Looking beyond the arrest

Article by my father, S. Viswam,

Courtesy: Janata, Mumbai, 11/16/2004.

Which is the more incredible of two recent developments? The naming of the high-profile so-called incarnation of God, the Kanchi Shankaracharya, Sri Jayendra Saraswati, as the principal accused in a contract killing of a temple accountant, and his arrest and incarceration on a charge of murder? Or the denial by 35,000 temples in Andhra Pradesh of teerth and prasad to their devotees and the directive of the Sangh Parivar and Hindu religious heads owing allegiance to it to suspend naivedyam (offering) to Gods and Goddesses in all temples of the country for a day in protest against the Godman’s arrest?

God is the universal provider. Even God, said Gandhiji, dare not appear before the hungry except in the form of food. For, God is the Daridranarayan, the One who feeds the hungry. But we now have an instance where even God is being denied his daily sustenance because He merely looked on without raising His little finger to stop the Shankaracharya’s arrest!

The arrest of the religious head on a murder charge of one of the five highly revered mutts established by no less a religious mentor than the Adi Shankaracharya himself has no precedents in India. Just as the arrest is the first of its kind in the rule of law, so is the Sangh Parivar’s call to the temple priests in the country not to feed the deities. The wrath of mere mortals has been directed for the first time against the Gods themselves instead of the wrath of the Gods visiting the sinners.

Religion and politics have seldom before in India’s history got so intertwined as in the developments flowing from the Shankaracharya’s arrest. The religious fervour evoked by the arrest has been reflected in the poojas, homas, japas and samoohike prayers of the devotees. Political reaction has followed in the form of bandhs, hartals, demonstrations, processions and press statements by all and sundry individuals and select political parties and groupings. Interestingly, but not so strangely, the protests are all in defence of Hinduism which is supposed to have been dealt a body blow. The arrest is being projected to the public by the Sangh Parivar affiliates as an attack against Hindus in appeasement of the Muslims and Christians. Would any government arrest the Pope or any Muslim Imam?, they scream. An unholy conspiracy to tarnish the holy name of His Holiness, say these defenders of Hinduism. The trial of an accused in a murder case has already been held by these defenders of the Faith, and the accused has been declared an innocent victim of a deep-rooted conspiracy to hold the symbol of Hindu religion to public ridicule and humiliation.

However, don’t we need to look beyond the arrest and suspend judgement till the case is heard and the verdict is given? Admittedly, there is good cause for the followers of the Shankaracharya and thousands others owing allegiance to the Kanchi Matt to be upset over the arrest of their matadhipati. Devotees owing allegiance to the four other matts in India located in Dwaraka (West), Puri(East), Kedarnath (North) and Shringeri (South) would be equally upset if their respective Shankaracharyas were to fall into the police net. Religion and religious beliefs are sensitive issues the world over. If Jayendra Saraswati’s arrest has evoked both concern and protest, it is only because the involvement of matadhipatis in cases of contract killing is not a daily occurrence in India. Indeed, the reaction to the arrest has predictably been one of surprise, bewilderment and disbelief.

Amidst these conflicting emotions, it is understandably difficult for people to comprehend the real significance of the action by the Tamil Nadu police. The real message sent down the line by the police action embraces the simple rule of law: howsoever mighty an individual be, the law is above him. In the heat of the moment, it may appear that in daring to take a powerful and influential religious leader into custody, the police has not only been high-handed but insensitive, apart from being inordinately hasty. In the ultimate analysis, the basic quarrel of the protestors with the government is not over the substance of the rule of law or the guilt or innocence of the accused, but the style and manner of enforcement of the rule of law. Even if the dissatisfaction of the public over the latter consideration may be valid to an extent, it does not negate the seriousness of the charges against him. These charges include murder, conspiracy and abetment to murder, causing evidence to disappear, collusion with anti-social elements and funding them to murder a temple accountant with whom the Pontiff was at perpetual loggerheads, and more importantly, an attempt to flee the country and seek refuge in Nepal. The last charge has been cited in defence of the precipitious police action in arresting the Shankaracharya while he was about to perform a pooja in a town in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and that too late in the evening.

