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Oppiliappan List Archive: Message 00127 May 2004

 
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Dear friends,

Henry Ford, the pioneer car-maker, was once told 
customers were all complaining his famous Ford-T model
did not come in more colours than one. "They can have
any colour they want", Ford is said to have said
arrogantly, "as long as it is black".

What colour do you want your neighbourhood temple to
come in? Would you like the temple "gOpuram" (tower)
to be painted in majestic monochrome or riotous
polychrome? Would you want to see the 'gOpuram'
painted in uniform shades of grey, beige (as in
Tirumala or Ahobilam) or pale yellow or else in
"technicolour" as found in most temples in T'Nadu like
SriRangam, Tiruvellikeni etc.?

This question seems to have arisen now in Mylapore in
the famous KapAleeshwara Temple, which is due for a
'samprOkshanam' shortly. The religious community wants
to paint the tower in the usual splash of
kaledeiscopic multi-colours whereas the HR & CE
Ministry, which sanctions money for the
'samprOkshanam' preparations, wants the 'gOpuram' to
be painted in a single shade of pale yellow. 

Now, a classic "power struggle" between the Ministry
and the local religious community is brewing up and
threatening to blow-over -- it's the old conflict
again between the State and Church, except here we
find the holy battle being carried into God's own
camp! Earlier, it was the vexatious question of
painting the temple-elephant (as in Kanchipuram). Now,
the matter has progressed indeed to the issue of how
to paint the temple tower!

An excellent article in the "HIndu" dt.21st May'04
explains this battle and I have reproduced it below.
Please read the same and decide which side you will
vote for in the clash of ideas and parties involving:

   (1) Colour preference: Monochrome Vs Polychrome

   (2) HR & CE Ministry Vs the local Temple Priests

   (3) The temple priests Vs the temple architects
('silpis')

    (4) The 'Agama-sAstra' (the temple text) Vs the
"dEsAchAram" (the local practice of commoners)

    (5) the brahminical insistence on 'sAstra' Vs the
common people's insistence on local freedom of choice.

Views and comments are welcome on
Tiruvenkatam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Rgds,
dAsan,
Sudarshan 

                   ***************       

Temples and colours 

By A. Srivathsan 

A colourful gopuram is a physical paradigm of what
constitutes pluralism.  

THE GOVERNMENT of Tamil Nadu administers as many as
36,356 temples. It has a long history of temple
administration and has been in the eye of many reforms
and changes in temples. In recent times, it has been
extensively renovating temples and makes an annual
grant of Rs. 2.16 crores for this purpose. While it
has a system and structure in place to guide temple
renovation, one of its recent guidelines is arbitrary
and questionable. 

The issue in question is a recent order by the Hindu
Religious and Charities Endowment Board (HR&CE) that
instructs all Hindu temples under it to paint their
gopurams yellow. The order is particular that the
early tradition to paint gopurams in multicolour must
be dispensed with. In this context, the question of
the role of the state in the upkeep of temples, even
though relevant, will prove a distraction from another
issue. The issue is mediating taste and an assault on
popular cultural practices. It also raises the issue
of what constitutes tradition and who constitutes
them. Equally important is the absence of public
discussion. 

To the self-appointed protagonist of good taste,
vibrant colours of gopurams are gaudy and best suited
for Amman gopurams. The fondness for bright colours is
also considered very `Tamil', implying that it does
not form a part of the classical religion. Its
presence is, at best, explained as a spillover of folk
and filmic ideas into the temple tradition; a recent
error ? a historical aberration. This sets the basis
for revisionist arguments. Earlier, such prejudices
inhabited small spaces and minds. It now seems that
they have been legitimised, sanctioned by the state,
and considered best practices in art and architecture.


The arguments in favour of painting the temple in
monochrome have been that it is suits the sathvik
character of the deities, it is sanctioned by the
agamas and is hence authentic, and it is artistically
preferable. Any cursory reading on colours and gods
would tell us that deities come in many forms and
colours. Every colour has a place, including the
much-maligned black, in religion. Indeed Tamil culture
has a special place for black. The benign gods are
dark and the sangam poems celebrate the dark clouds as
harbingers of rain and many things poetic. This is
very much in contrast to English usage on dark clouds
and things black. Colour preferences are culture
specific. How do we explain the white marble gods of
North India? There is more to it than objective art
evaluation. 

