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How did the temples of Kerala come under the state government of the Devaswom board administration?Thanks to Suhas Nair for the question;Short Answer:On basis of Royal proclamation annexing all temples under the Crown. The crown (monarchy) simply got transferred to the state (people) along with all assets that the former held, on Jun 1st, 1949 when the Travancore-Cochin Kingdoms became a state of India.Long answer:The 5 State Devaswom Boards of Kerala, namely Travancore, Cochin, Guruvayur, Malabar and KoodalmanikyamUnlike many do think, Devaswom is relatively a new concept in Kerala. It started gaining popularity only in the 18th century and became a standard only by mid 19th century.The word Devaswom originates from 2 words- Deva (deity/god) and Swom (Property). So in short devaswom means Properties of the deity.Essentially the whole concept of Devaswom is managing the properties, assets, and resources of a temple; not its rites or rituals or mode of worship.Prior to Devaswom, Kerala had two forms of managing temple resources.The most common method was Brahmaswom (Property of Brahmins). In this case, the entire temple belongs to a Brahmin family (Nampoothiri family) or a group of families who enjoys hereditary rights over the temple and its properties. The Malayalam word for such owners is called YOGAKAR meaning members of a council or company. They have ownership of all properties of a temple as its trustee. Note, they are not owners, rather hereditary trustees who can enjoy the benefits from the land.Another model was Rajaswom (Property of Nobles/Royals). In this case, temple and all its associated property would be under the trusteeship of a Nair/Royal family.Under the feudal system, the ownership of land belongs to the Crown (not the individual King, rather the state). The King who holds the crown grants an irrevocable grant of privilege/lease etc to a Brahmin family to hold Brahmaswom or to Nair/clans of smaller royal families to hold Rajaswom, in return of military support to the Crown as there was no concept of Centralized Army in Kerala. Though it's an irrevocable right, the crown does reserve a right to withdraw the privilege, if the latter commits a breach of the agreement or violates the traditional code of conduct for which this grant is made. And Kings alone cannot take a decision, due to collective decision-making system followed in Kerala where these Brahmins and Nairs were part of such crucial councils. In this way, the King’s right is called Melkoiyma (Paramount rights).Effectively, the Crown itself was a prisoner to those people to whom it gave authority. This system almost made various Kings across Kerala less powerful as they were under pressure or dominance of these Brahmins and Nair lords till the 17th century.The 8 feudal lords- Ettuveetil Pillars who were trustees of Sree Padmanabha temple amassed much of its wealth and used to build up their own army that challenged the sovereignty of Venad (Travancore) Kings.An Ettuveetil Pilla making a challenge right in front of the King as the latter was effectively reduced to a puppetBy the 18th century, things came a flash point. The authority of Nairs and Brahmins rose to greater levels that effectively converted Kings to mere rubber stamp authority. They even started intervening succession rights of the royal family as well as decisions of the state. As the Kings were over-dependent on them for military and share of income from the resources they hold, they became more silent. However, things came to a radical change when in Travancore, Young crown prince Marthanda Varma questioned the authority of these councils. The questioning attitude of the young prince led the Brahmin council (Ettara Yogam) where the King had an only half vote questioning the succession of Crown Prince Marthanda Varma to the throne. With the 8 nobles (Ettuveetil Pillamar ) who were the supervising trustees of Sree Padmanabha temple joining with the Brahmins of Ettara Yogam, they wanted the block Marthanda Varma from succeeding the throne and place the King’s son as new King (contrary to Kerala’s matrilineal traditions) who was their puppet. This lead to the succession crisis in Venad and a civil war broke out.The armies of Ettuveetil were much powerful as they were funded by resources and money of Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple. Still, with tactics including deceit, Marthanda Varma succeeded and crushed the nobles with an iron hand in most brutal ways. He realized the nobles got the ability to question the sovereignty of the crown only because of the richness and resources of the temple they had. It's from here, the concept of Devaswom rose prominently. Marthanda Varma Maharaja abolished Brahmaswom as well as Rajaswom concept and ordered all temples to follow Devaswom concept by transferring the properties in name of the deity.Devaswom means, the properties of the temple will now be under name of the deity and the crown will decide the trustees to manage on behalf of the deity. This means, traditionally there was no separation of family accounts and temple accounts. Now it got separated. Similar incidents in Kochi in a similar time period was troubling the reign of Sakthan Thampuran Rama Varma Maharaja of Kochi. Rama Varma over a period of time realized Thrissur Vadakumnathan temple and almost the entire land around it came under a Nampoothiri confederacy under the leadership of Yogathiri (head of a Yogam or council). Accordingly, Cochin Army invaded