I am not sure if that is the full story since section 21 of the document I am posting today seems to indicate that Bhagavan did acquire property rights during his lifetime. Some devotees who were associated with the ashram in the 1950s told me that, though the judge recognised that the will was a validly executed document, he concluded that it lacked legality since it could not be proved that Bhagavan actually personally owned all the properties he was disposing of. I have not seen a record of the first court case, which took place in the District Court of Vellore in 1954, so my information about it is second-hand, and may well be wrong. The HRCEB wanted to take over Ramanasramam since it claimed that Bhagavan’s will did not legally convey the ashram properties and the management of them to Chinnaswami.
One of the primary functions of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board (HRCEB in future references) was to take over Hindu institutions that were either not being run properly, or had no legally established management structure.
Visitors could follow their own routines and immerse themselves in the sannidhi in whatever way they felt was most beneficial to them.Īfter Bhagavan’s mahasamadhi the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Board (nowadays known as the ‘Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Administration Department’) went to court and challenged the right of Chinnaswami to run the ashram. During Bhagavan’s lifetime there was no compulsion to be anywhere at a particular time, or to follow any particular practice. There is no mention in the will that Bhagavan’s teachings should be promulgated to the people who came, or that people who went there would be expected to learn them or put them into practice. I quite like the fact that there was no attempt to dictate what visitors and devotees should do or not do at the ashram.
There were few instructions in the will about what should go on at the ashram: there was a clause that a statue should be erected on Bhagavan’s samadhi, another that a daily puja should be performed at Bhagavan’s samadhi and in the Mother’s Temple, and in a more general instruction Bhagavan said that the ashram should remain open as a spiritual institution so that anyone who wished to could avail themselves of its facilities. Venakataraman, and he in turn would be succeeded by his own eldest son, the current ashram president, V. The only definition I could find, even in the Complete Oxford Dictionary, was ‘The provision made for the maintenance of the younger children of kings, princes, etc.’ I rather like the mental image of ‘King’ Ramana bestowing the gift of Ramanasramam on his younger ‘princeling’ brother in order to support him after he passed away, but I suspect that in legal circles the term may have a slightly different meaning.īhagavan’s will envisaged a succession of ashram managers, determined by the laws of primogeniture: Chinnaswami was to be followed by his eldest son T. It appeared to refer to the properties owned and run by Ramanasramam. There is one word – appanages – in the court’s written judgement that had me hunting through my dictionaries. It was further stated that Chinnaswami would continue to run the ashram after Bhagavan’s mahasamadhi, and that when Chinnaswami died, those rights would be inherited by his son, T. In 1938 Bhagavan executed a will that bequeathed all the Ramanasramam properties to his brother, Chinnaswami. I am reproducing it here in full because I want to discuss some of the evidence and assumptions that featured in the case.įirst, though, a little background information is needed. It was a fascinating document that I pored over for the better part of an hour. However, thinking that it might be a standard feature of future visa applications, I went online, typed ‘Ramanasramam’ and ‘charity’ into Google, and found myself being directed to the transcript of a 1959 court case in which Ramanasramam’s legal status was clarified. I had never heard of Ramanasramam’s status being queried in this way before. The consular official, who had obviously never heard of Bhagavan or Ramanasramam, asked my friend for proof that Sri Ramanasramam was a registered charity in India. A few weeks ago a friend of mine, armed with a letter of recommendation from the president of Ramanasramam, went to an Indian consulate office in Australia and asked for a long-term visa.