Partha Mitter's work, Much Maligned Monsters, shows
how temple architecture and iconography were evaluated
based on the principles of the western art canons. To
19th and 20th century art and architectural
historians, ideas of human anatomy, perspective,
proportion, colour sense, and design principles were
all missing in Indian temples. An indigo merchant,
Ferguson, could authoritatively state that the
principles adopted in temple designs were totally
convoluted. His statements on the Srirangam temple are
now a classic example of jaundiced vision. 

It appears that many have not still got away from such
biased constructions but consider the presence of
human figures in temples an index of bad taste. As a
result, new temple vimanas and gopurams in India and
abroad have fewer and fewer human figures. They have
more geometrical patterns than mythical figures. This
negates the multiple role of temple sculpture and
affects the sustenance of this craft. 

Modern architecture too has privileged the use of
monochromes such as white, grey, and cream. These
preferences are rooted in misplaced anxieties such as
honesty of structure, purity of form, abstraction, and
non-representational aesthetics. If architecture is a
`discipline of milieu', then urban elites have been
producing a self-proclaimed pure and preferable
milieu. Sitting inside this, the polychrome,
figurative architecture and the popular world outside
appear as bad taste. 

Painting the temple gopuram in a single colour would
visually efface the plethora of figures. It would
render them invisible. It would make them appear as a
mass of bricks piled ornamentally. The figures would
then appear abstracted and all the labour of love and
craft skill of the silpis would disappear. With this
disappear pluralistic practices of temple building and
life itself will disappear. In the name of visual
order, what is being imposed now is a particular
cultural preference. The story is familiar ? the
politics of aesthetics follows the contours of
power.What makes this familiar story a little
intriguing is the evocation of texts and traditions.
Agamas are invoked to sanction the use of monochrome
against polychrome. There are already counter claims.
How important are text-based arguments? What is the
role of text in the temple tradition? Agamas are
liturgical texts. Silpa or architectural content in
agamas is limited in scope. These texts are written
for priests so that they can be familiar with
architecture. Silpa texts, on the other hand, are far
more elaborate and the silpis (temple architects)
follow them. 

However, agamas and silpa texts are complementary.
Temples are built in consultation between the silpi
(architectural specialist) and the acharya (ritual
specialist). None of these texts is exhaustive and not
all the texts are consistent in their prescription.
Prescriptions between sects too differ. In the context
of a dispute, the texts allow the acharya or the silpi
to decide what they think is best practice. There are
many evidences to suggest this. 

Tradition comprises both practices and texts. In many
temples and legal disputes, practices have taken
precedence over texts. Nothing could be far from the
truth if one abstracts texts and claims it as
tradition. Practices are local in outlook and
interpretation. Often they take precedence over
codification and canonisation. Texts, on the other
hand, appeal to a larger audience and territory. It
speaks the language of generalisation and relative
universalisation. A decision to favour and privilege
text over practice is to prefer the general and the
homogenous over the local and variety. 

In 1999, the Archaeological Survey of India took over
the Tiruvannamalai temple. The reason given by the ASI
was bad and improper maintenance of a historical
temple. The Government of Tamil Nadu challenged the
take-over. The Government argued that Tiruvannamalai
is a temple in worship and that ASI's idea of
conservation was best suited to monuments and not to
the "worshipping temple." It is an irony that the same
Government now chooses to sanitise the practices of
worshipping temples in the name of texts and good
taste. 

It is important that conservation measures have
long-term interests as well as cultural relevance.
Short-term gain, whims and `taste' cannot be the
basis. Further, no measure should be adopted without
public discussion. A vibrant, colourful culture is
about pluralist practices. A colourful gopuram is a
physical paradigm of what constitutes pluralism.

© Copyright 2000 - 2004 The Hindu



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