Nine years after a sinister political conspiracy led to the Diwali-day arrest of Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati in November 2004 (Bal Perivaar Vijayendra Saraswati was arrested on January 10, 2005), the case collapsed into nothingness this morning as Puducherry Principal District Sessions Court Judge CS Murugan acquitted both seers and 21 others in the murder of A. Sankararaman. One accused, M Kathiravan, was murdered at KK Nagar in March this year.

Simply put, there was no evidence to support the prosecution case against the accused. This was mainly because the murder, believed to be related to a dispute over temple property under the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments department, was not properly investigated. Instead, on the basis of lose talk by some disgruntled elements, the Acharyas of Kanchi Matham were implicated along with several bhakts. Sankararaman, a former Matham employee and later manager of the Sri Varadarajaperumal temple in Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu, was brutally murdered on the temple premises on September 3, 2004; the Acharyas were later arraigned as principal accused. The co-accused included Matham manager N Sundaresan and MK Raghu, brother of the Bal Sankaracharya. The Supreme Court had transferred the case to Puducherry in 2005 following an appeal by Swami Jayendra Saraswati that the atmosphere in Tamil Nadu was not conducive for a free and fair trial. Early in the trial, it was obvious the prosecution would not be able to establish its case as 83 out of 189 witnesses turned hostile. These included approver Ravi Subramanian.

The case was riddled with holes from the start and the prosecution mainly relied upon organised media propaganda to win the battle in the public domain. Tamil Nadu public prosecutor K Doraisamy called Swami Jayendra Saraswati a ‘most undeserving criminal’, and tried to deny him bail. Accordingly, the court extended his judicial remand by a fortnight. Thebank accounts of the Matham, from which the alleged killers were allegedly paid, mysteriously changed from ICICI to Indian Bank. A key accused told the court he was tortured to confess, but retracted a day later, while still in custody. At the same time, the State Government awarded of Rs five lakhs to the wife of the murdered man.

While the scandal caused many eminent devotees to melt away, loyalists noted the hand of vested interests behind the crisis. Perivaar, as the Swami is known to his devotes, was a major obstacle in the path of evangelists as he planned to build a temple in every Scheduled Caste village and to give personal darshan there. He challenged missionary monopoly over higher education via the Chandrasekharendra Maha Vishwavidyalaya, a Deemed University that controls several educational and medical institutions which serve the villages. In fact, the Scheduled Castes protested against his arrest in several places, but the news was largely suppressed in the media. The Sankaracharya had launched several development schemes at Irulneeki village, his birthplace, for the welfare of the depressed classes, and the Kattunanyakan scheduled tribe, scavengers by profession, had built an Amman temple in 1992 with his help. As village chief Natesan then said, “When many still considered us untouchables, he treated us with dignity”. In November 2002, he performedpuja at the Veerakali Amman temple in Melur region, where 250 scheduled caste Hindus were converted en masse by a Canadian priest of the Seventh Day Adventists on 25 August 2002.

The Kanchi Matham took up the anti-conversion agenda with gusto; the seer was adamant that Hindu dharm does not promote or envision discrimination and regards people of all sections of society as equals. Hindu tradition, he stressed, was of living amicably as ‘family’; and while there are always differences in society, discrimination is not the hallmark of dharm. The Veerakali Amman temple attracts devotees from all castes and is locally renowned as a symbol of communal harmony as Muslims regularly join its annual festival in January.

Swami Jayendra Saraswati also travelled to Tirunelveli to insist that all that castes have an equal right to enter any temple across the State, individually, and offer prayers. He asserted that appropriate action would be taken against those trying to prevent Harijans from entering temples. The Sankaracharya maintained this momentum even after the devastating murder case was sprung upon him, and after being released on bail, met the fisher folk from Devanampatti in Cuddalore district when they sought his blessings before resuming fishing after the tsunami; he gave them a month’s food stocks as prasadam and ensured that all had a checkup at the Matham’s Free Medical Centre before returning to sea. He said, “In every family, there is a kula daivam and an ishta daivam they pray to. In the same way, by praying to whatever deity is beloved to your mind, obtain well-being – I bless you”.

Despite the criminal case taking a huge toll on his personal health, Swami Jayendra Saraswati maintained unrelenting pressure on missionaries in defence of Hindu dharm. In June 2009, he met Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, president of Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, in Mumbai and upstaged him with the request to give Hindus the same promise of non-conversion as was given by Pope Benedict XVI to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel in Jerusalem the previous month. When the Cardinal demurred that conversions were mainly done by Protestants, he told him to return with all Christian denominations and solve the issue permanently.

Recalling Pope John Paul II’s call to plant the Cross in Asia in the third millennium to facilitate the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, he challenged the Cardinal to explain the First Coming of Jesus Christ, when there was no Christianity or Church to convert the world. Swami Jayendra Saraswati also denounced the US Commission on International Religious Freedom as an “intrusive mechanism of a foreign Government” to interfere in India’s internal affairs. On subsequent visits to this country, the Cardinal avoided him completely.

Whichever way one looks at it, the arrest of the Kanchi Acharyas was the greatest civilisational insult to the Hindu people since the assassination of Guru Tegh Bahadur by a fanatic iconoclast. Sadly, the BJP was then in the vice-like grip of a geriatric leadership that could not even fathom the extent of the danger and it was the now disgraced kathakar, Asaram Bapu, who gave vent to Hindu trauma in the crisis. Tamil bhakts always believed that American evangelists were behind the affair. They were upset about the anti-conversion law and delighted when the State Government scrapped it. The then President George Bush Jr was an avid advocate of evangelism and immediately after his re-election hosted Iftaar and Diwali dinners simultaneously at the White House and attended only the former.