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Religion, Power and Law in Twentieth Century India

Ishita Banerjee-Dube*
El Colegio de Mxico

Abstract

Important works within History, Anthropology and Political Theory have tracked the genealogies of religion and politics (power), queried their construction as neat categories and underscored their imbrication. Drawing upon such works, this essay focuses on the long and convoluted interaction of a radical
religion of Orissa, eastern India, and the law, in order to highlight how religion and state power impinge
upon and shape each other. Through a situated analysis of the gradual institutionalization of Mahima
Dharma over the twentieth century dictated by the requirements of law, and the ascetics need to forge
a bounded community with a strong centre, the essay demonstrates how the contingency and particularity of religion and politics enable their constant redefinition, while their imbricated interface reinforces
the idea of separation. The essay thereby extends Talal Asads enquiry into the genealogies of the religious
and the secular, of religion and power, by arguing that the enmeshment and constant reshaping of power
by religion and religion by power shores up the idea of their separation.

This essay tracks the career of Mahima Dharma, a heterodox faith of Orissa, eastern India, over
the twentieth century, in order to explore the enmeshments of religion and power as mediated
by the law. My bid is to underscore the vital role played by law in the definition and classification of a radical religion, an endeavor that speeded up the institutionalization of the faith. The
essay analyzes the perceptions and deployment of law by renouncers of the Dharma not only to
highlight the distinct understandings and uses of state law but also to equally underscore the mutual constitution and conjoined articulation of religion and power, both understood as diffuse
domains of meaning and authority accessing and exceeding the institutionalized relations of
politics centring on the state and its subjects.1
The essay contends that the contingency and particularity of religion and politics/power
enable their constant redefinition and co-constitution. At a methodological level, it engages
and extends Talal Asads arguments that have underscored how genealogies of the religious
and the secular, encoded in the separation of the two, demonstrate their rootedness in historical
processes of specific (European) societies at particular (contingent) moments. Moreover, the
demarcation and maintenance of the separation of the sacred and the secular are based upon
abstractions, such that within these hermetically sealed off domains, the sacred bears a transcultural and ahistorical essence.2 Taken together, recognition of such specificity and abstraction
allows for a critical interrogation of the universal applicability of the doctrine of secularism as the
separation of church and state or religion and politics/power.
It is important to ask why the categorical division between religion and politics is held on to,
even as these concepts and processes actually emerge as entirely entangled, and why, despite
recognitions of the reality of enmeshments of religion and politics, this real is principally
apprehended as tending towards the ideal.3 This is to say, even those analytical endeavors that
recognize the intersections between religion and politics do so by treating the two as entirely
distinct domains, governed by the ideal of their separation, which are then understood as
coming together.
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622 Religion, Power and Law in Twentieth Century India

All of this is clarified by two salient thematic discussions concerning South Asia, where the
separation of religion and politics is innately, implicitly upheld. The first relates to the perception
of caste: even though caste is permeated by power and has been crucial in moulding politics in
independent India, recurrent debates relating to the positive or negative effect of caste for
Indian secular democracy tend to treat it as an institution that pertains to the domain of the
religious and the ritual. The second applies to understandings of nationalism and communalism
in Indian historiography where communalism predominantly signifies a negative force that
blinds the vision of communities and their members by inciting a disproportionate dependence
on religion. Ahead of these broad emphases, considering limitations of space, particular examples
of studies emphasizing the complete separation of religion and politics become unnecessary here.
The point is that against the grain of such understandings, this essay focuses on the interplay
and intersection of law, religion, power and the secular in a non-institutional arena over the
twentieth century. The attempt is to move attention away from the excessive focus on the state
and its promises, such as the constitutional guarantee of personal laws for particular communities as well as positive discrimination for caste-based groups, as the principal basis for critical
ref lections on religion and politics in India.
