir chose Gauri Gir as his financial successor ‘in accordance with the practice prevailing in the brotherhood’. He recommended that when Pem Gir and his subordinate disciple Kashi Gir ‘separated’ from the ‘math sarkar’ they would each be given substantial financial compensation.Footnote 28 Both Pem Gir and Kashi Gir established their own kothis in Banaras. Pem Gir's will of 2 December 1839 again reiterated that his khas chela Uttam Gir was the absolute owner of his estate except the math. It ordered him to provide for his chelas and their disciples as long as they ‘lived in agreement’.Footnote 29
After Uttam Gir's death, in 1865, a succession dispute between his chela Ude Gir and ‘grand chela’ Sheodutt Gir ended after arbitration. As a solution, the two disciples decided to remain in ‘joint possession’ of the math and business. Unhappy with the idea of ‘joint possession’ Sheodutt Gir expanded the absolute control of mahants over math properties. In 1887, his will asserted he was the ‘exclusive owner’ of Uttam Gir's ancestral estate and his own properties. It also outlined the rules of succession in this math in accordance with the rules articulated by the founder of this guru-parampara order who
in the end determined that more than one disciple should not be initiated so that there may not arise no [sic] disputes on account of joint rights and cause ruin to property and wealth. Future gaddinashins should at least nominate two successive descendants, i.e., their disciple and another fit disciple as the disciple of their disciple to ensure succession. Succession in my line should always be governed by the rules noted below. If the disciple of the gaddinashin is unfit, the gaddinashin may disinherit him, and nominate his disciple's disciple as the successor to his gaddi and property . . . Be it also known that this system is not against the principals (sic) of our sect.Footnote 30
For all time to come, Sheodutt Gir gave future mahants absolute power over ‘property acquired as a result of their personal efforts or purchased and acquired from the profits of the ancestral property’.Footnote 31
In north India, such shifts in mahants’ wills coincided with the favourable slant of Anglo-Hindu law on property and inheritance towards mahants’ rights to math wealth and the special position given by the Endowments Acts to maths. When adjudicating suits dealing with succession in maths, colonial courts rarely classified such institutions as trusts and mahants as managers of endowments, invoking time and again the position of monastic establishments as religious corporations. Exceptional judgments included instances in which sardar (head) maths treated mahants of their subordinate maths as ‘managers’ answerable to the superior gaddi or if mahants were connected to temples.Footnote 32 By the early twentieth century, the exceptional power of mahants to choose their successors was also reiterated in revenue papers and wajib-ul-arzs (record of land rights and customs) detailing inheritance practices within maths.Footnote 33 Importantly, mahants also took advantage of colonial courts’ reluctance to recognize the centrality of sexuality in shaping asceticism. Anglo-Hindu law on devolution divided monastic orders into householder (grihastha) and celibate (nihang) orders. Often, members of celibate orders ‘married’ and their wives and children claimed math property. In such cases, mahants deliberately invoked Anglo-Hindu law to successfully delegitimize private and familial claims to property within maths. Footnote 34
Despite the multiple claims on math properties, many mahants established private waqfs (charities) to nurture sanyasis belonging to their sampraday and their devotees. Such math charities were driven by the desire to nurture monasticism and its devotional and patronage networks. The circle of beneficiaries in most cases was very specific and limited. For example, in a gift deed of 1887, Gosain Sheodutt Gir of Tulsipur math in Banaras outlined five charities established by his guru Uttam Gir. The first waqf comprised a gift of six houses in Banaras to Brahmins as charity and another house donated to students for a residence. In 1865, a second waqf granted a house in Banaras to sanyasis as a dharamshala (resthouse) and established chattras (almshouses) to feed ascetics. A third waqf was established to worship Mahadeo or Ridh Nath from the income derived from the Baba Ridh Nath dharamshala for travellers and devotees. The fourth and fifth waqfs also established dharamshalas in various towns in the Banaras division for devotees and sanyasis.Footnote 35
By the early twentieth century, maths’ charitable portfolios diversified somewhat. Often, the aims of some maths remained limited to feeding sanyasis and students studying the Vedanta and holding bhandaras (feasts) on specific days including the anniversaries of their founder-gurus.Footnote 36 Other maths and akharas began to broaden their philanthropic activities to foster their relationships with their members, devotees, and pilgrims. Many of them held bhandaras and annasastras (soup kitchens) at the Kumbh and Magh melas (fairs) for the ‘general public’, ascetics, and lay devotees.Footnote 37 Maths were institutional actors that were deeply embedded in local power regimes. To attract audiences outside their devotional base, more ambitious maths began to establish public trusts supporting vidyapithas (Sanskrit schools), universities, Ayurvedic dispensaries, and voluntary services.Footnote 38
