Arrest of Kanchi seer

“Hindus can never get justice in secular India?”—S. Gurumurthy
Report by Pramod Kumar

Terming the arrest of both the Kanchi Shankara-charyas, Swami Jayendra Saraswati and Swami Vijyendra Saraswati, as a ‘predetermined move’, noted ideologue and author Shri S. Gurumurthy has said that anything connected with Hindus is never given justice in India. He was delivering a talk on the ‘Siege of Kanchi Mutt and its Implications’, organised by the BJP think-tank in New Delhi on January 30. “The secularists and English-educated people have caused a great damage to the country. In fact, it is the English-educated India that has become a problem for India itself,” he added.

Coming down heavily on the English press, that while reporting the case very irresponsibly, the press on its own convicted the Shankaracharya even before the court could say a word on it, he said that the entire media and secular India were insensitive to the noblest religious place of this country. “The media has done more damage to the seer than J. Jayalalithaa and the Tamil Nadu police. It is the purest example of yellow journalism,” he said, adding that if the media had truly supervised the whole issue, no government could have acted in such an irresponsible and biased manner. He said the state government had declared the seer a culprit and the whole media cooperated in this game-plan. “The press indeed endorsed both the ‘modern India’ and ‘secular India’,” he said, adding that the secular Constitution of the country too was insensitive to the Hindus.

Describing Jayalalithaa as a political enemy, he said the Central Government had the power to intervene in the issue, but it did not. He cited the raid by the Uttar Pradesh police at Nadwa to nab an ISI agent when the then Prime Minister, the late P.V. Narasimha Rao, intervened and sent two of his Cabinet ministers to apologise to Ali Miyan. He said what happened to the revered religious leaders of Hindus should not happen to any Imam, Archbishop, the President of India, the Chief Justice of Supreme Court, as they are respected persons of the country.

He emphasised, “The people in the Mutt are very law abiding. They fear the police and the law. It is a reverent religious place with no hierarchy, advisors or bureaucracy. The activities of the Mutt are transparent. Even in the case of funds, the Mutt has been submitting the annual audit report to the government since 1925.”

The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, the convenor, said, that it was impossible to say what prompted the Jayalalithaa government to take the step it did and claimed it was not for enforcement of law alone. “There appeared to be a number of designs behind this move. The entire establishment of Tamil Nadu was kept away from this action. Even the state Advocate General was not consulted before taking action. It was a clear case of pre-determined action,” he stated. He noted that the arrest at the behest of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, a ‘Hindu sympathiser’, had a ‘shocking effect’ on the Hindu society. Shri Gurumurthy cited the politically motivated police investigation in a murder case of Bihar in 1976 when the Anand Marg’s chief was falsely implicated in the case.

Earlier, initiating the discussion, Shri Balbir Punj, noted journalist and Member of Parliament, said that the arrest of Kanchi seer was a sustained effort to kill the historical Mutt and tradition of the country.