Why BBC withdrew Offending Article on Shankaracharya

[Guest guest]

of a suden, BBC withdraws Offending Article on Shankaracharya

http://indiacause.com/columns/OL_060318.htmBy: Dr Farokh Merat March 18, 2006On

11th November 2004 His Holiness Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, the Shankaracharya of

Kanchipuram was arrested by the Tamil Nadu police allegedly for having

conspired to murder Sankararaman, an employee at a temple unconnected to the

Kanchi Mutt. The very day after the Shankaracharya's arrest a vast character

assassination campaign was launched throughout India, portraying the Pontiff

not only as a murderer but also as an embezzler and a womanizer. Among the

English journals the most virulent attacks against Sri Jayendra Saraswathi came

from Outlook magazine. The titles of some of the articles by Mr. S. Anand,

Outlook's correspondent in Chennai, are eloquently self-explanatory: "How the

Gods Fall,Swami and Fiends" (sic), "A Sting in the Tail,The Baton

Awaits,Prison Diaries of a Pontiff." These articles are compilations almost

exclusively of slanderous back alley innuendos, invariably attributed to vague

police contacts and other faceless sources.But Outlook did not stop there. The

demonization of Sri Jayendra Saraswathi was to be internationalized on 28th

January 2005 by no other than the editor of the magazine himself, Mr. Vinod

Mehta. In a talk titled "A View from India," the Outlook editor went on BBC

Radio Four to inform English and European audiences about the "Jayendra

affair." The talk was rebroadcast two days later, on Sunday 30th January,

immediately after a program of Christian church services. To Hindus who

happened to be listening to BBC Radio Four on that Sunday morning, the contrast

between the dignified church services and the vicious slander heaped on one of

their foremost religious leaders must have been excruciatingly painful.Two days

later the

talk was published as an article on the BBC website with the title of "Murder,

Mystery and Politics in India." Straight away Mr. Mehta set the tone. "The

charges are a tabloid journalist"s dream - murder, sleaze, debauchery, greed

and sex," he said. The story he went on to recount was meant to illustrate each

of these "charges." But it was overwhelmingly fictitious and certain crucial

details stood in contradiction with the findings of the Supreme Court of India,

made public some three weeks before Mr. Mehta delivered his talk on BBC Radio

Four. His tabloid dream was of his own making.The Outlook editor did not merely

indulge in fibs. His entire article was a colossal lie - by omission. On

granting bail to the Shankaracharya on 10th January 2005, the Supreme Court had

stated that the Tamil Nadu authorities and police had failed to submit the least

prima facie evidence connecting the Pontiff to the Sankararaman killing; they

had

also been unable to submit any grounds of motive for the Shankaracharya to

commit such an act. But Mr. Mehta passed over the Supreme Court findings as if

they had never existed. The reason is obvious: the pronouncements of the Apex

Court would have demolished his viciously fictitious story. Immediately

devotees of the Shankaracharya throughout the world began writing letters of

complaint to the BBC. After some seven months of repeated complaints the BBC

Editorial Complaints Unit authorities admitted that Mr. Mehta's text contained

"serious error and inaccuracies." They tacitly acknowledged that apart from the

alleged conspiracy to murder, none of the "charges" mentioned by Mr. Mehta were

to be found in the charge sheet. On being questioned about the matter, Mr.

Mehta had apparently told them that the charges of personal misconduct were

listed not in the charge sheet but in the FIR (First Information Report), filed

by the police

shortly after the Pontiff's arrest - another lie. The BBC remained adamant about

keeping the offensive article on their website, purged of the "errors and

inaccuracies." Thanks to www.kanchiforum.org, the devotees of the

Shankaracharya organized themselves and engaged lawyers in London. Finally, the

threat of legal action compelled the BBC to remove the article, apologize and

reimburse the greater part of the legal costs incurred by the Acharya's

devotees.Two questions come to mind. Why did the BBC believe Mehta's version of

the events and refuse for a full year to remove the article from their website?

And the second and far more fundamental question is: why did the mainstream

media defame and demonize the revered Shankaracharya instead of investigating

the facts and exposing the real culprits?The first question can be readily

answered. The BBC believed Vinod Mehta's groundless accusations because large

sectors of the

media in India were mouthing the same unfounded charges against the Pontiff. The

media are by and large conformist copycats. Why, after all, should the BBC send

a journalist of world rank to Tamil Nadu to investigate the case - as we

repeatedly urged them to do - when most of the national press in India was

babbling the same lies? We battled against the BBC - a minuscule David against

a gigantic Goliath - for a full year. Nevertheless, I must say a word in

defence of the BBC: they were not the real culprits. They got hoodwinked not

just by Vinod Mehta but by the Indian media as a whole. Having accorded them

the benefit of a doubt, one can't help wondering why the British, after having

plundered, divided and departed, still feel a pathological need to humiliate

the Hindus. Would the BBC have dared to allow similar calumnies against a

Muslim religious leader of even the lowest ranks? No, they wouldn't, for

obvious reasons. But the

gentlemen and ladies at the BBC have retained from their readings at school that

devout Hindus are a peaceful and peace-loving people. They knew that

calumniations against the revered Shankaracharya of Kanchi would not bring them

bombs and sundry forms of violence. Hence the platform given so nonchalantly to

the pseudo-secularist Vinod Mehta.As to the second question, several

explanations have been given: clever orchestration of lies and manipulation by

the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and police; collusion of the Centre for fear that