Furthermore, gurus who founded associations collected funds to regenerate their own sampraday. The journals of different Vaishnava and Shaiva religious traditions give us a glimpse of a world in which gurus went on fundraising drives seeking monies from princely donors. They wished to disseminate their teachings and establish a spate of educational and charitable institutions for the lay and ascetic members of their sampraday. Thus, Gosain Madhavacharya who owned the Pushtimargi Gopal temple in Banaras took the financial help of his mercantile devotees throughout north India to establish a society called the Vaishnav Vaibhav. Through this association, Madhavacharya's acharya parampara reached out to the Vaishnav janta (Vaishnav public) to translate Pushtimargi texts for Brahmin boys aspiring to be acharyas and propagated the tenets of the tradition. Other regional bodies representing the interests of particular sampraday were also increasingly significant players. The Yogi Mahasabha (1924) established by the Nathyogis, to name one example, managed and controlled all the properties and charities associated with their sampraday.Footnote 39
Internal tensions within sampraday limited the scope of their charities. This is evident amongst the two strands of the Ramanandis. By 1918, larger associations like the All India Vaishnava Mahasabha representing the Brahmanical Ramanujis (or Sri- Vaishnavas) urged rich donors to give dharmic gifts to the organization so it could educate, organize, and strengthen the sampraday. Ramanuji gosains and acharyas went on fundraising tours in British India and the princely states for this purpose.Footnote 40 As long as the Ramanujis and Ramanandis were part of the same sampraday, Ramanuji maths, hostels, and soup kitchens frowned upon commensality between castes. Ramanujis also insisted on the pre-eminent position of Brahmin gosains within monastic hierarchies. In turn, the open-caste Ramanandi sadhus claimed that the Ramanuji Brahmin acharyas refused to dine and worship with them. By the 1930s, the escalating tensions between the Ramanandis and Ramanujis had ended in a formal sectarian split. By then, the Ramanandis had founded the All India Vaishnava Sammelan in Ayodhya to nurture the interests of their tradition's maths and akharas.Footnote 41
As the next section outlines, guru-based associations like the Mahamandala tried to move beyond a charitable template favouring particular sampraday to reach audiences comprising all orthodox Hindus. Its ascetic organizer, Swami Gyanananda emphasized the importance of dana in fostering an orthodox Hindu ‘nation’, led by Brahmins and monastic orders and accommodating sampraday. Concerned by the decline of asceticism, the Mahamandala underscored the importance of redirecting the energies of reformed sadhus to orthodox Hinduism. Its philanthropic activities were directed at propagating the ‘orthodox way of life’ for Sanatanis and preparing sadhus for their formidable task.
The Bharat Dharma Mahamandala, philanthropy, and the orthodox Hindu nation
Swami Gyanananda began his journey as Jogeshwar Mukherjee, the son of a wine merchant in Meerut.Footnote 42 After his father's death, he became the chela of Swami Keshavanand Bharti, a Shakta guru famed for his Tantric practices.Footnote 43 According to his authorized biography, published by the Mahamandala, after Swami Gyanananda became a siddha he relocated to Mathura. There he formed an organization called the Nigamagam Mandali.Footnote 44 In 1901, Swami Gyanananda controversially replaced Din Dayal Sharma as the General Secretary of the orthodox Hindu Bharat Dharma Mahamandal (1887). The Mahamandal was the largest and most influential nineteenth-century Sanatani association in north India, whose enunciation of sanatana dharma was articulated through a pan-Vaishnava idiom. Thereafter, Swami Gyanananda became the head of the newly resurgent Mahamandala, the head office of which was moved to Banaras. Swami Gyanananda and his chelas and devotees transformed the Mahamandala into an orthodox Hindu association led and dominated by Dasnami and Shakta ascetics. Amongst these, Brahmin sanyasis and gosains were the most prominent patrons of the association. Despite his own sectarian affiliations, Swami Gyanananda's writings sought with limited success to propagate an understanding of sanatana dharma, ‘integrating’ all philosophical approaches and all religious and social systems.Footnote 45 Initially, the Mahamandala had a tense relationship with north Indian Vaishnava and orthodox Hindu associations, which regarded Shaiva and Shakta traditions with derision and the Mahamandala as a ‘Shakta math’ intent upon marginalizing Vaishnava monastic orders.Footnote 46 However, as the math reform campaign escalated, the association won the support of monastic orders from various sampraday.
The Mahamandala clarified that it wished to rejuvenate the Hindu ‘social organism’ and ‘nation’ by rekindling its innate religious spirit.Footnote 47 The term ‘Hindu’ in Mahamandala publications referred to those who believed in a social order ruled by Brahmanical codes of varnasramadharma, presided over by Brahmins and ascetics.Footnote 48 The Mahamandala's ‘national corporate body’ included a plethora of religious associations representing different sections of Hindus such as dharma sabhas, Shiv sabhas, Hari sabhas, Varnasrama Raksha sabhas, caste associations, and panchayats (councils).Footnote 49 The Mahamandala invited all organizations to foster ‘national solidarity’ amongst Hindus by disseminating sanatana dharma according to Vaidik, Smarta, and Pauranic principles accommodating different sampraday.Footnote 50 The Mahamandala defined itself in opposition to another important strand of orthodox Hindu associations founded by Din Dayal Sharma and Malaviya after 1901. These associations propagated an interpretation of sanatana dharma transcending sampraday.Footnote 51 By the 1920s, the Mahamandala accused Malaviya and his allies of compromising orthodox Hinduism by espousing limited caste reform. After Malaviya embraced the Mahasabha's sangathan campaign, divisions sharpened between these two strands of orthodox Hinduism.