A New Religion
The institutionalization of Mahima Dharma, a radical faith (religion) that emerged in the 1860s
in Orissa, makes for an interesting study. Preached by an itinerant ascetic, now widely held as
Mahima Swami, at a time when Orissa was rocked by a devastating famine, the new Dharma
marked its distance from high Hinduism and opposed establishment of any kind. The Swami
advocated devotion to an all-pervasive, formless Absolute equally accessible to all as the only
way of salvation. This seemingly simple message rendered redundant worship of idols, including
that of Jagannath, the central deity of Hinduism in Orissa and the state deity for centuries, and
questioned complex hierarchies of caste and kingship, and the role of the Brahman as mediators
between gods and men. This was accompanied by a direct contravention of the rules of caste
and norms of commensality.
Mahima Swami asked for cooked rice as alms and ate it together with his disciples from the
same pot.4 Moreover, he accepted cooked rice from all including the untouchables but refused
to accept it from the Brahmans, ritually the purest.
Mahima Swamis practices underscored his detachment: he did not spend more than one
night at a place, slept on bare ground, wore a strip around his waist consisting of the bark of
kumbhi tree and only accepted cooked rice as alms. His appealing and accessible message and
simple lifestyle earned him many followers, particularly in the tributary states of Orissa. They
also led to his deification; he came to be regarded as an incarnation of the Absolute whose
mahima (radiance/glory) he preached. The Swamis death in 1875/1876 therefore came as a
shock to his disciples. This disparate group of renouncers (sanyasis) and lay followers were left
with no nominated successor, no permanent structure and no written precepts.
Leadership and organization became crucial to the survival of the faith after the death of the
preceptor. The ascetics (sanyasis) congregated at Joranda in Dhenkanal, a tributary state under a
local prince who was a follower of the Swami, and decided to construct a samadhi (memorial) for
him in Joranda, in an effort to keep alive his faith and hold his followers together.
The replacement of a mobile preceptor by a static memorial symbolized the beginnings of the
institutionalization of Mahima Dharma. Over the twentieth century, the memorial got transformed into a huge complex: the locus of the Guru (preceptor)s authority and the headquarters
of the faith with set ceremonies, liturgies, rituals and services. An annual pilgrimage to the
memorial came to constitute an important part of the activities of a member of the faith, a mode
to assert her/his distinct identity. Two orders of ascetics distinguished by their garb clashed over
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rights of precedence in the offering of ritual services at the memorial. Unable to resolve
disagreements through deliberations, the ascetics turned to the legal machinery of the colonial
state in the 1930s.
Mahima Swami, it bears pointing out, had initiated the two orders of renouncers: the wearers
of waistcloth (kaupin) and the wearers of bark (balkal). Although there were tensions with regard
to their relative position, they had been submerged by the founders commanding presence.
After his death and the gradual growth of the memorial into the headquarters of the faith, it
became important to establish the order of precedence since the conduct of affairs hinged on
that. The Balkaldharis (wearers of balkal, bark of the kumbhi tree), by virtue of the fact the
Mahima Swami wore balkal, claimed a superior status and the sole right to offer ritual services
at the memorial. In addition, they also got themselves registered as the marfatdars (literally mediators)
of Mahima Gadi (or simply Gadi) in the first settlement with the Raja of Dhenkanal, after
the Raja donated land for the construction of the memorial and the Gadi complex.5
marfatdars in this case meant persons who were in charge of the properties dedicated to the
Guru and who represented the Guru in all affairs of the faith.
Krupasindhu, an important direct disciple of Mahima Swami, and a wearer of kaupin
challenged all this, when he returned to Joranda after a long travel. The introduction of
hierarchy among followers, he felt, went against the very spirit of the teachings of the preceptor
that decried authority and discrimination. To register his disagreement with these new developments guided by the Balkaldharis, Krupasindhu started residing in a separate tungi (hut) within
the compound of the Gadi. His presence and his tungi provided the locus for the emergence
of a rival order, that of the Kaupindharis (wearers of kaupin).
The Balkaldharis viewed this development with great concern. A rival order was emerging at
the nerve centre of the Dharma. They saw this as a direct threat to the unity and solidarity they
were trying to forge around the sacred legality of Mahima Swami, and a challenge to the
authority of the preceptor and the samaj (community). They did not wish to allow a visible
breach to grow at Joranda and decided to resort to a higher authority. The Raja of Dhenkanal
may have afforded a possibility; but the Raja seemed favourably inclined towards Krupasindhu.