Hindu-oriented parties may regain power in the next elections; money generously

and secretly disbursed by the Evangelists to eliminate a Hindu religious leader

actively opposing conversions.But all this does not explain why the media

engaged in such wholesale slander and why the public did not object. The media

and the public are partners. It is said of a nation that it has the rulers it

deserves. In the same vein it can be said that the public has the media it

deserves. There is a constant give and take between the two. To be successful

and survive in a competitive context, each player in the media and the press

has to cater to and please its own audience. At the same time the media and the

press form and educate the public - for the better or for the worse. In the end,

the two are one. So the question becomes: why was a considerable portion of the

population of India, and of the Hindu population itself, receptive to lies and

unfounded accusations against one of the foremost religious leaders of the

land, a Saint who had spent more than fifty years of his life helping the

downtrodden, building and running schools, hospitals, homes for the disabled

and the aged, charity organizations, and doing everything he could to maintain

communal peace and harmony, notably in the grave Ayodhya issue? His profile was

reversed by

the media overnight, between 11/11 and 11/12 2004. Why, one wonders, did not the

public demand serious journalistic investigation, evidence instead of

innuendos?It is fashionable, after the American model, to laud in flowery terms

the four pillars of democracy: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary and

for the last fifty-or-so years, the media/press. This is to forget the most

essential component of all: the civil society. Wherever the civil society is

awake, healthy and coherent, the fourfold power system works smoothly.

Otherwise it does not. It is for the civil society to constantly watch the four

"powers" and take them to task whenever there is injustice, abuse of power,

corruption, falsehood. Let us take an example. On New Year's Day 2006 the

Calcutta Telegraph published a cartoon of Sri Jayendra Saraswathi with a dagger

sticking out from under his attire dripping with blood. Just a few days before,

the Prime

Minister and President of India had expressed their great indignation at the

offending cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad published in Europe. But about the

cartoon published in their own country ridiculing one of the foremost religious

leaders of the Hindus, they expressed no opinion at all. Was it because of the

unfounded murder allegations against the Shankaracharya? But surely the leaders

of the country must have taken note of the verdict of the Supreme Court of India

I have already referred to, as well as a second verdict, dated 26th October

2005, in which the Apex Court ordered the transfer of the murder trial out of

Tamil Nadu and chastised the State Government machinery for attempting to

deprive the Shankaracharya and co-accused of proper legal defense, launching

persecution against journalists, lawyers and members of the civil society

"merely because they expressed some dissent against the arrest of the Seer, and

creating "a

fear psychosis in the minds of the people," thus discouraging witnesses from

testifying objectively. About all this, too, the President, the Prime Minister

and the Super-Prime Minister remained deafeningly silent.But they alone are not

to blame. It is for the civil society to inundate them with letters asking: "Why

such double standards?" And it is again for the civil society to flood the

Telegraph and other unfair media with letters of vigorous protest demanding

immediate apologies. The sad truth is that peaceful and civilised protests are

not given serious consideration by the Government, while there is immediate

response to agitation and aggressive protests. This tendency on the part of the

rulers, of whatever hue, leads to violence and erodes civilised values. Had the

Shankaracharya's followers taken to the streets, it would no doubt have risen

both the Government and society at large from their slumber. But it is to

the incalculable credit of Sri Jayendra Saraswathi that he did not veer a

millimeter from the path of the holy lineage of Adi Shankara. He urged his

followers to hold their peace and promised that Dharma would prevail, thus

avoiding violence and bloodshed. When a Saint of the stature of Sri Jayendra

Saraswathi is slandered, it is the sacred tradition of Advaita Vedanta, the

highest light of humanity, that is slandered. When the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham

is attacked, Sanatana Dharma, the root religion of all that deserves to be

called religion, is attacked.In South Africa they have a beautiful saying:

People are people because of other people. Transposed to the context we are

concerned with, the proverb is laden with hope. It means that if a few start

taking the responsibility to act rightly, even in little ways, their action is

bound to ripple and influence others, making the entire world a little more

just, humane and peaceful -

a return to the primeval and pristine religion: Sanatana Dharma.Dr Farokh Merat

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