Swami Gyanananda's devotees comprised princes, zamindars, merchants and middle class professionals, and Brahmin Vaishnava, Shakta and Dasnami gosains were among his patrons and supporters. They supported the Mahamandala in its ventures and undergirded its articulation of elite norms of citizenship, sociality, and political order. Its rich patrons were clear about the societal dividends they wished to gain from participating in the Mahamandala. They wished to shape the fields of religion and politics as spaces of hegemony, power, and cultural capital.Footnote 52 In 1917, the loyalist Mahamandala emphasized that it expressed the opinion of the Princes and ‘intelligent classes’ to guide the masses towards the formation of right opinions and sentiments, and ensure they understood their obligations towards pax Britannica.Footnote 53 The Raja of Darbhanga, the President of the Mahamandala endorsed its vision of a ‘stable’, evolutionary, and conservative social order organized by a Brahmanical understanding of varnasramadharma.Footnote 54 The danpatras (gift-deeds) of Swami Gyanananda's devotees suggest that gifting was essential to crafting this vision.Footnote 55
The Mahamandala was invested in reinvigorating dana to realize its goals. In 1917 it argued that religious endowments were the evolutionary product of the ‘Hindu’ tradition of dana.Footnote 56 It lamented that evils besetting contemporary religious gifting was the consequence of selfish donors no longer caring about age-old ‘Hindu’ notions of philanthropy and public spirit.Footnote 57 In 1917, the Mahamandala organized a committee in Banaras comprising sanyasis, mahants and local notables to ensure that almshouses gave food and clothing to the ‘deserving’ poor.Footnote 56 In step with conversations on dharmic gifting, the Mahamandala invited its patrons to undertake national work of benevolence for Brahmins and ‘touchable’ castes.Footnote 57 From the 1920s, the Mahamandala, while asserting its loyalism, blamed British rule for the decline of religious endowments sustained by private piety and managed from ‘time immemorial’ by religious traditions.Footnote 60 It held colonial systems of administration and justice accountable for decimating the power of the ‘ecclesiastical hierarchy’ managing community-based charitable enterprises.Footnote 58
Orthodox Hindu associations allied with Din Dayal Sharma deprecated the transformation of the Mahamandala into an organization dominated by sadhus. They berated Swami Gyanananda for misusing offerings gifted to him by his bhaktas (devotees).Footnote 59 His detractors bemoaned his mismanagement of the controversial Mahamandala Trust and improper behaviour towards female disciples in his private chambers.Footnote 60 In turn, the Mahamandala praised Swami Gyanananda for being a pavitra (pure) ascetic committed to crafting an orthodox ‘Hindu nation’ through philanthropy.Footnote 61 It accepted that orthodox Hinduism was on the wane due to the undeniable decline in the moral and spiritual behaviour of its erstwhile ascetic leaders.Footnote 62 Mahamandala periodicals reiterated that once the bodies, morals, and behaviour of sadhus were reformed, they would embrace the path of directed sewa (service) and charity to revitalize an orthodox Hindu ‘public’ and ‘nation’.Footnote 63
The Mahamandala sponsored the Updeshak Mahavidyalaya, or College of Divinity in Banaras to train Brahmin sadhus to become preachers of orthodox Hinduism.Footnote 64 In 1917, the Raja of Darbhanga urged the Mahamandala's donors to fund the College so that sadhus could be educated in the ‘proper’ rituals, theology and modern ideas required to protect sanatana dharma.Footnote 65 The College was funded by Swami Gyanananda's princely bhaktas. Prominent amongst them was the Maharaja of Darbhanga and the Rani of Khairagarh in Mirzapur district.Footnote 66 Here, the curriculum for the sadhus included the scriptures, natural sciences, general knowledge, comparative theology and philosophy, amongst other subjects.Footnote 67 By 1920, The Principal of the Hindu College of Divinity averred that the institution had prepared the ‘sadhu class’ for leadership.Footnote 68 Between 1940 and 1942, alumni of the College of Divinity made public speeches opposing the main planks of the Hindu Mahasabha's sangathan campaign like shuddhi (conversion), temple-entry, strategic caste reform, and measures attacking maths.Footnote 69
The Mahamandala emphasized the importance of reforming sadhus in accordance with the customs and maryada (conduct) of their sampraday.Footnote 70 It gave prime importance to internal regulatory bodies and panchayats (councils) established by different monastic orders to restrain their members and protect their wealth. These bodies could be established to resolve individual disputes. In 1927, for example, one Mahant Ram Kishen of Bara Asthan in Faizabad assembled a panchayat of 100 Ramanandi bairagis to excommunicate Mahant Ram Padharay of Bithia Raj temple for marrying a widow and purchasing property for his nephews out of temple monies.Footnote 71 The Mahamandala also supported local monastic bodies exercising supervisory powers over maths. For instance, the Sri Panch Dasnami in Banaras removed ‘unsuitable’ Dasnami mahants from maths and ruled on disputes that were resolved outside colonial courts.Footnote 72 Regional sectarian associations also controlled maths belonging to their sampraday. The Mahamandala endorsed all regional sectarian associations such as the All India Vaishnava Sammelan, which consolidated the position of Ramanandi maths and akharas.Footnote 73
Sadhus and sampraday were at the heart of the Mahamandala's orthodox Hindu political community. During the math reform campaign, the Mahamandala emerged as the champion of monastic autonomy, amidst growing criticism that maths were uninterested in dharmic gifting and sangathan. Throughout, the Mahamandala endorsed the rights of monastic bodies to use their assets as they saw fit, determine the beneficiaries of their charities, and discipline their members. The next section shows that it opposed the Mahasabha and Hindu sangathan through these discussions.