The Balkaldharis, well versed in the language of colonial law as the marfatdars of the
Gadi, turned to the authority of the states legal system. With this began a long and intricate
interaction with state power that contributed to the redefinition of Mahima Dharma within
the universe of Hinduism.
Law and History
The earliest document found in the court records relates to a title suit of 1936 between
Baba Dinabandhu Das of the Balkaldhari samaj and Baba Krupasindhu Das in the court of
the subordinate judge of Dhenkanal.6 Dinabandhu Das, the appellant, sued Krupasindhu for
constructing unauthorized buildings within the Gadi compound. He asked for demolition of
these buildings and a permanent injunction against the raising of new ones by Krupasindhu.
The verdict, unfortunately, is missing from the records. What is known, however, is that this
verdict failed to settle the issue. The dispute dragged on as members of both groups, individually and collectively, filed innumerable appeals and counter-appeals. From the court of the
subordinate judge, the dispute moved to the Cuttack High Court. The higher court eventually decreed that the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of Endowments,
Orissa.7
The intervention of the judicial machinery of the state brought about significant shifts within
the faith and shaped its subsequent development. Prolonged litigation, arguments of the lawyers
of both groups of ascetics and the awards and orders of judges ruled out negotiation. Ascetics,
who quarrelled over the interpretation of the founders teachings, became entrenched as
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defendants and appellants, all-time rivals, and invested energy in carving out two separate orders.
In addition, the insistence of law courts on the collection of evidence and the display of proof
prompted the ascetics, already convinced of the efficacy of written texts, to produce their own
canonical formal histories of the Dharma.
Biswanath Baba, an important member of the Balkaldhari group who was at the helm of
affairs for several decades between the 1930s and his death in 1992, took the lead. His Satya
Mahima Dharmara Itihasa (History of the True Mahima Dharma) appeared in 1935.8 It gave
the Mahima Dharmis (community of followers of the Dharma) an authentic past and a new
present and accorded the Guru (Master/Preceptor) the dignity of chronology, temporality
and a new historicity.
The opening passage of Satya Mahima Dharmara Itihasa (henceforth Itihasa) informed the
reader that before Biswanath Baba embarked on the project of writing a history of the faith,
several persons had taken up the task but had failed because the Guru had not willed them to
succeed.9 Clearly, Biswanath Baba was endowed with the blessing of the Guru, and the trust
of the Mahima Dharmis. Moreover, prominent citizens of Orissa had urged him to take up
the venture.10 The credentials of the author stood established.
The Itihasa moved on to authenticate its contents. Fully subscribing to the view that
historical narratives have to be true, the Itihasa laid claim to a distinct standard of truth by
premising its veracity on the divinity of the founder. The very content of the text made it
inherently true. The beginning of a new era, the age of Mahima (Mahimabda), was stated to
begin in 1826, when Mahima Swami made his appearance in Orissa in the human form of an
ascetic to perform his lila (divine sport). The year 1826 heralded the beginning of a new religion
(that would actually be preached decades later), and a new temporality. Sacred chronological
time underlay the beginning of true faith, and the two together fundamentally guided the life
of the true devotees.
The Itihasa blended modern history with traditions of itihasa-purana or puranetihasa to situate
Mahima Dharma within a linear chronology and locate the founder in history.11 The founding
concerns of chronology and temporality of modern history were paid attention to and
overturned by a particular notation of time and invocations of the timelessness of the founder.12
Following upon this, the Itihasa codified the teachings of the Swami and demarcated the
different sets of rules he had established for the two categories of adherents, lay followers and
ascetics. It also marked out the three layers within the ascetic order and placed the wearers of
balkal at the top. The lowest rung was made up of bairagis who had just renounced the world;
the intermediate one of apara sanyasis (wearers of waistcloth who were yet to attain selfrealization); and the top layer of the para sanyasis, the wearers of balkal, who have attained
self-realization. The Itihasa did not forget to mention that balkal was what Mahima Swami wore
at the time he started preaching the faith.
