As the Sankaracharya stands like Abhimanyu ...

Author: S. Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express

The entire polity of Tamil Nadu except the BJP is ranged against him. Never in the history of the state did the DMK and the AIADMK, whose leaders never meet, ever unite on anything as they do on this issue and against him.

The lawyer’s outfits are targeting his head. For the 'secular' media it is a godsend to say not just that the Modi type Hindus are criminals, even Sankaracharya is one such. It is having a field day in publishing and showing all kinds of rubbish. Here there is no difference between the yellow journals and the serious ones in the content that is carried about him.

Today the Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati is standing like Abhimanyu caught in Chakravyuha. Thanks to the vicious atmosphere, the Acharya has been convicted at the bar of the public even as the investigation on the charges against him has just begun.

As his known enemies gloat over this, his vast and dignified followers who do not know how to burn buses and indulge in arson on the roads suffer in silence.

The charge against Sri Jayendra Saraswati is that he conspired to kill a person who was carrying on a vicious campaign against him and the Kanchi Mutt. The prosecution case is that the Acharya alone, almost no one else on his behalf or for his assistance, was involved in the conspiracy!

The police says, and wants all to believe, that Acharya himself identified the killers, negotiated the terms, gave them the contract, paid the advance, met the killers after the event, pleaded with them to bear with the delay in remitting the balance, and talked to them on phone and so on.

The case against the Acharya rests on three circumstances. One, the Acharya had a motive to eliminate the victim. Second, the Acharya was in contact with the main killer over phone. Third, there are cash withdrawals in the bank accounts of the Mutt, which have been used to pay off the contract killers.

This sums up the case against the Acharya.

There are two ways to approach a criminal investigation. Particularly in a case in which a revered religious leader, representing the oldest religious order of the nation, the Sankaracharya order, is involved.

One, that he is guilty because he could not get over the normal human failings of anger and vengeance. The other that he is innocent and is being fixed by the organisers of the crime using his own apparent motive.

Having almost condemned him as a criminal, let us look at it from the perspective that he may be innocent, a perspective the prosecution has clearly ignored.

Undeniably the victim was hostile to the Sankaracharya and the Mutt. So the Acharya could have had the motive to eliminate him. But the letters written by the victim and sent to all-important persons in society including the opposition parties, show that the victim has fixed who the accused would be if he were killed. He had said that if he were killed it was the Kanchi Mutt who would be responsible.

So here is a golden opportunity for some one to fix the Mutt and the Acharya, its head, if he so wished. All that one who had to do to finish off the reputation of a reputed Mutt and the Sankaracharya was to finish off the victim by a contract to kill him.

This could be done without any risk of the doer being accused of murder, as the victim has already identified who would be his killers.

The Sankaracharya must have known that if anything happened to the victim the investigation would target the Mutt, if not him. Why would he then invite the charge?

Despite the victim indicting the Acharya and the Mutt in advance of the murder, the police have gone on the assumption that the Acharya is guilty, namely that the Acharya invited the charge on himself by obliging the victim. This is totally against common sense.

Again the Kanchi Mutt had long been a target of the anti-Hindu Gods movement and the situation presented the best opportunity to hit at the credibility of that great institution. It was an eye sore to the rationalists and anti-nationals. That the main hit man engaged for the task is linked to the DMK is important.

Despite these circumstances, the prosecution has not examined, even in theory, whether some one else could have eliminated the victim so that the Mutt and the Acharya emerge as the readymade accused.

This may be less than a one per cent possibility, but still it is a possibility. A key prosecuting police official is too deeply associated with the DMK to be indifferent to his link. So from day one the police seem to have fixed the Acharya as the culprit and begun collecting evidence to that effect. Obviously this suits the settled political climate in this state.