Dana, math reform, and Hindu sangathan before and after 1947
The Mahamandala and monastic orders debated vigorously with the Mahasabha on the relationship between dana and sangathan. By the 1920s, the Mahasabha (1915), an umbrella organization initially formed to represent ‘Hindu interests’, encouraged philanthropy purged of sectarian and caste divisions. As mentioned earlier, the Mahasabha's ‘Hindu public’ sought to expand its constituency through a variety of instrumental measures to forge a carefully crafted and unified ‘Hindu community’ comprising achuts, ‘converts’, all religious traditions, and ‘sects’ like the Sanatanists to protect its interests from its imagined ‘enemies’, led by Muslims. Pertinently, the Mahasabha carefully utilized the idea of sangathan in preference to Hindutva until the 1940s. The Mahasabha was aware that gurus found problematic Savarkar's influential ideology decentralizing the troubling heterogeneity of religiosity and sampraday in favour of the presumed racial, political, territorial, and cultural basis of ‘Hinduness’. Further, while the Mahasabha was supportive of the RSS's goal of a Hindu rashtra based on Hindutva, it deliberately focused on the more neutral ‘Hindu public’ to avoid alienating monastic orders and Sanatanis. In the United Provinces, the Awadh and Agra Hindu Sabhas, together with their local chapters, sought to forge alliances between the embittered Arya Samaj, orthodox Hindus, and monastic orders. The Hindu Sabhas enunciated these ideas in an environment in which a variety of regenerative projects sought to consolidate different communities of interest distinguished by caste and sampraday. The Hindu Sabhas questioned philanthropic ventures they deemed an obstacle to the formation of their ideal ‘Hindu public’, whether sectarian associations directing dana to sanyasis, maths, and networks of devotees, or institutionalized philanthropy by orthodox Hindus excluding lower castes. The Mahasabha's support of math reform also coincided with its endorsement of the shallow ‘democratization’ of sacred space through temple-entry to enable achuts and shudras to benefit from caste- and sect-specific religious endowments.
When Din Dayal Sharma and Malaviya were at the helm of the Mahasabha it sought to build alliances with ascetic orders. The All India Sadhu Mahamandal (1918), affiliated to the Mahasabha, was formed under Malaviya's guidance. Its general secretary, one Jagdishwaranand Bharti, reminded mahants of the important role sadhus needed to play in shaping the Mahasabha's policies. He also pleaded with sanyasis to vigorously work for the cause of Bharatvarsha to dispel society's negative attitudes towards them.Footnote 74 Prominent gurus and gosains attended the Mahasabha's annual sessions, became its members, and were connected to its local chapters in the United Provinces. In 1915, the Mahasabha nominated the Mahamandala's Swami Gyanananda and Dayananda Swami to its gauraksha (cow protection) committees.Footnote 75 In 1919, Dayananda Swami was a prominent member of the United Provinces Hindu Sabha Propaganda Committee.Footnote 76 He was also on the Committee for the Protection of Milch Cattle and participated in controversial gauraksha initiatives and campaigns. Footnote 77 Dayanand Swami supported some aspects of sangathan, like shuddhi, but was not in favour of allowing ‘converts’ to dine and intermarry with orthodox Hindus.