The Itihasa established the Balkaldharis as unquestioned leaders of the Gadi; they were, however, warned of the dangers of unjustly exploiting their superior status by acquiring property or
starting their own lineage. The text introduced gradation among the adherents but emphasized
mutual respect, and reiterated Mahima Swamis insistence on detachment, while legitimizing
the claims of Balkaldharis as the marfatdars of the Gadi, and decrying the attempts of
Kaupindharis to forge a rival community.
The Kaupindhari reply to Biswanath Babas Satya Mahima Dharmara Itihasa took the form of
Mahindra Babas Satya Mahima Dharmara Sanksipta Itihasa (An Abridged History of True
Mahima Dharma, henceforth Sankshipta Itihasa), which was published in 1958.13 The publication of this abridged history had become almost necessary on account of the success of
Biswanath Babas texts with the practitioners of law. The Introduction commented on the
significance of history for a community and jati (nation), and for the followers of the faith,
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particularly in times of crisis.14 It emphasized how earlier texts had failed to offer a true history
of the Dharma and prompted Mahindra Baba to take up the venture.
This text did not differ much from the Itihasa in its account of Mahima Swami, from the
moment of his appearance in Orissa in 1826 through to the time he started preaching the
faith after a long meditation of 36 years. At the same time, it made no mention of the fact
that the founder had changed his garb from cloth to bark when he started preaching. The
choice of the garb was made dependent on the will of the initiate; it had nothing to do with
superior or inferior status. Indeed, Mahima Swami was stated to have been pained to see his
followers bicker over trivial issues such as the garb. The bhek (dress), he had said, was only an
external symbol: an ascetics status was to be judged by the quality of his sadhana
(meditation). The renouncers were reminded that paat (cloth) and pat (bark) were the
same.15 The text affirmed that Balkaldhari attempts to introduce gradation went against
the spirit of the founders teachings, and that their wrong practices made it almost impossible
to come to any agreement with them.
We are faced with a paradoxical situation. Renouncers of a radical yet marginal faith show
their belief in the state machinery of the law by deciding to move to law courts to sort out
dispute and disagreement. They accept the courts need for written evidence and decide to
produce authoritative histories of the faith. Such texts, however, blend historical proof with
truth premised on the divinity of the founder and move seamlessly between history and itihasa
acceding to and exceeding the norms of history writing. The excess generated by such a move
makes the texts amenable to diverse interpretations and allows the ascetics to use their own texts
to question the definitions of judges and connive at their rulings.
The judges and lawyers, for their part, seize upon Biswanath Babas Itihasa and later the
Sankshipta Itihasa, to firmly situate Mahima Dharma as a sect within Hinduism that gave them
unquestioned authority to define and rule over it. We take up this tale now.
Law and Religion
Biswanath Babas Itihasa earned recognition as an authoritative history of the faith from the
Oriya literati.16 More significantly, it became the point of reference for the practitioners of
law. The court accorded the written Itihasa a superior position as evidence than it gave the oral
testimony of witnesses. The oral testimonies, it bears pointing out, demonstrated Biswanath
Babas familiarity with the requirements of law courts. He spoke clearly and confidently and
aligned Mahima Dharma to Sanatan Hindu Dharma. The Kaupindhari sanyasis, on the other
hand, showed ambivalence with regard to this clear affiliation of the faith with Hinduism.
The lay devotees and members of the Oriya literati, all selected for being educated, followed
not just the ascetics, but also their textsthe Itihasa and the Sankshipta Itihasain making their
statements. The wide range of opinion prompted the judges, arbitrators and Commissioners of
Religious Endowment to pay greater attention to the written texts in drafting their decisions.17
Since Biswanath Babas Itihasa preceded the Sankshipta Itihasa, Balkaldharis gained an edge over
the Kaupindharis.
