The HR&CE department’s building was completed on Nungambakkam High Road on November 2, 1959.
| Photo Credit: Antony
Karthik Bhatt, that indefatigable researcher on Madras, informs me that the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu is in its 100th year. Of late, this umbrella body that exercises supervision and control over all State-run temples is frequently in the news. That the revenue generated by it is clubbed with the State’s income is held against it. Also often challenged in court are its sometimes very vague plans to utilise lands endowed to various shrines. But it must be said in its favour that it brings a certain administrative rigour to the running of the larger shrines which any student of history will know was lacking earlier. However, its running of smaller and remote temples is not edifying, to say the least. Suffice it to say that it is a mixed bag.
It was in 1923 that the Government of Madras passed the Hindu Religious Endowments Act and in 1925, the Hindu Religious Endowments Board (HREB) came up as a consequence. The Raja of Panagal, who was its prime mover, envisaged a body on the lines of the Board of Charity Commissioners in England, and the HREB, when formed, had a President and four Commissioners. There followed a series of litigation challenging the Act itself and later various provisions in it, and though the Board itself continued to function, it was only in 1959 that the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, as we know of it, came to be passed.
By then, many changes had happened — India had become independent, the Madras Presidency had given way to Madras State from which Andhra was carved out in 1953, followed by further border alignments in 1957, and so the Act, when passed, came to be operational in what is now Tamil Nadu. Interestingly, the temples in the city of Madras remained outside the purview of the HREB from 1925 to 1940, whatever be the reason. And it was an amendment to the Act in 1951 that replaced the HREB with the HR&CE Department, to be headed by a Commissioner, replacing the President of earlier times. The first incumbent of the post of President was incidentally Sir T. Sadasiva Iyer, former Justice of the High Court of Madras.
In the process of writing this article I learnt much. It was news to me that the Department has a magazine titled Tirukkoil, many of whose issues are now digitised and online. From Vol. 2, No. 3, December 1959, I gleaned that the HREB and later the HR & CE Department functioned, from inception, on the Government Printing Press premises which is at the end of Mint Street and was once the Madras Mint. The present and rather handsome building on Nungambakkam High Road, designed by architect Vincent Isaac and executed by contractor S. Thirunavukkarasu, was completed on November 2, 1959. Early that morning, vedic ceremonies, chanting of Tirumurai and a nagaswaram and tavil performance were held. The building was declared open that afternoon by M. Bhaktavatsalam, then HR &CE Minister, Government of Madras.
The same article also gives the previous history of the property. It spans 26 grounds and was owned by Dewan Bahadur C.S. Ratnasabhapathy Mudaliar from whom the government purchased it in 1946. Though he is associated more with Coimbatore (R.S. Puram commemorates him), owing to his interests in spinning mills, he was from Chengalpattu and like so many other Mudaliars from that area to play a prominent role in Madras Presidency politics. He was also a patron of arts and a pillar of the Tamil Isai Sangam.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)
Published – February 04, 2025 10:48 pm IST