Despite such prominent examples, the Sadhu Mahamandal attracted few ascetics, given its insistence that they rise above sampraday and caste to achieve sangathan. In 1924 Malaviya established another body called the Bharat Varsh Sadhu Mahamandali in another effort to attract sadhus. At this association's Kumbh mela session in 1924, mahants expressed their dissatisfaction with its close connections with the Mahasabha.Footnote 78 By then, Brahmin gosains had moved away from those planks of the Mahasabha's sangathan campaign seeking to instrumentally reform caste. At the Mahasabha's 1923 gathering, Malaviya had unsuccessfully urged orthodox Hindus and Brahmin gurus to allow achuts to attend their meetings, schools, and colleges, draw water from wells, and ‘convert’ to a higher caste status. Malaviya's assurances to orthodox Hindus that they were not required to intermarry or dine with Hindu ‘converts’ fell on deaf ears.Footnote 79 Amidst worries of anti-Brahmin sentiment, the Mahamandala allied with orthodox Hindus troubled by sangathan. Consequently, the provincial Hindu Sabhas in the United Provinces found it an uphill task to attract orthodox Hindus as allies.
Various allied associations worked with the Mahasabha during the math reform campaign. All initiatives drew upon parallel programmes of the Gurudwara Prabhandhak Committee to purge and cleanse religious institutions amongst Sikhs.Footnote 80 By 1920, in the United Provinces the local Hindu Sabha worked with the Dharma Rakshana Sabha of Lucknow whose senior leadership comprised prominent members of the Awadh Hindu Sabha. The Dharma Rakshana Sabha targeted maths and temples whose treasuries had been mismanaged by their mahants and gurus and participated in legal and populist schemes to manage such shrines.Footnote 81 Similarly, the Dharmarth Rakshini Sabha (1926) of Banaras dominated by members of the local Hindu Sabha wished to ‘supervise and manage’ the charitable endowments of the city.Footnote 82 Orthodox Hindu associations affiliated with Malaviya also controversially recommended the appointment of a management committee to regulate religious institutions.Footnote 83 This was a polarizing issue for Malaviya's supporters, many of whom had an innate belief in the sanctity of charismatic leaders.
The Mahasabha and its allies supported populist campaigns targeting rapacious Dasnami mahants like Satish Chandra Giri of the Tarakeshwar math and temple near Calcutta. In 1924, a local Mahabir Dal supported by Satish Chandra Giri's tenants started a satyagraha (movement based on passive resistance) demanding his resignation. Subsequently they wished to convert the Tarakeshwar math into a trust controlled by the ‘Hindu public’. Soon, the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee joined hands with the Mahabir Dal. It terminated the satyagraha after reaching a settlement with Satish Chandra Giri and his cronies.Footnote 84 In 1925, the Tarakeshwar satyagraha inspired the Bharatji satyagraha against Mahant Paras Ram in Rishikesh in the United Provinces. The mahants of this Ramanandi gaddi were chosen from the Brahmin Ramanuji acharyas or the open-caste Ramanandi bairagis.Footnote 85 In the late nineteenth century Mahant Lachman Das, a Brahmin Ramanuji acharya willed the gaddi to his grihastha son Ram Ratan Das.Footnote 86 Ram Ratan Das left the temple to his minor son Paras Ram, who became mahant in 1906.Footnote 87 Paras Ram was a powerful landholder, local notable, and founding member of the local Hindu Sabha. When he announced he was grooming his son as his successor, he was opposed by the non-Brahmin Ramanandi bairagi faction within the temple. Subsequently, the All India Vaishnava Sammelan of Ayodhya, comprising Ramanandi bairagis, started a satyagraha (1925–1930) to remove Paras Ram as mahant against the background of their escalating sectarian schism with the Ramanujis. Throughout, the bairagis pilloried Paras Ram for being a Brahmin, a ‘bastard’, and immoral, and for misusing temple funds.Footnote 88
The Mahasabha's support to these populist campaigns was tempered by its anxiety about alienating notables, orthodox Hindus, and monastic orders. In August 1924, members of the United Provinces Congress Committee attended the Mahasabha's working committee meeting in Banaras. It resolved not to alienate orthodox Hindus by sympathizing with the Tarakeshwar satyagraha. The Hindu Sabha in the United Provinces was guided by Malaviya who criticized the Bengal Congress for participating in the satyagraha without the permission of the All India Congress Committee.Footnote 89 From 1925, the Hindu Sabha's support wavered during the Bharatji satyagraha. Before the agitation, the local Hindu Sabha and the Dharma Rakshana Sabha had established a committee of enquiry to investigate matters in the temple. They supported the agitation on the grounds that the Bharatji temple belonged to the entire ‘Hindu janta’ and not to just one sampraday.Footnote 90 By 1927, given the sectarian differences shaping the agitation, the local Hindu Sabha distanced itself from this satyagraha. The agitation was ultimately unsuccessful as it was unpopular amongst Paras Ram's tenants and local elites troubled by what it portended for religion, property, and social unrest.