The first important award found in the court records, granted by lawyer arbitrators on
11 December 1947, vested sole authority over all property in the Mahima Gadi and granted
exclusive right to the Balkaldharis (para sanyasis in Biswanath Babas terms) to offer service at
the Gadi Mandir. The other sanyasis were not to be debarred from rendering such assistance in services as they are carrying on at present. The award also categorically ruled against
the presence of rival institutions within the Gadi complex. The arbitrators further entrusted
leading Balkaldharis (Biswanath Baba among them), with the task of formulating a code of
rules not inconsistent with the provisions of the award for all followers of different status.
The arbitrators stated that they had carefully heard the arguments of both sides, given due
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consideration to the statements and the evidence adduced, consulted lawyers and other
witnesses present at the hearings and taken great care to frame a just and proper award.18
The award is important as a marker of the evolution of Mahima Dharma as an institutionalized order. A process that had begun with the decision to construct a memorial for the Guru had
resulted in the emergence of Mahima Gadi as the central institution of Mahima Dharma, an
institution that had replaced the Guru as the prime authority.
The award also highlights the commanding role assumed by the practitioners of law in
defining and guiding Mahima Dharma. It is not just that the arbitrators sought to establish a
formal procedure of promotion for the renouncers from one level to another and lay out
detailed instructions on various aspects of the faith; they assumed the power of entrusting leading sanyasis of formulating a code of conduct for the adherents, reserving for themselves the
supreme right of arbitration in case of disagreement. They also claimed the right to closely
supervise the administration of the Gadi, and punish disobedient members of the faith. The
Board of Arbitrators had displaced the ascetics as the decision-makers of Mahima Dharma.
As indicated above, the award did not settle the dispute, nor did the arbitrators manage to
have the ascetics follow their dictates. The dispute dragged on, and the rival group of
Kaupindharis became more confident and assertive. Mahindra Babas Sankshipta Itihasa at
once highlighted the confidence of the Kaupindharis and occasioned a shift in the dispute.
It was no longer a question of whether it was possible or permissible for a separate
Kaupindhari samaj to exist; its existence was an established fact. The dispute now turned
around the status of Kaupindharis and their role in the management of the Gadi. The judges,
who handled this particular case, were persuaded by the arguments of the Abridged History.
While decreeing that the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the Commissioner of
Religious Endowments 19, they handed over a comprehensive and well-chalked-out programme to the Commissioner to help him prepare a scheme for the management of the
Gadi in 1966.
A suitable scheme, in their opinion, required a careful consideration of three important
points: Who were the ascetics who formed the Kaupindhari samaj? Was the Kaupindhari
samaj a separate institution or was it to be treated as a part of the Balkaldhari samaj in which
Balkaldharis were the be all and end all? If the Kaupindhari samaj was indeed a separate
order, what status was it to be given in the proposed scheme for the better administration
of the Gadi?
The judges turned to the history of Mahima Dharma since its inception to answer these
questions. The Dharma was declared a part of the Vedic Sanatan Dharma in which idolatry
has been discarded. The founder, they stated, wore both of scarfs of cotton and barks of
Kumbhi tree and gave both balkal and kaupin to his disciples while initiating them. In this
legally ordered past of Mahima Dharma, the parallel orders, of equal status, had come into
being during the lifetime of the founder. There was no hierarchy between the two: the true
mark of an ascetic was his meditation or self-realization. Closely following Mahindra Babas
arguments advanced in the Sankshipta Itihasa, the judges emphasized the superf luity of the
garment as a standard of assessment and concluded that the Kaupindhari sanyasis are equal
in status with the Balkaldhari sanyasis of their level and had the right to offer ritual services at
the memorial.20
If the judges were persuaded by the arguments of the abridged history, they were acutely
conscious of their power to decide the course of a sect that belonged to eternal
Vedic Hinduism. The ascetics, once again, took recourse to and fell in line with the requirements of the law, and yet evaded its pronouncements.
