Maharaj Libel Case
The Maharaj Libel Case was an 1862 trial in the Bombay Court (then just in transition from a Supreme Court to a High Court) in British India. The case was against Nanabhai Rustomji Ranina and Karsandas Mulji, they alleged that & their public accusation is that the religious leaders of Pushtimarg had had sexual liaisons with women devotees, & it was libelous for petitioner.
Background[edit]
The case arose when the plaintiff, Jadunathji Brijratanji Maharaj, a religious leader, filed a case of libel against a reformer and journalist Karsandas Mulji for writing an article in the newspaper, Satyaprakash, titled Hinduo No Asli Dharam Ane Atyar Na Pakhandi Mato (lit. 'The True/Original Religion of the Hindus and the Present Hypocritical/phoney Opinions'). In this article he questioned the values of a Hindu sect called the Pushtimarg or Vallabhacharya Sampradaya. The article was claimed to be libelous by the plaintiff. In particular were accusations that Jadunathji had sexual liaisons with women followers and that men were expected to show their devotion by offering their wives for sex with the religious leaders.[1]
Jadunath was a religious leader of the Vaishnavite Pushtimarg sect of Hinduism. The Pushtimarg was founded in the 16th century by Vallabha and worships Krishna as the supreme being. The leadership of the sect remained with Vallabha's direct male descendants who possess the titles of maharaja. Theologically Vallabha and his descendants are accorded partial divinity as mediating figures for Krishna's grace who are able to render Krishna's presence immediately to the devotee.[2][3]
The Pushtimarg's followers in Gujarat, Kathiyawad, Cutch, and central India came from rich merchants, bankers, and farmers, including the Bhatiya, Lohana, and Baniya castes.[4] Many of these mercantile groups migrated to Bombay under British rule as the city was the political and financial capital of western India.[5] The merchant groups were headed by merchant-princes or seths who were heavily involved in the political and cultural milieu of Bombay. The seths, despite their general lack of education, ignorance of English language, and British political traditions, were influential in Bombay society as leaders of business communities and maintainers of cultural honour.[6]
By the mid-ninteenth century the British had established political control over the Indian subcontinent and sought to create a administrative-legal framework to manage their colonial interests. British officials sought to compile Indian legal doctrines and apply them to British common law, effectively stripping native groups of civil and criminal self-governance in favor of a unified legal system. This desire to produce legal codes spawned the Orientalist school of Indology, whose grand narrative of Indian history was that of a decline from an ancient golden age into a degenerate, superstitious modern society. The British established schools and colleges that would educate new generations of Anglicized Indians who would be supportive of social reforms. These institutions created a new class of urban English speaking professionals who claimed to be superior leaders of society due to their intricate knowledge of the British administrative machinery. These English-speaking professionals joined various religious reform movements who concurred with the Orientalist view of modern Indian religion, and especially opposed the seths for their role in so-claimed excessive religious patronage.[6]
The Pushtimarg religious heads, the maharajas, began settlling Bombay in the 19th century and by 1860 there were five maharajas in the city. The maharajas sought to exert control over their devotees and castes through seth intermediaries, and they were generally successful against anonymous reformers and caste solidarity. One such reformer was Karsandas Mulji, an English-educated reformer who was the editor of the Satyaprakash newspaper. Mulji came from a orthodox Pushtimarg merchant family who were highly respected in Bombay society, however Karsandas was disowned for his reformist views and had to drop out of Elphinstone College. Mulji became well known amongst Bombay reformists, and he launched attacks against the Pushtimarg and the Bombay maharajas for belived sexual depravity. Sexual allegations against the maharajas had first became public in 1855, and the senior-most maharaja in Bombay, Jivanlal, launched rebuttals against the reformers. Jivanlal attempted to silence criticism from Pushtimarg devotees by making his supporters sign a document that would censor their criticism of him under threat of excommunication. Mulji decried Jivanlal's document as a "slavery bond", and in 1860 published a work claiming the Pushtimarg was a heretical sect which advocated sexual mistreatment of women. The Bombay maharajas then decided to bring in Jadunath Brijratan, a well-known maharaja from Surat, to defend their stances. Jadunath had several public and press debates with Mulji and other reformers.[7]
