The Tragedy of Thanjavur

ON JANUARY 20, 1801, Raja Sarabhoji II Bhonsle wrote an anguished letter to Benjamin Torin, the British Resident at the Thanjavur Samsthanam. It was his response to an enquiry from the East India Company’s top administrative heads regarding revenue management in the Samsthanam. Such ‘enquiries’ had become rather ubiquitous by 1801. They had originated about half-a-century ago when the East India Company had, at Palashi, pummelled the Nawab in a history-altering victory. These ‘enquiries’ hold the key to a dark secret that unlocks the clinical, heartless precision with which the British nibbled away at all our Princely States before gobbling them up wholesale, and finally bringing them all directly under the British Crown.

This particular enquiry asked Sarabhoji II or Serfoji II the reason why a vast swathe of coastal land that stretched from Thanjavur till Rameshwaram had been assigned to the queens of his royal family and why they were using all that revenue to fund charitable institutions.

Serfoji’s reply is akin to an embodied tragedy equipped with a quill, narrating its tale of woe till its last painful detail.

“From the first of my ancestors,” writes Serfoji, these lands were assigned to the queens so that they could manage a large variety of charitable institutions, including but not limited to chhatrams and mathas from the revenue they generated. Variety and number. Although Serfoji does not mention a specific number, these institutions—big and small—easily ran into thousands, spread over 250km.

The loot-hungry British clearly regarded the revenue funding these charitable institutions as an avoidable waste. But Serfoji, like his predecessors, had a more profound conception of them. He writes, “…although these Charitable institutions did not originate with me, I consider them as attached to my house, and essential to my reputation and happiness. The Tanjore country is celebrated over all the world for its Charities, it is called Dherm Raje [Dharma Rajya], and I consider the reputation which reverts upon me through all countries from the appellation, as the most honourable distinction of my Rank. The Revenues appropriated to the support of these Charities by my Ancestors, and my Father Tuljagee Rajah, have never been included in the public Revenue of the Country. They invariably cherished and supported the Charities; It is my earnest wish to do the same.” [Emphases added]

Till the end of their colonialism in India, the British failed to understand the sublime impulse that drove all such charitable institutions operating throughout Bharatavarsha from Varanasi to Rameshwaram, from Kamakhya to Puri.

When Serfoji wrote, “although these Charitable insti­tutions did not originate with me, I consider them as at­tached to my house, and essential to my reputation and happiness,” he was simply echoing a very ancient Sanatana tradition of Daana in English. It is the last verse found in every dana-sasana: svadattam paradattam va yo hareta vasundharam/ sastim varsasahasrani vistayam jayate krmih (He who usurps or snatches the charity [grant, gift, donation, land] whether that charity was made by himself or by others, will suffer for 60,000 years as a worm in the gutter).

We detect Serfoji’s anxiety about the impending annihila­tion of all these charitable institutions in almost every line of his letter. His precise and evocative descriptions of the activities of the dharma chhatrams evoke our adoration, anger and sorrow at the same time.

A majority of these chhatrams were located along the eastern coastline. But the primary distinction of this geography was not political or commercial but spiritual. Serfoji underscores this dis­tinction: “…it is also the road to Ramiseram [Rameswaram] and forty thousand persons from all parts of India from Banaras, Oude, Delhe, Aurangabad and Poona pass and repass every year; for the accom­modation of these travellers principally, the Chetrams have been established.” [Emphasis added]

Till date, the traditional tirtha yatra (pilgrimage) from Kashi to Rameswaram pretty much follows this route. And then, Serfoji gives us a graphic picture of the range of the profound functions that these chhatrams performed.

Each chhatram had a temple, choultries and schools attached to it. Every traveller or yatri was welcome, “from the Bramin to the Pariar [Pariah or what are known as low castes, Dalits, etc, today] inclusive.” Their every need was catered to in a spirit of piety and service. Thus, “[p]ilgrims of every description, including Jogues [Jogis], Jungums [Jangamas], Ateets [the Ateeta sect] and Byragies [Bairagis] are fed with boiled Rice, those who do not chuse [choose] to eat the boiled Rice receive it unboiled with spices & c.”

This anna-santarpana (food sharing or distribution) had no time limits. It was carried on well into the night, throughout the year. At midnight, a bell would be rung followed by this announcement: “all those who have not yet eaten are requested to take their meals.”

Pilgrims and travellers who were unable to travel farther for whatever reason were fed and accommodated as long as they remained in the chhatram. If they fell sick, doctors were at hand and were “attended with respect and kindness until their recovery.” If a traveller or pilgrim died while staying in the chhatram, his apara-karma (funeral rites) would be dutifully performed according to the customs of his varna (incorrectly known as ‘caste’).

Pregnant women travellers or pilgrims would be carefully tended to and if they delivered at the chhatram itself, “their expences are defrayed, medicines are given to them and they are permitted to remain in the Chetrum three months after their delivery.” Infants were supplied with milk.

