Is Narayana Guru Part of Sanatan Dharma?

Recently (December 31, 2024) while inaugurating a conference as a part of the Sivagiri Mutt pilgrimage, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan supported the proposal of Swami Satchitananda to stop the practice of removing shirts to keep the torso bare while entering temples.

It is believed that this practice came into being to identify those wearing the sacred thread -- the upper castes alone were privileged to wear it. Some people doubt this, but it is unlikely that there was any other reason for keeping one’s torso uncovered. The one’s not wearing the sacred thread were to be prohibited from entering the temple.

Vijayan also said there were efforts to propagate that Narayana Guru was part of the Sanatan tradition, but he was far away from it as he propagated, ‘one caste, one religion, one God’. This equality, irrespective of caste and religion, is far away from the core of Sanatan Dharma.

Vijayan also pointed out that Guru’s life and work was very relevant today, as violence is being orchestrated by instigating religious sentiments. He said Guru was not merely a religious leader, he was a great humanist.

Vijayan’s critics are also criticising him, saying that during his tenure as Chief Minister, Hindus were being troubled. They cite the example of Sabarimala, where the ruling party decided to support the Supreme Court ruling of entry of even menstrual age women to the sacred temple. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons are up against Vijayan for insulting Sanatan Dharma in this instance also.

The debate around Sanatan Dharma seems to have come to the fore for the second time. First, it came up when Udhayanidhi Stalin spoke against Sanatan. The BJP-RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) is stating that Sanatan can’t just be reduced to caste and chaturvarnya.

Incidentally, in 2022, Kerala had submitted a float for the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. It displayed Narayana Guru. The jury from the Union Defence Ministry stated that the Kerala float should display the Sankaracharya from Kaladi rather than Guru. This was a major reason for rejecting the float.

As such, Sanantan stands for eternal and has been used for Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Hinduism is a religion that has no single prophet or no single holy book. The word ‘Hindu’ does not find mention in its holy scriptures. It has two major streams, Brahmanism and Shramanism.

Brahmanism is based on graded inequality and patriarchal values. B.R Ambedkar renounced this Hinduism as he felt that Hinduism was dominated by Brahmanical values. The Shramanic traditions, include Nath, Ajivikas, Tantra, Bhakti traditions, which are away from the values of inequality.

Today, in popular parlance, Sanatan Dharma and Hindu Dharma are interchangeable. Some ideologues claim that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life based on Dharma. As per them, Dharma is not the same as religion.

As such, Sanatan Dharma stands for primarily the Varna system, caste inequality and sticking to these traditions. Dharma is best understood as religiously ordained duties. What is being opposed by social reformers is the rejection of a religion that is based on inequality.

Take the example of Ambedkar, who regarded Buddha, Kabir and Jyotirao Phule as his Gurus. What mattered to him was the rejection of inequality of caste and gender. In medieval India, saints Kabir, Tukaram, Namdeo, Narsi Mehta and their likes harped on opposition to the caste system and some of them even had to face attacks from upper caste rulers.

Narayana Guru comes in as a great social reformer against the caste system and transcends religious divides. No wonder, the present ruling dispensation, guided by Brahminical Hinduism, could not accept the float from Kerala on Narayana Guru.

Narayana Guru was a deeply humane person. During the course of his growing up, he went into deeper engagement with spiritualism and the practice of Yoga. During the course of his philosophical journey in 1888, he visited Aruvippuram, where he went into meditation. It is during his stay there, that he took a rock from the river, consecrated it and called it an idol of Shiva. This place since then has been known as Aruvippuram Shiva Temple. This act later came to be known as Aruvipuram Pratishta. It created a lot of social commotion and opposition, especially from the upper castes.

The Brahmins did not accept Guru's right to consecrate the idol. He replied to them "This is not a Brahmin Shiva but an Ezhava Shiva". This quote of his later became famous and has been used against casteism. He committed his life to fighting against casteism. His steps were a big practical means in challenging the deep-seated caste system. The revolutionary understanding of Guru was ‘one caste, one religion, one God’.

Narayana Guru goes much beyond caste and religious divides to proclaim a single humanity. Later, he went on to open a school, which was open even to low castes, quite on the lines of what Jyotirao Phule did in Maharashtra. Like the principles of Ambedkar’s Kalaram Temple movement, he went on to build temples open to all castes.

The recent suggestion of Swami Satchitananda, supported by Pinarayi Vijayan, also argues that a bare torso may be medically bad as it may transmit diseases. There are many practices which need to change with time. One recalls that women did not have the right to cover their breasts. There was a breast tax if women covered the top. It was Tipu Sultan, when he annexed Kerala, who abolished breast tax and women gained their dignity as they were permitted to cover their breasts.

Temples are a part of our community life. Such changes in dress code have to accompany the changes in social patterns. Any opposition to this is like putting the clock back. Politics in the name of religion in most places is against social change and change in political values.

Kerala has many contrasts in diverse fields. It was here that on the one hand, the Acharya from Kaladi Sankara countered the Buddhists in debate. The Buddhists argued on materialist grounds to focus on the issues of this world, while roughly speaking Sankara tried to argue that the world was an illusion, supporting the idealist philosophy.

In today’s India, Kerala included, we need to follow the path of saints like Narayana Guru and Kabir, whose humane values gave a direction to amity in society. The conservative ‘status quo’ in most matters, therefore, retards social progress.

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.