The Kanchi Mutt Controversy

by Thenali Raman

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 The Jayalalitha government's actions so far are based on frivolous charges like: 1) Rs. 40 lakhs was withdrawn from the bank; 2) the surrendered persons were bogus; 3) some of the withdrawn money made its way to the accused; 4) there were cell phone calls between the mutt and the accused and, 5) finally, the confessions by the accused.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.