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Kanchi Seer Arrrest: The Political Fallout
by K N Pandey

THE junior Shankaracharya, Vijayendra Saraswati, was arrested by the Tamil Nadu police hours after the senior pontiff got bail from the Supreme Court in the Sankararaman murder case. This left the Kanchi mutt virtually headless.

The junior seer, who had been twice summoned for interrogation, has been charged with murder and criminal conspiracy. His younger brother Raghu has already been arrested. While granting the bail to the senior pontiff, the three judge bench of the apex court, presided over by the Chief Justice, Mr R C Lahoti, time and again questioned the senior prosecution lawyer, Mr K T S Tulsi, the ground of arrest, and keeping the Shankaracharya for two months in prison. During the two days hearing of the bail proceedings, at one point, the Chief Justice, expressed his unhappiness saying that the documents made available to the Court were not valid enough to warrant incarceration, and the Tamil Nadu police had arbitrarily interpreted the Indian Penal Code (IPC) Act.

Upset by the arrest of the junior Shankaracharya, a delegation comprising the former president, Mr R Venkatraman, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, Mr L K Advani, along with Mr Jaswant Singh, called on the president, A P J Kalam. They pleaded to save the mutt from the alleged takeover by the Jayalalithaa government.As the prosecution piles on charge after charge against the two Acharyas, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu had earlier told the state assembly that evidence against the senior pontiff was both shocking and damning as he had “ordered a mafia-style contract killing” of Shankarraman. The entire Hindu community was stunned, and the Rajya Sabha MP and a great intellectual, Cho Ramaswamy said that Ms Jayalalithaa had “inflicted wounds on the Hindu psyche”.

The whole episode marks a significant change of tack by, Ms J Jayalalithaa, who has encashed the older traditions of militant opposition to Brahmanical orthodoxy by proceeding with the incarceration of the Kanchi seer. In doing so, she seeks to re-capture a political space more commonly associated with other, more radical Dravidian outfits and also distance herself from the saffron outfits with which she has had a pre-electoral accord earlier last year.

The wheel has turned, and turned with a vengeance, for the head of the Kanchi mutt. In fact, it was the period of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam rule, especially the early eighties, when Jayendra Saraswati found political leaders much more receptive to his message than in the past. The Chief Minister herself has, on many occasions, called on the seer and been in close contact with him. Yet, many tend to underestimate her capacity to re-invent herself when the need arises.

She embodies the paradox of being a Brahmin heading a political party that recognises E V Ramaswamy Naicker, the most influential radical social reformer of 20th Century Tamil Nadu. In the past, and most so in her recent spell in power since 2001, the Chief Minister has played on both religiosity and her affinities with ‘Hindutva’. The two are distinct. Her scheme for feeding the poor at temples won approval of the ‘sangh parivar’, but she is careful to turn up at ‘dargahs’ and ‘mazhars’ at appropriate occasions. But is was her presence at the investiture of Narendra Modi and her comments on Godhra that seemed to indicate a creeping saffronisation of the polity.

Even prior to that, Tamil Nadu enacted a bill against religious conversion that won encomia from the saffron fraternity and paved the way for re-negotiating an electoral alliance. The May 2004 general elections saw such sanguine hopes fall flat, and there has been a change of tack ever since. With the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and smaller parties lining up with the Congress, Jayalalitha stood in danger of being politically isolated. The killing of Veerappan, a dacoit with a long record of evading the police forces of two states, was the first good news in a long time.

Within the state, her actions won grudging support of her arch-rival, Mr M Karunanidhi. The rationalist DMK even clashed with pro-Rashtriya-Swayamsevak-Sangh volunteers outside the courts. But taking on the head of the Kanchi mutt is another matter altogether. Although the Brahmins make up only a minuscule three per cent of the population of the state, the early 20th century movements set the tone for much of popular political discourse. The last two decades saw the slow rise of ‘Hindutva’ in public and political fora, but it still does not have the kind of clout it has in neighbouring states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.What Jayendra Saraswati did was to expand that space. His extensive networking with the political leaders from beyond the Tamil-speaking zone gave him clout and stature unequalled by any other religious leader. Unlike the Tamil Saivite saint, Adigalar, who forged links with the currents of social reform, Jayendra spoke a language more in common with the emerging Hindu Munani. The revival of Brahmanical cultural symbols and the more-than-nodding acquaintance with militant ‘Hindutva’ went well together.

Even his bid to play a mediator in 2002 on the Ayodhya dispute was shot through with contradictions. First, he managed to get the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to agree that a court settlement would be binding. Once the organisation went back on its word, the seer himself disclaimed any question of building any new mosque anywhere in Ayodhya as the town already had nine ‘masjids’. Why did they need any more? In all this, the bid was to wrest a larger-than-life space for religious leaders. He often expressed the hope that they would solve the Ayodhya dispute if left to themselves. Politics was foul, religion was not.

The former on noted division and the latter harmony. Politicians misled India; the men of God would rescue it.Religion and politics are often closely inter-linked in Indian public life. But Tamil Nadu is perhaps exceptional for its long history of militant atheism. This strand was far more significant in the non-Brahmin stirs in the state than in any other region in the country. Karunanidhi is one of the last living links to that other age; for long, Jayalalithaa and her predecessor, MGR, were seen as moving on towards an embracing of religious symbols in public life.

Even in the present controversy, she has disclaimed any intention of taking over the Kanchi mutt. Tamil Nadu has a minister of Hindu religious endowments and the takeover of such establishments was a major demand of early Dravidian social reform. —INAV


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