Chidambaram, July 25: Arumugaswamy is an angry man. He has been a Shiva devotee for God knows how long, but the priests of the Nataraja temple here won’t allow him and others to sing Tamil hymns in front of the sanctum sanctorum.

He nearly had a showdown last week with the authorities of the over 2000-year shrine.

Bearded and dressed like a sadhu, Arumugaswamy, a backward class Vanniyar, tried to march into the temple with 80 supporters to assert what he called the right of all castes to sing hymns composed by Tamil poet-saints of the past.

Police stopped him and his band from entering the temple, as the authorities had managed a court stay ordering status quo in temple rituals.

As the temple is managed by 350 Dikshithar (Brahmin priest) families, the row has taken a Sanskrit vs Tamil hue.

The reason is all pujas in the temple are performed according to Vedic instructions handed down by the sage Patanjali to the ancestors of the Dikshithars and the mantras are all in Sanskrit.

Tamil singers (oduvars) can sing their devotional hymns, but not in the artha mandapam, the hall that faces the sanctum sanctorum. They can sing from the maha mandapam, which is a little way off, and after the pujas are over.

The Tamil enthusiasts say not allowing oduvars or other non-Brahmins like Arumugaswamy to sing Tamil hymns from the artha mandapam amounts to giving importance to only the Sanskrit language and treating Tamil as a poor cousin.

One man, Manickkam, who courted arrest with Arumugaswamy and was later released, said it was an “affront” to the Tamil language.

More so when chief minister M. Karunanidhi had got the Centre to declare Tamil a classical language and when the state government says members of all castes can become priests.

The Tamil Nadu government had in a recent move allowed people of all castes to become temple priests if they had the necessary training.

“Come what may, one day Arumugaswamy and his band of followers will sing hymns to Nataraja from the artha mandapam itself,” Manickkam vowed.

The Dikshithars say the controversy has “nothing” to do with the recent government order. “They are giving it a political twist to prepare the ground for government takeover of this temple,” said Natanasabapathy Dikshithar.

The Dikshithar families, who take turns to perform the six daily pujas, say “nobody” is allowed to sing hymns in the artha mandapam. “That is an enclosure only to perform the daily pujas,” said a priest.

Down the centuries, they added, Tamil hymns have been sung only from the maha mandapam. “Nobody does it in the artha mandapam. Any Shiva devotee is free to come to the maha mandapam and sing in praise of the lord,” said Nardanathan, the temple oduvar who comes from a backward class group.