Indeed, even the order of the Commissioners of Religious Endowments did not settle the
matter. Three different Commissioners handled the disputes and came up with three distinct
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settlements, with the third one turning completely against the Kaupindharis. Balkaldharis and
Kaupindharis defied legal decrees and continued to run their own institutions separately. The
Additional Assistant Commissioner of Endowments observed in 1973, The two branches are
now working independently without any regard to the schemes framed from time to time.21
Once the division within the community was acknowledged, the two groups of renouncers
went about the business of managing the Gadi separately without paying any heed to judgments
and settlements.
From the 1970s, Oriya newspapers started reporting on statements, events and ceremonies
carried out by both the groups, and in the 1980s and 1990s, scholars working on
Mahima Dharma found it necessary to assess the claims of the rival orders. Books and pamphlets,
newspaper reports and essays in journals all came to be regarded by the ascetics as either
supporting or opposing their point of view. Two groups of sanyasis who differed over the
interpretation of the Gurus teachings ended up establishing two rival orders within a faith that
got restructured as a sect within Hinduism.
Power in Religion
The intricate tale narrated above offers insights into the institutionalization and
sedentarization22 of a radical religion over the course of its existence, in this case through
its interaction with the law. While there is nothing novel about institutionalization, it is important to pay attention to the particular paths it takes. A linking of everyday pursuits to particular
circumstances23 the renouncers need for, perceptions and apprehensions of law and power
offers insights into the real and symbolic meanings of power and politics as articulated within a
religious endeavour.
The ascetics of a marginal faith turn to the legal machinery in order to keep a contingent
community of believers together. If this highlights the vital presence of the state in the life of
the community, it also demonstrates the various ways law and the state are drawn upon and
apprehended by marginal communities. The ascetics urge to form a bounded community
out of a disparate group of followers blend with the emphasis of the law in framing the faith
through fixed and formal, unambiguous and authoritative written evidence to produce a shift
in accent within the faith from the periphery to the centre, and from the oral to the written.
Under the auspices of legal and ritual power, and through ascetic negotiations of religion and
modernity, Mahima Dharma evolves as a sect within the universe of Hinduism.
If this substantiates Marc Galanters point that that the judiciary of independent India has
acted as a sponsor for reform within Hinduism,24 it also underscores the contingency of the
religious that, at the same time, redefines state power through its various claims. If the neutral
judiciary of independent India intervenes to define religion and keep it separate from politics,
authoritative texts produced by ascetics of a heterodox faith inf luence the judges understanding
of religion. An intertwined articulation shores up the separation of religion and power.

Short Biography
Ishita Banerjee-Dube received her BA, MA and PhD degrees in History from the University of
Calcutta. She is a Professor at the Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mxico,
and holds the highest Rank (level 3) in the National Scheme of Reserachers (SNI), Conacyt,
Mexico, and is an editor of the series Hinduism with De Gruyter Open. Banerjee-Dube has
been a Visiting Professor at the Department of History, University of Syracuse; the School of
Womens Studies, Jadavpur University; Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla;
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628 Religion, Power and Law in Twentieth Century India

visiting scholar at the South Asia program, Cornell University; Sd-Asien Institut, University of
Heidelberg; and Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
Banerjee-Dube is the author of four books: Divine Affiars (Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
2001); Religion, Law, and Power (Anthem Press, 2007), Fronteras del Hinduismo (in Spanish, El
Colegio de Mxico, 2007); and A History of Modern India (Cambridge University Press,
2015). She has edited eight volumes including Caste in History (Oxford University Press,
2008), Ancient to Modern (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Cooking Cultures (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and published numerous articles in international journals and book
chapters in anthologies such as Subaltern Studies. Her research explores issues of religion, law and
power, time and temporality, language and identity, gender and nation, food and emotion, and
democracy and social justice.
Notes
* Correspondence: Center for Asian and African Studies (CEAA), El Colegio de Mxico, Camino al Ajusco no. 20,
C.P. 10740, Mexico DF, Mexico. Email: ibanerje@colmex.mx
1
I use Orissa and Oriya and not Odisha and Odia because I am speaking of a period prior to 2011, when the decision to
change the name of the state of Orissa to Odisha was taken ofcially.
2
Two representative examples, among a host of writings, are Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 128, 2954; and Asad, Formations
of the Secular, 117, 181201.
