The ‘namam’, the religious mark on the forehead of Lord Venkateshwara, is something devotees can see even from afar. So you know it’s a powerful symbol and now, a senior priest who painted the ‘U’-shaped symbol of the Vadakalai Iyengar sect on the idol has been suspended. Why? Because the time for the Vadakalai ‘U’ namam was up and the deity should have been adorned with the Thenkalai namam, which is ‘Y’-shaped. So, the priest A.V. Arun Dikshitulu has been held guilty of misdemeanor.
Confused? The Iyengar Brahmins of South India fall under two sects – Vadakalai and Thenkalai, a division that goes back several centuries. The Vadakalai sect’s namam is ‘U’-shaped, while the Thenkalai one is like a ‘Y’. The two sects have been constantly at loggerheads, especially in the matter of temple rituals and particularly their respective namams.
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In Tirupati, the matter went to court in the ‘90s and it was decided that Lord Venkateshwara would sport the Vadakalai namam for 15 days in a month and the Thenkalai one for the rest. Accusations from both parties of the other overshooting their ‘namam’ time are not uncommon, but this time the erring priest has had to pay with his job.
Other temples in the South have also seen similar Vadakalai-Thenkalai face-offs. Some years ago, the issue of what symbol the elephant of the Parthasarathy temple in Tiruvallikeni in Chennai went to court. There, too, it was decided that the elephant would sport the two namams alternately.
Apparently, the namam controversy is not new. Historians point to the fact that as early as in 1792, the question of what namam the temple elephant in Kanchipuram should be adorned with was taken to the authorities.