Thrissur and unleashed a wave of brutality against opposing Nampoothiris and their helpers which lead to the nationalization of Vadakkumnathan temple and banishment of Yogathiri and others from the Cochin Kingdom. With this, the concept of Devaswom took roots in Kochi.However, this system had problems. As trustees were decided by the State who were either leading political figures/nobles etc of the royal court or bureaucrats or council of village leaders of a village as duly authorized by the state, they had no personal attachment with the temple or its properties. This lead to a massive corruption of temple resources by the individual trustees and the system didn’t have much accountability. In addition, families who were associated with a temple had all traditional rights intact. In short, it was falling back into the same trap as it was under the previous system.One of the key areas of the issue was temple lands. In those days, temples had huge land banks in form of farmlands, residential properties and other estates which all earn huge revenue. One typical form of corruption was an appropriation of temple lands into private hands of trustees. They used their influence in politics, to get such lands into private leases for their own benamis or relatives as well as other means to claim income from these estates. After all, these properties were in name of the deity and the deity won’t come out of the shrine to complain. So it was a free run for all these officials.So corruption was at its peak and much of finances of Travancore were at doldrums. The reign of Avittom Thirunal Balarama Varma was the dark age of Travancore with extensive corruption, the rise of Velu Thampi as Prime minister and subsequent revolt against British etc. Soon after the suppression of revolt, Travancore almost came under extreme subordination of British who don’t want similar revolts to happen again.As a means, the British Resident Col.Munro also became the new Diwan/Prime Minister of Travancore as well as neighboring Kochi who too joined in the previous revolt.Col. Munro was a well-known statesman, a visionary and a strong leader. And luckily the King died and his niece- Gowri Lakshmi Bai became the new queen who was bold and progressive. Similarly, in this period Veera Kerala Varma became the new King of Kochi who shared similar views. This helped Col Munro to bring massive changes in Kerala society that has its effects even today.One key approach was to curb the authority of these lords and barons who gained more power in society using temple resources. The corruption was at its peak and it needs to be curbed. For that, the revenue source of these lords has to be curbed which happened to the land resources which were all owned by the deity.It wasn’t possible to nationalize the land of the deity alone, as it would be stripping the deity from its properties. So instead of that, the entire Devaswom itself got Nationalized.Queen Rani Gowri Lakshmi Bai Maharani who nationalized all the temples in TravancoreOn 3rd Kanni 987 Malayalam Era (Sept 1811), H.H Queen Gowri Lakshmi Bayi issued a proclamation nationalizing 348 major devaswoms and 1123 minor devaswoms under the crown. All temples, barring those operating inside a family residential unit (Tharavad temples/ Family temple inside a house) and shrines belonging to Dalits/lower castes (as it wasn’t defined as temples then), were nationalized. A new department was formed called Pandaravakkuppu (Revenue Department) to handle revenue and control of these devaswoms.The managers (Adikaris) who managed the temple were dismissed and a new government position came up called Tahsildar (manager) at local level to manage the resource, then a Pradesha Peshkar (Divisional Secretary) to supervise Tahsildar at the regional level and Diwan Peshkar (undersecretary to the state) at the state level were appointed. All these 3 positions were directly responsible to the crown.Every temple accounts need to be audited and presented before the royal court for the final approval. The land of devaswoms became part of Pandara department, hence the new land title- Pandara vaka Bhoomi (Revenue land) became the new term.Even after nationalization, there was essentially a division of temple activities. The state won’t interfer in the traditional rites, customs, and areas related to worship procedures which were under the control of traditional Nampoothiri families (Uralar). This includes the appointment of priests (Poojaris/Shantikar), purchasing provisions for temple rites like the sandal, flowers, rice and similar etc.Again there was corruption in these activities. These Uralar would inflate the value of sandal and make excess out of it thro’ commissions and etc as the payment was done from the royal treasury. So as they appoint their preferred people as priests who would demand additional grants from the state in their position as Poojaris.King Ayilyam Thirunal and his Diwan T. Madhava Rao made sweeping changes in the Devaswom concept.It was this time Ayilyam Thirunal became the new Maharaja of Travancore. As a strict ruler, he has taken up reports of previous diwan peshkars who reported corruption in temples etc. Accordingly in the year 1035 ME (1860), the King stripped many powers of Uralar. The appointment of Priests now became part of the state responsibility and Division Peshkars got the right to appoint them. So as purchasing rights also vested with the state. Tahsildars got the authority to purchase things and report back to the Finance department. There was a