3
Dube, Modernity and Its Enchantments: An Introduction, 6; Dube, After Conversion.
4
Cooked rice readily absorbs pollution from those who prepare and serve it, and accepting cooked rice from a person
belonging to another caste would, in effect, be symbolically accepting a relatively high degree of pollution from the
giver. Babb, Divine Hierarchy, 55. Mahima Swami played havoc with this strict code by accepting cooked rice from the
lowest castes but not from Brahmans and kings.
5
Balkaldharis were recorded as marfatdars in the rst bandobasta (settlement) carried out during the rule of Maharaja
Bhagirathi Bhramarbar Bahadur, soon after the construction of the Gadi Mandir. Baba, Mahimagadi Mahimadham, 7071.
6
Civil Suit No. 215 of 1936. We do not know if this was the rst suit. I came across a typescript of the records up to the
1970s, titled Joranda Selections from Religious Endowments in the archives of the Orissa Research Project,
South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, in 1991.
7
This happened in 1962. Order on Miscellaneous Appeal No. 58 of 1960 and Civil Revision No. 190 of 1960. The Orissa
Hindu Religious Endowments Act was passed in 1951.
8
The literal meaning of itihasa is thus it has been iti-hi-asa. We are not sure if the Itihasa was published prior to the law suit,
but the decision to move to law courts had certainly been taken.
9
Baba, Satya Mahima Dharmara Itihasa, 1.
10
Baba, Itihasa, 23.
11
For distinct approaches to itihasa-purana and puranetihasa, see Thapar, Society and Historical Consciousness, 35383; and
Chatterjee, Claims on the Past, 149. The order in the use of this compound noun is signicant. While for Thapar, Itihasa
comes rst as it highlights the presence of historical consciousness in India, for Chatterjee, the Puranic tradition of itihasa,
which easily moved between divine and secular time and history, is of great import.
12
For an insightful analysis of myth as a mode of ordering the historical past, see Dube, Untouchable Pasts, 115144.
13
Baba, Itihasa.
14
Baba, Itihasa, 11.
15
Baba, Sankshipta Itihasa, 19.
16
The account of Mahima Dharma in the Gazetteer of Dhenkanal, for instance, closely followed the Itihasa. Senapati et al.
Orissa District Gazetteers: Dhenkanal. The account of the Dharma is to be found in the Appendix, pp. 4437.
17
For a detailed discussion and analysis of the depositions, see Banerjee-Dube, Religion, Law, and Power, 141146.
18
The main conditions laid down by the award were prexed by all parties agreed and we also decide.
19
This view was expressed in the verdict that dismissed Miscellaneous Appeal No. 58 of 1960 and Civil Revision No. 190 of
1960 on 12 November 1962.
20
Ibid.

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629

21
To the Commissioner of Endowments, Orissa, Bhubaneswar, from the Additional Assistant Commissioner of Endowments,
22 January 1973, Management File No. 607, Ofce of the Commissioner of Endowments, Bhubaneswar, pp. 601.
22
The term sedentarization has been used by Peter van der Veer to explain the process of settling down of the wandering
Ramanandi ascetics. Van der Veer, Gods on Earth.
23
de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday, ix.
24
Galanter, Law and Society in Modern India, 23758; Galanter, Hinduism, secularism and the Indian judiciary, 26893.

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Press, 1984).
Dube, S., Untouchable Pasts: Religion, Identity, and Power Among A Central Indian Community. (Albany, NY: State University of
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Globalization. (London, New York, New Delhi: Routledge, 2009), 141.
Dube, S., After Conversion. (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2011).
Galanter, M., Law and Society in Modern India. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Galanter, M., Hinduism, Secularism and the Indian Judiciary, in R. Bhargava (ed.), Secularism and Its Critics. (New Delhi:
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Primary Sources
Joranda Selections from Religious Endowments, (SAI, Heidelberg, 1970). Records, Ofce of the Commissioner of
Endowments, Bhubaneswar.

2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

History Compass 13/12 (2015): 621629, 10.1111/hic3.12290