The chhatrams would perform the Upanayana or marriage of Brahmanas who were too poor to afford these costs. Likewise, they also paid for and arranged to perform the funeral rites of a deceased father if his son had no money.

Schools attached to these chhatrams provided free educa­tion for orphans. Its span covered the elementary level up to what is today known as pre-university. Courses were offered in sacred learning (Vedas, Dharmasastra, the theory and practice of various karmas) as well as professional subjects, including but not limited to medicine and science. Serfoji provides valuable details about the ambience and mechanics of this culture of education: “…all the orphans of strangers, who may come to the Chetrum are placed under the care of the Schoolmaster—they are also fed three times a day, and once in four days, they are anointed with oil—they receive medicine when they require it, cloths also are given to them and the utmost attention paid to them. They are instructed in the sciences to which they may express a preference, and after having obtained a competent knowledge of them the expences of their marriage are defrayed.”

This is nation-building in its most earnest sense—of train­ing orphans from the scratch so that they became produc­tive citizens. They were also married off at the optimal age. The family institution is still one of the greatest guarantors of stability. This system in the Thanjavur Samsthanam was also the continuation of an unbroken tradition dating all the way back to the Vedic era. The ideal of Indian education is to create a dutiful and productive citizen. The rank, profession or eminence of the adult citizen was secondary. The emphasis on marriage, in turn, is rooted in the centrality of the Grhasthashrama Dharma or the dharma of a householder. Sanatana civilisation and society could withstand, absorb, overcome and renew itself periodically after undergoing serial shocks precisely due to the sturdy edifice of Grhasthashrama Dharma.

We notice the undercurrent of precisely these elements in Serfoji’s perturbed letter. More remarkably, this substantial ecosystem of charity was funded by the revenues of lands, which in his words, were “very poor”, and suffered from frequent “deficiency of rain, that they do not produce sufficient for the expences.” In a highly poignant tenor, Serfoji expresses the extent of his devout attachment to this charitable system when he writes, “my anxiety to prevent any diminution of these excellent charities, which I consider as the most honourable appendage of my dignity, has always induced me to send to them from the Circar [sarkar, or government] both grain and money sufficient to make up the deficiency.”

The same letter also provides us a hint as to how perceptively Serfoji had grasped the innate nature of the British psyche that was fuelled by conscience-free loot. At one place, he mentions a certain “Mr Harris” who had taken over the “Subah” and had unleashed a vile scheme to impoverish these Chhatrams by denying them the supply of grain. Repeated intercessions by Raja Serfoji himself had yielded little. This story has an unhappy ending. It did not take long for the rapacious British to reduce this sprawling ecology of dharma (a synonym for charity) to an arid wasteland. JK Bajaj and MD Srinivas, authors of the en­nobling work, Annam Bahu Kurvita (1996), delineate this British attitude lucidly: “These institutions are a matter of concern to the British, especially because they find a substantial part of the public revenues committed to the running of such institutions. The British administrators are under pressure to curtail the ex­penditure on these institutions and to abrogate the resources thus freed to the revenues of the British state. That is why they keep fretting about these institutions for almost half a century, and in the process leave a record of how strongly the discipline of sharing had been institutionalized in the traditional Indian polity, and how vigorously these institutions functioned till they were uprooted by the alien rulers.” [Emphasis added]

They also describe the contemporary state of some of these Chhatrams which they visited in the 1990s: “This and the other four chatrams mentioned in this letter lie on the coastal road from Pattukottai to Ramesvaram. All the five are identifiable even today, though almost every one of these is in ruins.”

This tragic saga, imbued with an epic quality, holds lasting lessons. For our own time, it points to the urgent necessity of re-examining the narrative around something called the welfare state. The chhatram system described so far clearly fits this defini­tion of a welfare state. But the details of its functioning and, above all, the sanctity that the king—head of government—attached to it tell a different story. A story that is accessible to minds operating on a more exalted plane.

POSTSCRIPT

Raja Serfoji had the misfortune of living in a time when Sanatana civilisation had terminally declined. The British had restored the throne of Thanjavur to his bloodline after it had been usurped by his half-brother and regent, Amar Singh. In return, they swallowed the administration of Thanjavur, thus making him a mere titular head. His sovereignty did not extend beyond the fort and some villages and towns in the vicinity.

Serfoji’s death in 1832 extinguished the suzerainty of the Thanjavur branch of the fabled Bhonsle dynasty in which Chhatrapati Shivaji had been born. Anglican Bishop Reginald Heberd escribed it memorably:“I have seen many crowned heads, but not one whose deportment was more princely.”

British imperialismManikundra Perumal templeMarathasMukthambal chhatramRamaswami Amarasinha BhonsleSerfoji IIThanjavurwelfare state