(The police brought him expeditiously back to Chennai in a government aircraft to Chennai late in the night to present him before a magistrate who was specially asked to sit in court in the dawn hours to pack the Pontiff off to the Vellore Jail. This, admittedly, confirms high-handedness. The Heavens would not have fallen if the accused had been produced in court in the normal hours. The police also will find it hard to defend itself against the accusation that all the haste was to ensure that the Shankaracharya’s bail application could not be heard till after the Dewali and Ramzan holidays. An element of deliberateness in further humiliating him? Or in establishing the point that the Tamil Nadu police is a stickler for rules and procedures regardless of personalities?)

However, the basic fact remains: the Shankaracharya has been arrested not for any ordinary transgression of law but for murder. The charges against him are serious, and the debate over the rights and wrongs of the manner of the arrest and the treatment of the accused becomes irrelevant in the face of the nature of the crime he has been charged with. The protests organized by the Sangh Parivar outfits, the demands for his release, and the slogan of Hinduism in danger are all incidental, irrelevant and also opportunist. Crime is crime even if it is politicized.

The law will naturally take its course, and must be allowed to do so. The guilt or innocence of the Shankaracharya will be established after the due processes of law are completed. This is the fundamental premise on which a civilized civil society rests, and campaigns about any religion subjected to assault in the conduct of the discharge of due processes of law should not be allowed to influence the course of the law. This much is self-evident in a democracy functioning under a Constitution by law established.

That said, it only remains to raise two other interesting points. BJP President Advani recently lamented that his party is always in the news for wrong reasons. The last time it was in the news for wrong reasons was when Uma Bharati’s revolt and her challenge to the party leadership occured in the full glare of television cameras specially placed in the venue of the office-bearers’ meeting at the invitation of Advani himself. His well-meant intention to showcase for the public the unity within the party backfired on him. But even as the party was contending with the fall-out of the public tamasha resulting from Uma’s tantrum politics, luck has favoured it by handing over it on a platter as it were another campaign issue. The Sangh Parivar is now engaged in capitalizing on the Shankaracharya arrest for political gains. The VHP and the sadhus in its fold frowned on the same Shankaracharya’s mediation in the Ayodhya issue.They went even to the extent of berating a Shaivaite matadhipati interfering in the Vaishnavaite cause of the Ram temple and sneered at him for meddling in politics. They said that the Kanchi matt was an interloper since it was not really established by the Adi Shankaracharya but enjoyed patronage by default since successive Shankaracahryas heading it over the centuries were all good preceptors. That could not be said, they argued, for its present head who was more political than religious. The same VHP and its affiliates are now portraying the Shankaracharya as a victim of an anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim conspiracy. The Shaivaite has overnight become a defender of the Vaishnavaite cause in the overall defense of Hinduism!

Of equal interest is the sudden unification of the pro-Jayendra and anti-Jayendra lobbies in the Kanchi Kamakoti Matt. The Pontiff’s arrest is now being seen as an attack on the Hindu religion even by his detractors who were distancing themselves away from him because of his extra-religious interests, which manifested themselves in his self-propelled intrusion into politics, his craze for publicity, his penchant for ostentation and his tendency to amass wealth. The Shankaracharya hobnobbed more with politicians and the high and mighty in government than with his religious peers. The Kanchi matt devotees have been more familiar and impressed with the self-effacing, low-profile, deeply-devotional style of Jayendra’s erudite predecessor, the highly revered Paramacharya. The great Paramacharya was perhaps the last of a genre of Shankaracharyas who practiced what they preached and were the embodiments of sacrifice and religious discipline. He shunned all kinds of vehicles and traveled barefoot across the length and breadth of the country. The new Pontiff just loves stretch limousines and jumbo jets and levies a fee for his presence at religious gatherings and temple kumbabhishekams. The contrast between the two acharyas has been too glaring to go unnoticed. The Pontiff’s arrest must have shocked them into a further sense of disbelief and bafflement. Even so, they have rallied to his side, since the Kanchi Matt is greater than its head and its holy image must be preserved at all costs. Besides, after all, there is the Hindu religion which is under threat although the threat has come not from the police but from one of its high-priests!