strong financial accountability brought to the system and within 3 years, Travancore was declared as India’s first Public debt free state (1863).Under revised provisions, instead of relying on land and indirect resources of the temple, the govt made everyone in the temple including the priests as salaried employees of the state. So now, a priest doesn’t need to worry about revenue earned from a harvest or sale proceeds of fruits from estate etc which all were key areas for corruption. They all have fixed salary like any government employee apart from post-retirement benefits like pension etc.Even hosting a festival or a pooja became part of the state’s responsibility and govt brought accountability by introducing a tender system for supplies or other activities instead of relying on favourites etc. This brought sweeping changes in the culture of devaswom from catering interests of few to an institution of public accountability.Sree Moolam Thirunal Maharaja who brought the concept of separation of Devaswom as an independent department and administrative service.In 1888 (Chingam 1063 ME), then-the Maharaja Sree Moolam Thirunal brought another set of change.By then, the Tahsildars were working in two roles. As administrators of temple land as well as public land (Sircar Land). This often created a confusion as sometimes, the public land got classified as temple land and vice versa in records. So Tahsildars now became administrators of Sircar Lands alone while a new cadre of public servants called Devaswom Kariakkar (Temple Managers) was developed. And it's from here, the process of division of devaswom from revenue department slowly startedAnd this lead to many commissions and survey bodies to divide the department. And by 1912, a new proclamation came that divided Pandaravakkuppu into two. One as Travancore State Revenue department handling only government/public lands and another as Travancore State Devaswom Department handling only temple land. So eventually Devaswoms became a new independent ministry under control of an independent Diwan Peshkar solely for these activities with its own independent govt cadre of employees etc.The Cochin Kingdom also had a similar story but unlike Travancore, they didn’t nationalize every single temple by giving multiple exemptions. But over a period of time, 90% of temples came under state control, but unlike Travancore, there wasn’t a single department to control every temple, rather multiple departments and multiple bodies all reporting to the King as Kochi Kings by tradition was the head of temples.The worse was Malabar. Malabar was in a political turmoil in the 18th century due to Mysore invasion and soon after that, the entire land was annexed and became part of Madras presidency. This lead to the preservation of many kinds of 17th-century institutions like Brahmaswoms, Rajaswoms, and other models. As there were no kings in Malabar eventually Rajaswoms became Devaswoms with the same model, ie under control of Nair feudal lords. And Britishers due to lack of knowledge in these concepts, over-complicated the land rights, which made it as absolute ownership (personal ownership) unlike relative ownership as the model originally meant. And due to 1858 Queen Victoria’s proclamation over preservation of rights of ancient beliefs of Indian natives, the Madras Govt never interfered actively to reform or change these structures, which resulted in several conflicts, mainly peasant conflicts as people were enforcing 17th-century concepts in the 19th and 20th century. The rising conflicts over lands of temples lead Madras Govt to bring in Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department (HR&CE) in 1925, to regulate the administration of the temple lands which brought some concepts similar to Devaswoms as in Kochi and Travancore, not extensively.The accession of Travancore-Cochin Kingdoms into Indian Union with the signing of Covenant with Govt of India. In Picture- Travancore Maharaja- Chithira Thirunal and India Govt’s States Secretary- V. P. MenonIn 1948, Travancore and Cochin Kingdom were ready to merge with independent India. As a concept, Maharaja Chithira Thirunal had talks on terms of accession of these kingdoms into Indian Union. He was keen to protect existing temple administration upon accession into India as well as other terms. So a covenant was signed in 1949 between Kings of Kochi, Travancore, and Dominion of India, protecting the existing structure of temple administration.Accordingly, the rights of the King over the temple were given to the Government of India or it's associated government and temple administration model, ie Devaswom will be protected by the Indian constitution. Due to this, when the state of Travancore-Cochin was formed in 1949, they passed a new bill- Travancore Cochin Hindu Religious Institutions Act of 1950 which got Presidential assent and enlisted under 9th schedule of Indian constitution as per terms of Covenant.So as two independent devaswom boards (Travancore Devaswom Board - TDB and Cochin Devaswom Board- CDB) were formed to manage temples of Travancore area and Cochin area which now got a position of the semi-constitutional body due to its enlistment under the Constitution of India.Guruvayur DevaswomDue to intense protests of seeking rights of Lower castes to enter into Guruvayur temple in Malabar, Madras Govt immediately nationalized Guruvayur temple on 2nd June 1947 to Madras HR&CE department to remove Zamorin from its administrative head position and allowed entry of all. Zamorin