Nandanar: The Saint Who Kept Saying He Would Go Tomorrow

This story has been argued about for a very long time, and a guide that presented it as straightforwardly uplifting would be doing a disservice.

What the story contains:

• A man was excluded from temples because of the community he was born into
• He was bonded labour and could not leave without permission
• He accepted the exclusion and did not challenge it; he circled the temple from outside
• When he was finally admitted, he was required to pass through fire first
• And what came out was a brahmana

The central problem. He was not admitted as himself.

The tradition's resolution is that he was transformed into somebody who could be admitted. The exclusion was not lifted; he was changed to fit it.

How this has been read. Two very different ways, and both are held by serious people.

The traditional reading:

• The fire is a purification in the ritual sense, not a comment on his worth
• The sacred thread signifies his attainment, not a change in his identity
• The story's point is that the Lord admitted him against the practice of the temple, and the Dikshitars were instructed to do so
• It is a story about the deity overruling the community's exclusion
• His inclusion among the sixty three, in a canon recited in that temple, is itself the argument

The critical reading:

• A man had to be burned and remade before he was allowed in
• The story ends with his disappearance, so he does not have to be accommodated as a living presence
• The exclusion is left intact for everybody else
• It is a story that appears to include while confirming the boundary
• It has been used, historically, to counsel patience to excluded communities rather than to challenge the exclusion

Both readings are available in the text and both have been held.

Who has argued this. The critical reading is not a modern import.

• Dalit writers and thinkers in Tamil Nadu have written extensively about the Nandanar story and have been direct about the fire
• The story's popular form, Gopalakrishna Bharathi's Nandanar Charitram of the nineteenth century, a Tamil musical composition, is itself a nineteenth century reworking, and has been analysed for what it added
• The 1942 Tamil film Nandanar, with Dandapani Desikar, made the story enormously popular and shaped how most people know it
• Scholarly and literary criticism of the story is substantial and is worth reading

What can be said fairly:

• The story is in the tradition's canon and Nandanar is among the sixty three, carried in procession at Mylapore every year with the others
• The fire episode is in the text and it means what it appears to mean
• The tradition also produced Thiruppaan Alvar, where the resolution is the opposite: the priest carries him in as he is, and the deity rebukes the priest
• So the tradition contains both resolutions, and they are not the same

The comparison is instructive. Set them side by side.

Thiruppaan Alvar: struck by a brahmana, the deity refuses worship until that brahmana carries the injured man into the sanctum on his shoulders. The man enters as himself. The priest is the one who has to change.

Nandanar: excluded, waits outside, is finally admitted after passing through fire, and emerges transformed. He is the one who has to change.

Two canons, two saints from excluded communities, two different answers.

Where this leaves a reader. Knowing both.

The tradition is not one thing. It produced the story of Thiruppaan Alvar and it produced the story of Nandanar, and it produced the institutions that maintained the exclusions for another thousand years while reciting both.

And the legal position now is unambiguous: temple entry on the basis of community is illegal in India under Article 17 and Article 25 of the Constitution.

The story has a second dimension that is frequently overlooked, and it is worth drawing out.

He could not leave.

Before the temple exclusion, there is a simpler obstacle: he was bonded to a landowner and needed permission to go anywhere.

What that means concretely:

• His time was not his own
• Requesting leave meant asking somebody who could refuse
• The refusal did not need a reason
• When he pressed, he was given an impossible condition as a way of refusing while appearing reasonable

The impossible task. This detail is the sharpest thing in the story.

The landowner did not say no. He set a condition that could not be met: plough and sow a large field in one night.

That is a recognisable move, and anybody who has been on the wrong side of a power relationship recognises it.

The tradition's answer: the field was done. By morning it was ploughed and sown.

And the landowner, faced with it, let him go.

What the tradition does not say. It does not say the bondage was wrong.

The story resolves the individual case, miraculously, and leaves the arrangement in place.

Bonded labour now. It should be said plainly because it is not historical.

• Bonded labour is illegal in India under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976
• Article 23 of the Constitution prohibits forced labour and trafficking
• It nonetheless persists, in agriculture, brick kilns, quarries, mills and domestic work
• It is enforced by debt: an advance is given, the interest is unpayable, and the person and often their family cannot leave
• Identification and release is a District Magistrate's responsibility and there are rehabilitation entitlements

If you know of a case:

• The National Human Rights Commission and state human rights commissions receive complaints
• District administrations have a duty to conduct release proceedings
• Several established NGOs work specifically on bonded labour release and rehabilitation
• The childline number 1098 covers children in bonded or hazardous work

Why this belongs in a devotional guide. Because the story is about it, and because the tradition's own text puts it there.