Orthodox Hindu associations in the United Provinces led by the Mahamandala opposed populist campaigns against mahants. When discussing the Tarakeshwar satyagraha, they expressed discomfort with the Congress’ domination of the agitation.Footnote 91 The Mahamandala reiterated the importance of pre-existing checks and balances within monastic orders to check the excesses of sanyasis, not ‘external’ methods designed to destroy religious traditions.Footnote 92 Specifically, it expressed its outrage at the treatment meted out to Satish Chandra Giri, a member and patron. In the case of the Bharatji affair, the Mahamandala reiterated that ‘married’ mahants like Paras Ram could not succeed to the gaddi of the Bharatji temple.Footnote 93 It endorsed the opinion of the Mandir Committee convened by the All India Vaishnava Sammelan at the Haridwar Kumh mela that Paras Ram be replaced by another mahant appointed by a Ramanandi bairagi council.Footnote 94 Apart from the Mahamandala, ‘moderate’ orthodox Hindu bodies like the Sanatana Dharma Mahasammelana also refused to endorse campaigns cleansing religious institutions by force.Footnote 95 Fearful mahants concerned by threats to class and caste hierarchies within monastic orders stayed aloof from both satyagrahas. They were afraid that popular agitations headed by rank and file bairagis and tenants would foster a social revolution within maths and against landholders more generally.
Given the combustible nature of such agitations, the Mahasabha and its moderate orthodox Hindu allies changed their strategy to reform maths through colonial laws on religious endowments.Footnote 96 In 1928, the government of the United Provinces appointed the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Committee to draft a new bill for the legal supervision of maths and temples and their conversion into public endowments. Members of the Committee included representatives of the Arya Samaj, the Mahasabha, the Congress, and some orthodox Hindu associations.Footnote 97 Prominent amongst them was Raja Rampal Singh, one of the founding members of the Dharma Rakshana Sabha and the Awadh Hindu Sabha, and Ramakant Malaviya, a member of the Congress and the Mahasabha.Footnote 98 This group viewed the legal status given to monastic institutions by the Endowments Acts responsible for the licence given to maths and akharas to use their discretion about charitable activities.Footnote 99 The Endowments Committee also included mahants, gurus, and members of the Mahamandala.Footnote 100 It examined the maths, temples, and pilgrimage sites in the United Provinces between 1927 and 1930 and published its findings in 1931.Footnote 101 Of the 556 witnesses examined by the Committee, 237 were mahants, priests, and others connected with religious institutions.Footnote 102
Throughout, mahants, gurus, and their associations opposed measures to convert maths into public trusts accountable to the ‘Hindu public’. They warned that such bills would threaten sectarian autonomy and the rights of monastic bodies to regulate maths and akharas. Ascetic orders were divided about the degree of control mahants could wield over math wealth. Mahants such as Harihar Gir of the rich Dasnami Buddha Gaya math in Bihar, which controlled many Dasnami institutions in north India, reiterated that all wealth accumulated by sanyasis were subject ‘to their own desires’. Such gifts included unconditional offerings made to gurus by devotees in recognition of their sanctity and wealth accumulated through business. He emphasized that sanyasis spent money on charity according to their conscience and were not accountable in law as trustees.Footnote 103 Despite differences on this score, there was a consensus that converting maths into public trusts would endanger the rights of monastic orders to this wealth. From 1920, fearful akharas warned that an Endowments Bill transforming maths and akharas into public trusts and granting legal powers to ‘the public’ to audit and regulate these bodies would lead to the oppression of mahants and multiply the dangers of litigation.Footnote 104 Between 1925 and 1930 associations representing mahants, maths, and akharas recommended the creation of an all-India body comprising religious specialists to resolve problems within their institutions and protect them from external threats.Footnote 105 By this time, monastic orders were already prejudiced by the Mahasabha's eagerness to support Buddhist organizations in their sustained campaign to ‘reclaim’ the Mahabodhi Temple owned by the Dasnami Buddha Gaya math on the grounds that it was a Buddhist pilgrimage site.Footnote 106
Unsurprisingly, the Religious Endowments Committee's final report, submitted in 1932, reflected two starkly diverging opinions. The ‘majority’ opinion, shaped by mahants, their orthodox Hindu devotees, and the Mahamandala, stressed the importance of excluding akharas and maths from endowments legislation and of recognizing the rights of ‘autonomous’ religious traditions to regulate their own institutions.Footnote 107 It recommended that a number of ‘denominational committees’ representing Hinduism's main sampradays, comprising mahants, sadhus, and grihastha devotees at the local and central levels, supervise their religious charities and maths.Footnote 108 The Mahamandala argued that converting maths into ‘public trusts’ would imperil the independence of sampradays following ‘different religions’ and divergent theological perspectives.Footnote 109 In contrast, the Mahasabha and Congress members on the Committee insisted that sectarian boards could not regulate maths. Ramakanth Malaviya and Raja Rampal Singh insisted that such denominational boards would breed disharmony and disunity amongst Hindus and weaken the conception of Hindus ‘as a class, a people, a nation’.Footnote 110 Given the impasse, the Religious Endowments Committee was unable to convert monastic establishments into public trusts by legal enactment.
