Maharaj Libel Case
These accusations ultimately coalesced into claims that the Maharajs in Bombay were abusing their female followers under the pretext of reenacting the love between the young Krishna and the milk maidens called Gopis.
However, when Mulji published his scathing article in the newspaper Satyaprakash, titled "Hinduo No Asli Dharam Ane Atyar Na Pakhandi Mato" the Maharaj took legal action against him.
In particular were accusations that Jadunath had sexual liaisons with women followers and that men were expected to show their devotion by offering their female family members for sex with the religious leaders.
[8][9] Pushtimarg's followers in Gujarat, Kathiyawad, Kutch, and central India were rich merchants, bankers, and farmers, including the Bhatia, Lohana, and Baniya castes.
[10] Many of these mercantile groups migrated to Bombay under British rule as the city was the political and financial capital of western India.
The seths, despite their general lack of education, ignorance of English language and British political traditions, were influential in Bombay society as leaders of business communities and maintainers of cultural honour.
[12] By the mid-nineteenth century the British had established political control over the Indian subcontinent and sought to create an administrative-legal framework to manage their colonial interests.
This desire to produce legal codes spawned the Orientalist school of Indology, whose grand narrative of Indian history was that of a decline from an ancient golden age into a degenerate, superstitious modern society.
These institutions created a new class of urban English speaking professionals who claimed to be superior leaders of society due to their intricate knowledge of the British administrative machinery.
In one instance Bhatia seths (including Gokuldas Lilahadhar) convened a meeting of two hundred people of their caste to further this aim.
In fact, the main expert witness was Dr. John Wilson both a missionary and an Orientalist,[5] who has been "actively engaged in criticizing the contemporary forms of Hindu culture in the vicinity of Bombay since the early 1830s".
The devotee witnesses did their best to defend Jadunath with the limited theological knowledge they possessed, but none knew Sanskrit or Braj Bhasha and were not fully versed in Pushtimarg history.
Mulji restated his earlier claims that the Pushtimarg was not the "true" Hinduism of the Vedic age, but rather a heretic sect that encouraged devotees to hand over their wives and daughters for the maharajas' pleasure.
He stated the maharajas were uneducated spiritual leaders who were worshipped as incarnations of Krishna solely due to their genealogical descent from Vallabha, and that their religious scriptures sanctioned the offering of devotees' wives and daughters to them.
[27] Chief Justice Matthew Richard Sausse was the senior of the two judges in the case, and overruled Arnould's judgement to find Mulji guilty of libel.
Sausse was also greatly impressed by the defense's witnesses, which in his view affirmed the defendant's claim that the Pushtimarg was a heterodox sect and that Jadunath engaged in salacious behaviour.
It is written on the lines of the defence made by Karsondas in the Maharaj Libel Case, painting the entire sampradaya of Vallabhacharya in the darkest of colours.
It became an important weapon in the armoury of missionary propaganda concerning the people of India, helping to show them up as stricken with ‘moral plague’.
[34] In 1875, Dayananda Saraswati came to Bombay and attacked the Pushtimarg on similar lines as Mulji, calling it a heterodox sect with false religious leaders who contradicted "true" Hinduism.
The book was authored by multiple generational practitioners of Pushtimarg, most prominently Dhawal Patel, Pratyush Mehrishi, and Maitri Goswami.
It aimed to demystify the misconceptions regarding the true and essential characteristics of Pushtimarga, in light of the allegations presented in court during the Maharaj Libel case of 1862 A.D.[7] Saurabh Shah, Gujarati author and journalist, wrote a novel titled Maharaj based on the case[36] which was awarded the Nandshankar award by the Narmad Sahitya Sabha.