The Periya Puranam records that a devotee could not go to a temple because his time belonged to somebody else. That is a description of a labour arrangement, in a religious text, and it is the reason the whole story happens.

A reader who takes the story as being only about caste exclusion is missing half of it.

And the thing he made. Worth noting.

Nandanar's community made leather goods, and the temples used them: the skins of the drums, the thongs, the equipment of temple ritual.

So the temple he could not enter used objects made by his community, in worship, every day.

That contradiction is not commented on in the text. It is simply true, and it is worth noticing.

The same pattern elsewhere:

• The parai drum, played at Tamil funerals and festivals, is made and played by communities historically excluded, and the instrument's name is connected to the community name
• Temple flowers, garlands, cleaning and construction have historically involved communities that could not enter
• Chokhamela in Maharashtra, described in a later entry, has exactly the same situation at Pandharpur

The economy of temple worship has always run substantially on the labour of people the institutions excluded, and the traditions' own saint lists contain those people.

Since this is the entry where the subject cannot be avoided, the history deserves setting out properly.

The situation:

• Exclusion of certain communities from temple entry was widespread across India and was enforced
• It was not universal: practice varied by region, temple and period, and many village and community shrines had no such exclusion
• The great temples generally did exclude

The reform movements:

• Vaikom Satyagraha, 1924 to 25, in Travancore, over the right to use the roads around the Vaikom temple. Periyar was arrested, Gandhi was involved, and the Akalis sent a langar
• Guruvayur Satyagraha, 1931 to 32, led by K. Kelappan, with A. K. Gopalan among the volunteers
• The Temple Entry Proclamation of 12 November 1936 in Travancore, under Maharaja Chithira Thirunal and Diwan C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, which opened all state controlled temples to all Hindus
• Similar legislation followed in Madras, Cochin and elsewhere
• Article 17 of the Constitution abolished untouchability and made its practice an offence
• Article 25(2)(b) provides for throwing open Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus
• The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989

The 1936 Proclamation is worth quoting the substance of. It stated that no Hindu should by reason of birth, caste or community be denied entry to, or worship at, temples controlled by the state.

Gandhi described it as a modern miracle.

Where it stands now:

• Temple entry on the basis of community is illegal
• Individual instances of discrimination continue to be reported and prosecuted
• Disputes over specific practices at specific temples continue, including over priesthood
• Several states have taken steps to appoint priests from all communities, and this has been litigated

What a devotee can do:

• Do not participate in or accept exclusion of anybody from a temple on the basis of community
• If you see it, it can be reported to the police and to the state SC/ST commission
• Do not treat temple workers, cleaners or cooks as ritually beneath you
• Do not repeat the claim that these exclusions were required by the shastras, since the tradition's own most celebrated saints came from excluded communities

And the honest summary of the tradition's record:

The canon repeatedly honoured people from excluded communities. Nandanar, Thiruppaan Alvar, Kannappa, the Nayanars from every occupation, Ravidas, Chokhamela, Kanaka Dasa, Nandanar again in Telugu tradition.

The institutions maintained the exclusions for centuries while reciting their verses daily.

The reform came from within, principally from people who used the tradition's own canon against its practice, and it took a very long time and considerable personal cost.

And it is not finished. Discrimination in and around temples still occurs and is still reported.

A person can love this tradition and know all of that. Knowing it is a better basis than not knowing it, and the people who did the reforming were, overwhelmingly, devotees.

Most people who know the Nandanar story know it through music, and the musical version deserves its own treatment.

Gopalakrishna Bharathi:

• Nineteenth century Tamil composer, roughly 1810 to 1896
• From the Thanjavur region
• A contemporary of Tyagaraja, whom he is said to have met
• Composer of the Nandanar Charitram, a musical narrative of Nandanar's life

What the Nandanar Charitram is:

• A kathakalakshepam work, a musical narrative for performance
• Songs interspersed with narration
• In Tamil, set in Carnatic ragas
• Composed in the nineteenth century, a thousand years after the Periya Puranam

Its most famous songs. Several are standard Carnatic concert repertoire and are widely known.

• Varugalamo ayya, may I come, sir, in raga Manji, in which Nandanar asks whether he may approach
• Thillai chidambaram, on the temple
• Enneramum, and others

Varugalamo is the one everybody knows. It is a song in which a man asks permission to come, and it is sung in concert halls by musicians of every community.