Importantly, in the aftermath of unsuccessful legal reform to convert maths into public trusts, disaffected orthodox Hindus and monastic orders rejected sangathan and its problematic ‘Hindu public’ void of sampraday. By 1930, the Mahamandala agitated to protect orthodox Hinduism and varnasramadharma from the Mahasabha.Footnote 111 It joined forces with like-minded orthodox Hindu associations to assert that the requirements of the times made the term ‘Sanatana dharmi’ (‘original Hindu’) more appropriate than the term ‘Hindu’ utilized by the Mahasabha.Footnote 112 Prominent gurus like the Shankaracharya of Karva Peeth supported the Mahamandala in its stand against the Mahasabha and its political vision. They advocated that ‘heterodox pro-changers’ like the Mahasabha and their Sanatani supporters be denied rights in temples, ancestral property, religious charities, and other Sanatanist institutions as a form of punishment for sponsoring ‘anti-religious bills’ attacking maths and akharas.Footnote 113 Before 1947, the Mahamandala and its supporters agitated unsuccessfully to protect the ‘unique’ rights of orthodox Hindus through legislation and later in the Constituent Assembly, which rejected their claim that Sanatanis were a religious minority requiring protection from ‘other’ Hindus in an independent India.Footnote 114
By the 1950s, the Mahamandala's fortunes waned. Subsequently, new associations like Swami Karpatri's Dharm Sangh (1944) and its political wing, the Ram Rajya Parishad, became dominant players in the politically fractured field of Hindu nationalism. Swami Karpatri was an influential Dandi sanyasi, one of the three subdivisions of the Dasnamis dominated by Brahmins, who had been closely associated with the Mahamandala from its inception. His associations allied with the declining Mahasabha and the RSS during the troubled 1940s, when both parties moved Hindu rashtra and Hindutva centre-stage. The Dharm Sangh thereafter participated with both organizations in a spate of agitations seeking to protest the ‘anti-Hindu’ Nehruvian state. Swami Karpatri skilfully navigated the tense relationship between the Mahasabha and RSS, shaped in no small part by the latter's reluctance to participate in politics. Instead, the RSS chose to popularize its ideology through grassroots organizations, whether its shakhas (cells) or its ‘family’ of affiliated associations, now known as the ‘Sangh Parivar’. By 1955, the Dharm Sangh and Ram Rajya Parishad parted ways with the Mahasabha. Swami Karpatri and his associations also moved away from the Jan Sangh, the new political party affiliated with the RSS. By this period, the RSS and its affiliated organizations grew in power, influence and scale compared to other Hindu nationalist organizations. Importantly, there were significant disagreements between the Dharm Sangh, the RSS, and the Mahasabha on the role of orthodox Hinduism in shaping Bharatiya sanskriti (Indian culture) and a Hindu political consciousness driven by Hindutva and Hindu rashtra.Footnote 115
The failure of Hindu sangathan, and continuing debates between the various political organizations identifying themselves with Hindu nationalism, meant that the aims, goals, and beneficiaries of philanthropic projects of gurus continued to be diverse. For example, in 1950, Swami Karpatri founded the Dharma Sangh Shikhshamandal (1944), which defined itself as an important ‘public institution’ elucidating his orthodox Hindu vision of Ramrajya (utopian state). The Shikshamandal established schools and colleges in Banaras, Delhi, and Rajasthan to carry out its ‘pious’ national duty to propagate ‘Indian culture’ and to train Brahmin lecturers to preach sanatana dharma and the ‘Hindu’ way of life.Footnote 116 The trust functioned as an arm of the Swami Karpatri Dham, the math in Banaras established by Swami Karpatri until its decline due to a lack of funds and internecine feuds between trustees.
