Plot against mutt

The Pioneer Edit Desk

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has never been known for restraint. Even so, she had one redeeming feature: She normally ensured she could not be tripped for her draconian actions on technical, if not moral, grounds. But her Government's anti-Kanchi mutt rampage has no such mitigating factor. On Monday, the Supreme Court granted bail to Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati, passing a scathing stricture on the prosecution's failure to furnish even a shred of evidence on why his two-month-long detention should not be terminated.

Within hours of the order releasing the pontiff, junior Shankaracharya Vijayendra Saraswati was dragged into custody on charges of 'conspiracy' in the Sankararaman murder case. The timing of the arrest leaves no room for doubt that the mutt's authorities are targets of a premeditated witchhunt. It only reinforces the widely-held belief that a state-sponsored takeover of the highly influential religious body, deliberately rendered headless, is at hand. That the mutt has considerable resources may not be the sole reason driving Ms Jayalalithaa's reprehensible politics of vendetta.

A larger, more insidious, agenda seems at play: The majority community's sentiments are being attacked via the brazen assault on a revered symbol of the Hindu faith. Desecration of the Kanchi religious seat, where rituals and prayers have been disrupted, seems part of the pre-written script. Worse, no-holds-barred meddling in a sensitive case smacks of political obstructionism with regard to the law taking its own course.

In fact, it is perhaps no accident that the Jayalalithaa regime's anti-Shankaracharya virulence has burgeoned in direct proportion to mounting evidence that the seer has been sinned against: His counsel ripped apart the prosecution's case so successfully that the apex court described the stated grounds linking him to the Sankararaman murder as unconvincing. That the pontiff's judicial reprieve was followed by an immediate backlash against another mutt representative merely gave the conspiratorial game away.

Since the cause of justice seems open to sabotage, the Centre cannot play mute spectator. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did write to Ms Jayalalithaa, with cautioning advice. But, as her action against the junior seer makes plain, his counsel fell on deaf ears. The UPA should realise the explosive potential of the events running riot in Tamil Nadu-it can have a very nasty social fallout, since Hindus are unlikely to take steamrolling insults to their faith lying down. It should think twice about adopting a hands-off approach for another reason as well: The judiciary is being mocked, and it is the Centre's duty to rein in the offender.

Ms Jayalalithaa has been exposed as using state machinery to conduct a pogrom against the mutt-police ham-handedness is only one proof. The Prime Minister is right in saying the law should take its own course. But he should be equally anxious to prevent a travesty of the law and its provisions. Only recently, the Chief Minister told the State Assembly that "shocking evidence" existed against the seer. If that were indeed the case, her bid to conduct a 'trial by media' would hardly have fallen flat. It has been thought that the AIADMK leader is after the 'secular' constituency of her rivals. Hence her new anti-Hindu avatar. She should know that riding roughshod over religious sensibilities is akin to playing with fire. Ideological cynicism can boomerang, since the targeted social groups are rarely the dupes politicians think they are. Post-Shah Bano, Rajiv Gandhi learnt this the hard way when he played the Ayodhya card. A similar lesson seems in store for Ms Jayalalithaa.