What the nineteenth century version added. This is worth knowing.

The Periya Puranam account is short. Gopalakrishna Bharathi expanded it very substantially, adding:

• A named landowner and a developed relationship with him
• Extended scenes of Nandanar's humility and self abasement
• Dialogue
• The emotional structure most people associate with the story

The critique of it. Substantial and worth stating.

Critics, including Dalit writers and scholars, have argued that the nineteenth century version:

• Increases the emphasis on Nandanar's submissiveness well beyond the original
• Presents his acceptance of exclusion as a virtue
• Was composed in a period when the caste order was under pressure and functioned to defend it
• Made the story emotionally satisfying to an upper caste audience in a way the original was not

The counter view is that it made the story of a Dalit saint into standard Carnatic repertoire, so that the name and the story are known to everybody who listens to that music.

Both are true and they do not cancel.

The 1942 film. Nandanar, with Dandapani Desikar, based on the Charitram, was a very large success and fixed the popular version.

How to listen to it now. The songs are beautiful and the argument about them is real.

A person can listen to Varugalamo in Manji, which is one of the most affecting pieces in the Carnatic repertoire, and also know that it is a song about a man asking permission to enter a building he had every right to enter.

That is not a reason not to listen. It is a reason to hear what is in it.

A note on Carnatic music and caste. Since it is connected.

The Carnatic tradition has had an ongoing and public argument about caste, access and representation, including about who performs, who is programmed, the historical exclusion of hereditary performing communities including the devadasi community, and the treatment of composers and performers from outside the dominant communities.

That argument is current and is conducted publicly by musicians. It is worth knowing about if you listen to this music, and it is directly connected to the fact that its most performed song about a Dalit saint was written by somebody who was not one.

Places

Thiruppunkur:

• In Mayiladuthurai district, Tamil Nadu, near Sirkazhi
• The Sivalokanathar temple
• The Nandi sits off centre, to one side, so that the linga is visible from outside
• The tank associated with Nandanar
• A Paadal Petra Sthalam
• Quiet, small, and the Nandi is the thing to see

The off centre Nandi. It is worth going for.

In almost every Shiva temple the Nandi sits directly in the axis, facing the sanctum. At Thiruppunkur it does not, and the temple's own account is that it moved for a man who was not allowed inside.

Whatever you make of the story, the architectural fact is there and it is unusual.

Chidambaram:

• The Nataraja temple
• The shrines to the Nayanars
• Nandanar's own shrine

Adhanur:

• His birthplace, in the Chola country

Mylapore, Chennai:

• The Arupathimoovar in Panguni, where he is carried with the other sixty two

What to take from this entry

One. The tradition contains an argument with itself.

Thiruppaan Alvar enters as he is, and the priest has to carry him. Nandanar enters after passing through fire, and it is he who changes.

Both are canonical. A reader is entitled to notice which one they think is right, and the tradition has produced people on both sides.

Two. He could not go because his time was not his own.

Before the caste exclusion there is a labour arrangement, and the story turns on somebody needing permission to leave. That is the part most retellings drop.

Three. Tomorrow.

His name is made out of postponement. He said he would go tomorrow, for years.

That is worth sitting with, because it is the most ordinary thing in the story. Most people's relationship with the thing they intend to do is exactly that, and the tradition made a saint out of somebody who kept meaning to.

Four. And the practical instruction.

If there is a thing you have been saying you will do tomorrow, the entry does not have a miracle to offer you.

What it has is the observation that the tradition named a man after the phrase, kept the name, and put it in a canon, which suggests it understood the condition very well.

Practice

• Namah Shivaya
• The Arupathimoovar, if you can be in Chennai in Panguni
• Varugalamo in raga Manji, listened to with the whole story in mind
• And, in the spirit of the thing: do not exclude anybody from anything on the basis of what they were born into, and say so when you see it done

A closing thought. A man who worked somebody else's fields and made the leather for the drums the temple used spent years saying he would go tomorrow to see a dance he was not allowed to look at.

When he finally got permission to leave, it was because a field got ploughed overnight. When he got to the temple he walked around the outside because he would not go in.

And when he was finally let in, they burned him first.

The tradition put him in the list of sixty three, carries him through the streets of Mylapore every year with the kings and the brahmanas, and sings a song about him in concert halls in which he asks whether he may come.