British bureaucratic involvement with the temple reached its zenith and then was gradually withdrawn in the half century from 1826 to 1878. As a consequence of these two phases of the relationship, a new meaning began to apply to the term Teṉkalai. Increasingly, it lost its pan-regional, sectarian, and ritual connotations and began to acquire the status of a local sociopolitical category that designated the political constituency of the temple. This chapter examines the logic of this development: First the period from 1826 to 1840 will be discussed, then the period from 1841 to 1878.

British involvement: 1826–1840

In the period from 1826 to 1840, three processes are of primary importance: (1) the alteration and exacerbation of temple conflict resulting from the directness of British bureaucratic control; (2) the transformation of the preexisting tensions in British ideology (between the ideas of “protection” and “subordination”) into new idioms; and (3) the beginnings of a new sectarian politics.

Temple conflict and British control

By 1832 the temple had lost most of its economic autonomy. It was dependent for all its regular income on the British revenue administration in the form of the collector's office.