In more recent times, gurus in Uttar Pradesh remain embedded in a north Indian socio-religious and political landscape of sampraday sustained by immense networks of devotees, despite the efforts of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), a religious organization formed by the RSS in 1964, to pull all charismatic leaders together on one platform.Footnote 117 Notably, gurus and their maths, akharas, and ashrams have made philanthropy one of their core goals. The participation of monastic establishments in philanthropic ventures waxes and wanes depending on their aspirations, ambitions, and local political alliances. Charity within smaller maths continues to be restricted to beneficiaries defined by sampraday and caste. The Dasnami Dakshinamurti math in Banaras, belonging to the Mahanirvani akhara, funds the Vishwanath Sanskrit Pathshala open to ‘twice-born’ castes.Footnote 118 Modest maths, such as the Machlibandar math in Banaras belonging to Dandi Dasnami sanyasis, have no affiliated institutions except for primary schools within their premises for upper-caste boys, most of whom are Brahmin.Footnote 119 Maths often donate funds to organizations taking care of sadhus from their religious tradition. These associations include the Akhil Bharatavarshiya Avadhut Bhesh Barah Panth Yogi Mahasabha that assists ‘all Nathyogis and monasteries, and maintenance and progress of the Nath sampraday’.Footnote 120 Likewise, the Akhil Bharatiya Dasnami Sadhu Chattra Parishad (1947) seeks to unite Dasnamis by awarding scholarships to sadhus irrespective of sub-sect and caste. The Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (1955) protects the interests of both Vaishnava and Shaiva akharas.Footnote 121
Few maths in Uttar Pradesh have consistently yoked philanthropy to Hindutva. A notable exception is the Shaiva Gorakhnath math in Gorakhpur belonging to the Nath sampraday. The charitable portfolio of the Gorakhnath math has expanded in conjunction with its emergence as the largest landlord and power-player in Gorakhpur. This coincided with the tenure of Baba Digvijaynath (1932–1966) who had played a prominent role in the leadership of the Mahasabha. Thereafter, the math has been closely involved with the RSS and Sangh Parivar. Simultaneously, its mahants maintained its position within the Nath sampraday. Baba Digvijaynath was one of the main organizers of the Akhil Bharatiya Yogi Mahasabha in Haridwar, which regulated the properties and interests of the sampraday. He and his successors ensured that the mahants of the Gorakhnath math remained its hereditary sabhapatis (presidents). This exceptionally powerful Nathyogi math has been funded by wealth amassed by its mahants and its devotees and political patrons. Its charities encompass a whole range of services for sadhus and pilgrims. Further, the Maharana Pratab Shikshamandal, established by Baba Digvijaynath, supports educational institutions and hospitals in Gorakhpur city and district.Footnote 122 Thus, maths linked to Hindu nationalist bodies also continuously juggle multiple constituencies and beneficiaries of charity in their localities of interest.
Conclusion
This article has highlighted colonial law's tendency to treat maths and akharas as discrete and autonomous religious corporations. This ironically strengthened the ability of monastic orders to utilize dana with few restraints. Indeed, court judgments indicate that mahants strategically used colonial law to assume personal control of math assets, and even tried to elude internal regulation by monastic councils and bodies. Thus, colonial law and the courts enabled the transformation of mahants and their maths and akharas into powerful socio-religious and economic stakeholders, who were not scrutinized for their contributions towards charity. During the math reform campaign, mahants and their allies dominated the United Provinces Religious Endowments Committee and were successful in keeping at bay efforts to change the unique legal position of maths and akharas. After 1947, monastic institutions have continued to engage strategically with legal discourses.
Under British rule dana given to gurus and maths remained multi-layered in intent and meaning in ways that transcended colonial binaries of ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ gifting. Despite the dislocations caused by colonialism, the sharp rise in devotionalism led to an explosion of ‘sacred’ gifting to Vaishnava, Shakta and Shaiva gurus by devotees and donors. Such gifts were amalgamated into complex financial portfolios of individual gurus, maths, and akharas. Within monastic institutions, whether such monies belonged to individual members or to the math or akhara in question continued to be a contentious issue. By the twentieth century, the relationship of math wealth to philanthropy was discussed in an environment in which gurus from different sampraday rebuilt their relationships with their devotional base through new associations, print culture, and diverse philanthropic projects. Within maths members were divided on the question of dana and its relationship with philanthropy.
While monastic orders were possessive of their wealth, they awoke to the advantages of participating in new philanthropic projects to rejuvenate their sampraday and strengthen their position and power in shifting political contexts. In the nineteenth century monastic institutions supported private charities for their sanyasis, devotees, and patrons. By 1940, mahants and gurus engaged with public sphere debates connecting gifting by donors to the revitalization of communities of interest. Larger maths and akharas established educational and philanthropic trusts nurturing broader audiences. Since independence, despite the subsequent expansion of the Sangh Parivar's influence, the charitable portfolios of monastic orders have remained diverse, ranging from charities focusing on their sampraday to ambitious ventures encompassing hospitals, educational institutions, and welfare schemes. Through philanthropy, charismatic leaders attached to most maths, akharas, and sectarian associations in north India continue to be primarily interested in enhancing their spiritual and symbolic capital and the power of their institutions in various networks.
The math reform campaign revolving around the trope of the ‘fallen sanyasi’ took place amidst concerns to regenerate socio-religious publics through philanthropy. Despite the Mahasabha's best efforts, orthodox Hindus and monastic orders opposed its conception of the ‘Hindu public’ that would benefit from philanthropy, and articulated alternative visions of a socio-religious ‘public’ and political community. Orthodox Hindus established networks of charitable institutions for ‘true’ varnasrami Hindus to nurture the Sanatani community and its ‘way of life’. Maths and sectarian associations linked dana to the renewal of guru-parampara orders and sampraday. Even the Mahamandala's efforts to connect philanthropy to an orthodox Hindu nation ordered by caste and monasticism was tilted in favour of sampraday. The circles of beneficiaries of charitable gifting within these socio-religious publics of gifting were circumscribed and limited by internal hierarchies of caste and class. Thus, my discussion of philanthropy and sangathan shows that the early twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a discordant Hindu political and cultural consciousness, whose engagements with gurus and religious traditions continue to inform the meanings attached to Hindutva and Bharatiya sanskriti in significant, if unexpected ways.