Eventually Jadunathji Maharaj filed a libel case in the Bombay Supreme Court on 14 May 1861 against Karsandas Mulji, editor of Satyaprakash, a Gujarati weekly newspaper, and its publisher Nanabhai Rustomji Ranina, for defaming the plaintiff in an article published on 21 October 1860.[8]
Case and judgement[edit]
The trial of the case in the Supreme Court was before a full court consisting of the Chief Justice Mathew Sausse and Joseph Arnould. The case was followed with great interest by the press and thousands of the general public attended the case in court. In the course of the case, the sect's philosophies were examined and compared with other Hindu texts by missionary orientalist scholars like John Wilson. Doctors, including Bhau Daji, testified to having treated the religious leader for syphilis and several witnesses recounted his erotic escapades. Max Weber examined the religious sect and noted that their path to salvation was based on sexual orgies.[9] The case went in favour of the journalist and Judge Joseph Arnould pronounced that he was only doing his duty as a journalist of exposing the misdeeds of the religious leader. In his own words - "a public journalist is a public teacher: the true function of the press, that by virtue of which it has rightly grown to be one of the great powers of the modern world—is the function of teaching, elevating and enlightening those who fall within the range of its influence."[10][11]
The case commenced on 25 January 1862 and ended on 4 March 1862. Thirty-one witnesses were examined for the plaintiff and thirty-three for the defendant. The judgment was given on 22 April 1862 in favour of the defendant, Karsandas Mulji. The plaintiff was asked to pay Rs. 11,500 to Karsandas, who had to bear a cost of Rs 13,000.[8]
A related case was the Bhatia Conspiracy case which arose when Gokuldas Liladhar and eight others were accused of intimidating and preventing witnesses from providing evidence against Jadunathji.[12]
Reaction[edit]
The libel case stirred unprecedented interest in the public. Karsandas Mulji's efforts and the court decision received praise from the liberals and the press.[8][13] For his part, Mulji was cited by the local English presses as 'Indian Luther', after the Christian reformer Martin Luther.[14]
In popular culture[edit]
Saurabh Shah, Gujarati author and journalist, has written a novel titled Maharaj based on the case[15] which was awarded the Nandshankar award by the Narmad Sahitya Sabha.[16]
Maitri Goswami, Dhawal Patel et al., have written a book titled Doctrines of Pushtibhaktimarga: Allegations, Conspiracies and Facts (In context of Maharaj Libel Case)[17] based on the case.
References[edit]
- ^ Shodhan, A. (1997). "Women in the Maharaj libel case: a re-examination". Indian Journal of Gender Studies. 4 (2): 123–39. doi:10.1177/097152159700400201. PMID 12321343. S2CID 25866333.
- ^ * Barz, Richard (2018). "Vallabha Sampradāya/Puṣṭimārga". In Jacobsen, Knut A.; Basu, Helene; Malinar, Angelika; Narayanan, Vasudha (eds.). Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online. Brill.
- ^ * Saha, Shandip (2004). Creating a Community of Grace: A History of the Puṣṭi Mārga in Northern and Western India (1493-1905) (Thesis). University of Ottawa. p. 255.
- ^ Thakkar 1997, p. 48.
- ^ Saha 2004, p. 269.
- ^ a b Saha 2004, p. 258-279.
- ^ Saha 2004, p. 281-289.
- ^ a b c Thakkar, Usha (4 January 1997). "Puppets on the Periphery-Women and Social Reform in 19th Century Gujarati Society". Economic and Political Weekly. 32 (1–2). Mumbai: 46–52. ISSN 0012-9976.(subscription required)
- ^ Lütt, Jürgen (1987). "Max Weber and the Vallabhacharis". International Sociology. 2 (3): 277–287. doi:10.1177/026858098700200305. S2CID 143677162.
- ^ Scott, J. Barton (2015). "How to Defame a God: Public Selfhood in the Maharaj Libel Case". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 38 (3): 387–402. doi:10.1080/00856401.2015.1050161. hdl:1807/95441. S2CID 143251675.
- ^ Haberman, David L. (1993-08-01). "On Trial: The Love of the Sixteen Thousand Gopees". History of Religions. 33 (1): 44–70. doi:10.1086/463355. ISSN 0018-2710. S2CID 162268682.
- ^ Mehta, Makarand (2002). Gujarati Vishwakosh (Gujarati Encyclopedia). Vol. 15. Ahmedabad: Gujarati Vishwakosh Trust. p. 451.
- ^ Yagnik, Achyut (2005-08-24). Shaping Of Modern Gujarat. Penguin UK. pp. 93–94. ISBN 9788184751857.
- ^ Kumar, Anu (9 September 2017). "The Long History of Priestly Debauchery". Economic and Political Weekly. 52 (36). Mumbai: 79–80. eISSN 2349-8846. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 26697565.(subscription required)
- ^ Shah, Saurabh (2014-01-18). Maharaj - Gujarati eBook. R R Sheth & Co Pvt Ltd. ISBN 9789351221708.
- ^ Shah, Saurabh (2014-01-18). Maharaj - Gujarati eBook. R R Sheth & Co Pvt Ltd. ISBN 9789351221708.
- ^ Patel, Dhawal; Goswami, Maitri; Sharma, Utkarsha; Shirodariya, Umang; Bhatt, Ami; Mehrishi, Pratyush; Goswami, Sharad (2021-04-21). Doctrines of Pushtibhaktimarga: A True representation of the views of Sri Vallabhacharya: In the context of Maharaj Libel Case (in Hindi). Shree Vallabhacharya Trust, Mandvi - Kutch. ISBN 978-93-82786-37-5.