The spiritual Magna Carta of Travancore, and the law that followed it

Background

Temple administration is before the Kerala Legislative Assembly again: the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (Amendment) Bill is one of the Bills published for the Sixteenth Assembly, and it touches the law that governs temples in the old Malabar region, which was a district of the Madras Province before it joined Kerala. The oldest layer of this subject is a princely proclamation. Law-making in Travancore began with proclamations by its Maharaja, long before a representative body existed, and the Travancore Legislative Council came only later. Sri Chithira Thirunal, in whose reign the legislature was made bicameral, authored the Temple Entry Proclamation, which came to be known as the spiritual Magna Carta of Travancore. Travancore's enactments were called Regulations until a Proclamation changed the terminology of Regulations to Acts. After Travancore and Cochin were integrated, the new State's legislature put the same purpose into statute through the Travancore-Cochin Temple Entry (Removal of Disabilities) Act. Kerala's own Legislative Assembly, which now has the Malabar temples Bill before it, came after the integration of Travancore-Cochin and Malabar.