What colour do you want your temple to come in ?

[Guest guest]

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

 

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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