The Kanchi Mutt Controversy

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The Kanchi Mutt Controversy

Thenali Raman

Published on Thursday, November 18, 2004

Sitting in a distant land watching all the tamasha happening in TN

(Tamil Nadu), one can't help but wonder whether India is fit to be a

democracy. For with freedom comes tremendous power and with power

comes responsibility. None of our politicians, both Hindu and

atheist, seems to care about tarnishing the reputation of Hinduism

and Indian culture, by this inane display of vote bank politics.

They openly call the Shankaracharya names and demand the extinction

of a 2500-year tradition – that the Kanchi Mutt signifies. The

public prosecutor is especially vicious in calling the Acharya 'a

criminal who deserves no sympathy'. Pardon me if I sound dumb but

our law does presume everyone innocent until proven guilty. Then why

this witch-hunt? A cursory look at some of the facts surrounding

this drama makes for interesting reading.

The fact is Sankaraman was murdered due to some vendetta between him

and an unknown figure. Common sense dictates that the Shankaracharya

with such a huge national clout would not risk his prestige on such

an incident knowing the fallout could be disastrous. The Jayalalitha

government's actions so far are based on frivolous charges like: 1)

Rs. 40 lakhs was withdrawn from the bank; 2) the surrendered persons

were bogus; 3) some of the withdrawn money made its way to the

accused; 4) there were cell phone calls between the mutt and the

accused and, 5) finally, the confessions by the accused. Now let us

look at each of these factors known to us so far:

 

 

The value of life in India is so cheap that one does not need to

spend Rs. 40 lakhs to take out an ordinary person like Sankaraman.

The dadas in Bombay would have done it cheaper and left the TN

police clueless.

Well, how many political crimes and crimes involving land grabs have

been resolved by the TN police based on the statements of

surrendered bogus criminals? The right answer would be too many to

count. Since the surrendered people, in this instance, were liars

anyway their statements cannot be counted upon as evidence.

The Kanchi Mutt is a nationwide institution and could be spending

lakhs of rupees everyday for charity and other works. So the

withdrawal of huge sums is not uncommon. It is possible that the

money given to X could have landed with Y. So this claim is equally

ridiculous.

Unless there were recordings of the conversation (which I doubt),

the accused could have been talking to anybody inside the Mutt and

in connection with a completely different matter. Or these could

have been stage-managed to implicate the Kanchi Mutt. One has to

bear in mind that even high school kids know, let alone the Acharya,

that these days, mobile telephones are being regularly tapped to

trap bookies and criminals.

All those arrested so far are known criminals. So their confessions

could easily be either stage-managed by politicians or coerced by

the police to achieve objectives set by their higher-ups.

With all these aspects in mind, if one takes into account other

mitigating factors like the timing of the arrest, the TN Assembly

elections next year and alternative ways of handling such sensitive

religious issues, something does not add up right. Why was the

arrest done during Deepavali night? What would be the social

reaction to such an action? Who stands to gain and who loses? What

was the reaction of the different political parties?

Arresting a Hindu leader of such stature during Deepavali could not

have happened without adequate deliberation. Jayalalitha believes in

the theory of shock and awe campaigns. She is trying to send a

powerful message across to someone and for something. Could it be to

appease the Congress? Nah! DMK isn't parting with Congress anytime

soon. Could it be to covet the minority votes that helped the

Congress come to power? Doubtful, since in TN politics votes are

spread across caste demography than religion. Could it be to take

over the Mutt property? Doubtful, since that would definitely lead

to a legal quagmire and not to mention that Jayalalitha does enough

rounds to the courts already.

 

The only other explanation seems to be that she could have done this

with the next year's assembly elections in mind and to counter the

anti-Brahmin campaign constantly launched by the DMK, PMK and DK

combine. She could be trying to send a message that she, being a

Brahmin, does not want to be associated with Brahmanism in any

manner. This suits her perfectly because this would get her the

lower caste votes and probably chip away the minority votes from

DMK. The nation-wide scorn is not going to affect her politically

and the TN Brahmin community is too small to swing the votes anyway.

Look at the way all these disparate political parties like ADMK,

DMK, PMK, DK are singing the same tune -- a cosmic rarity indeed.

Jayalalitha is probably gambling on the fact that she could get away

with it while others of the Dravidian ilk cannot. If this is true,

then it could well be that this time she has bitten off more than

she can chew. It is one thing to revoke the anti-conversion law, and

appease the minority but an entirely different thing to mistreat a

popular Hindu religious leader in a way unheard of in our society.

Nobody seems to have asked the question: what if the Sangh Parivar

decides to up the ante and cause social unrest?

 

While it would set a bad precedent to argue that the Acharya should

be let go, even if he is guilty, saner minds would find subtler ways

to handle such sensitive issues without this much media fanfare. If

the Acharya is proved innocent, can anyone undo the damage done so

far nationally and internationally? I would like to end this by

saying that democracy does not mean cacophony; it means tolerating

dissent because the objective remains common. But sadly Indian

politics seems to be based on the politics of expediency without

long-term objectives and the public pays the price for narrow-minded

vote bank politics.