was so adamant that he would never allow breaking the tradition resulting in no further scope of a consensual settlement. This was the only case of Madras HR CE nationalizing a temple in Malayalam speaking lands.So when Malabar was merged with Travancore-Cochin upon States Reorganization Act of 1956 for forming Kerala State, Madras HR&CE handed over Guruvayur temple to Kerala Govt. As Guruvayur wasn’t part of the erstwhile Cochin state, it wasn’t appropriate to enlist Guruvayur with Cochin Devaswom Board which had a constitutional mandate to administer all temples of erstwhile Cochin Kingdom. So Kerala Govt passed a new act to establish an Independent Guruvayur Devaswom, making it as the 3rd Devaswom bodyIrjnalakuda DevaswomSo as there was a legal issue on the status of Irjnalakuda Koodalmanikyam Temple. This temple was located inside the erstwhile Cochin Kingdom, but even in days of monarchy, it was jointly administered by Cochin and Travancore Kingdoms due to its unique history. The administration part was vested with Kaimals who were appointed by Travancore while temple priests appointments other rites were within rights of Cochin Kingdom. So both Cochin and Travancore Devaswom boards have equal claims over this temple. Further, in 1918, Madras Govt passed a legislation that deprived Travancore appointed Kaimals over rights of land owned by the temple which complicated its status in Independent India over ownership rights. So in 1971, Kerala Govt decided to establish an independent devaswom exclusively for Irjnalakuda on models of Guruvayur devaswom.Malabar DevaswomThe biggest issue which Kerala Govt faced regarding Devaswom was status of Malabar temples. Majority of Malabar temples where upholding independent status as private temples and majority were in doldrums due to mismanagement and poor maintenance. Due to the dismantling of joint families and partition of family properties, many individual nuclear families find hard to manage their temples. Traditionally they depended on grants from HR&CE department. When they came to Kerala, the rules don’t allow the Kerala government to directly give individual grants to families as such which ends up in allegations of corruption and favoritism. To keep status quo, Kerala Govt extended Madras HR&CE Law (it became Tamil Nadu HRCE Law in 1960) to cover all temples over Malabar region. But it made things more complicated. Whenever TN Govt makes amendments in TN HRCE law, it automatically got extended into Malabar which often made irrelevant as Malabar doesn’t follow Tamil style of worship, making Kerala govt to pass exclusions each and every time. And individual families were making many claims under TN Law in Kerala which also didn’t make much sense. Most of the families that owned temples were afraid of Devaswom concept as the basis of devaswom law is deep-rooted in Travancore model of nationalization. None of the individual families wanted to lose their private temples. So they opposed it tooth and nail.Whereas employees of the temple, priests, and others associated wanted Travancore styled Devaswom law over Malabar as TDB Employees have a similar status of Govt employees. They get fixed salaries, pension and other government benefits which none of the employees of private temples in Malabar gets. Many priests in TDB have salaries equal to Gazette rank govt employees, so as other administrative employees. So as there is a job security too which none of them had in Malabar side. So they intensely protested to form Malabar Devaswom on models of Travancore/Cochin Devaswom. This ended up in a legal battle between Temple owners and employees. Finally when all the cases were disposed of mostly in favor of employees, Kerala Govt in 2007 decided to form Malabar Devasom Board concept which covers 1600 temples spread from Kasargod to Palakkad districts of erstwhile Malabar.1,600 temples to come under Malabar Devaswom`Malabar Devaswom Board in 2007'Unlike Travancore/Cochin Devaswom which owns and manages temples, MDB donot own all temples, rather supervise and act as a regulatory authority. They nationalize a temple from its private management upon allegations of corruption or mismanagement or misconduct. However, due to this reason, the salary structure of employees wasn’t similar to TDB or CDB which is still an issue.The policy of MDB is to nationalize temples only upon proving charges of corruption which exist in the majority of private temples of the region. Upon allegation, Kerala High Court’s Devaswom Bench would appoint an ombudsman to check on the validity of allegation and once the court is convinced of allegations of corruption, High court orders taking over such temples directly to MDB. So there is no blanket nationalization unlike that happened in Travancore in the 19th century.Several leading temples got annexed by MDB on successful proving of charges of corruption and mismanagement. However many celebrated temples still stand independently in the region.Suggested reading;Arun Mohan (അരുൺ മോഹൻ)'s answer to Is it true that the Kerala Devaswom board is used by the government for other purposes?http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/168474/4/13_chapter4.pdfhttp://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/27845/6/06_chapter%201.pdfhttp://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/61762/9/09_chapter%202.pdfColonel John Munro: A Catalyst for Socio-Political Change in TravancoreHistory of Cochin Royal Family

Most atheists I’ve met believe exactly what most non-atheists (myself included) I’ve met do regarding where the Bible came from. They believe it is a collection of books written over a period of time spanning around 400–600BCE to around 400CE. The early books of the Old Testament are a written codification of oral literature from an earlier pre-literacy (although not pre-literate for much of it) Hebrew culture. Genesis, for instance, has at least two and possibly 3 major sources, the oldest of which, called the Yawhist source may have been first written down as early as the 10th c. BCE. The form of the book we know today dates from some time after the re-establishment of the temple in Jerusalem in 538BCE. This date of establishment extends to the other books of the Torah, the “5 books of Moses.” The actual material in the Torah undoubtedly predates the Hebrew monarchy, but any written versions which predate the Yawhist source have not survived in a way that we can detect by textual analysis. The later books may or may not have origins in oral literature. Many of them were obviously composed as written documents.The books of the New Testament began as letters and testimonials circulated in the early Christian churches. As the Greco-Roman world in which they were composed was a broadly literate one (compared to the bulk of what preceded it), these books were composed as written documents from the first. After all, what are the epistles if not actual epistles complete with salutations and closings. They are letters written from people such as Paul, James, and John to various churches and individuals which were then copied for their instructional and inspirational value and passed along.The process by which these various documents are combined to form an authoritative book with agreed upon contents is known as canonization. Since we are really looking at two separate scriptural traditions, the Jewish canon and the Christian canon, I’ll start with the Jewish scriptures. The Torah was probably canonized around 400BCE at the same time the modern form of the text was finalized. Most of the books of the Prophets were canonized and put in their current form around 200 BCE. Finally, the various other books known as the Writings were canonized in their present form around 100CE.The early Christian churches did not have fixed scriptures, but are known to have used the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Torah and a number of other Hebrew scriptures traditionally said to be commissioned from 72 Jewish scholars by Ptolemy II of Egypt (who was Greek) for inclusion in the great library at Alexandria. There is quite a bit of evidence that supports this tradition, including the Koine Greek used and some characteristics of the text. Regardless, this was a very popular scripture among the Greek-literate world of the 100BCE-100CE. It includes much of what we think of as the Old Testament, along with books which now make up the Christian apocrypha such as Wisdom and Maccabees.The first attempt to establish a Christian canon was made by Marcion of Sinope around 140CE. His canon included a version of the gospel of Luke (known now as the gospel of Marcion) as well as a number of Paulian epistles. Unfortunately for Marcion, he also believed a lot of things completely incompatible with the beliefs of his fellows and was labeled a heretic.The oldest surviving attestation of authority for the four gospels we know in the present Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John was made by Iraneus in his “On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis” which is a manual on…well, it says right in the title. The various gnostic heresies were a major impetus for codifying what was and was not authoritative Christian scripture. By the 3rd century CE, there were a lot of gnostic texts circulating which posited everything from orthodoxy to the very weird. This led to a movement toward a canonization of Christian scripture that by 393CE had formed a canon containing the same books we know today. This was approved at the ecumenical council of Carthage in 397CE.That’s where the Bible comes from.

China indeed had promised to implement universal suffrage, format unspecified, in gradual manner, within the Basic Law. The first of such change proposed was based on a plan submitted by HK’s government in 2007, which itself came from result of a questionnaire conducted by HK government to the entire HK population. That plan called for a nomination committee based roughly in the same manner as the current election committee for the CE, which will nominate initial candidates, and then select among them two to four final candidates for a general election.That was the universal suffrage agreed to by Chinese government. It was ready to be implemented for the 2016 election if the HK’s legislature approves the plan. But, the pan-dem section of the legislature wanted to completely do away with the nomination committee instead, since their candidates are unlikely to be among the final candidates. Chinese government disagreed with their demand and declared that the plan approved in 2007 would be the format to be implemented. Therefore the pan dems went against the plan, then organized the occupy central protest to stop the plan from been passed. Since it wasn’t passed, the 2016 election continued with the existing format.That is the nature of the “reneging” that those people claimed. It was the pan dems who actually renegaded, and prevented any form of universal suffrage from been implemented in HK. But of course it’s so much easier to blame Chinese government.