SANKARALAYAM, the Chennai abode of Pujya Acharyas of Kanchi Kamakoti Matham, hosted an emergency dharma sadas comprising over twenty mathadhipatis, acharyas and sanyasis from Andhra Pradesh on November 29, 2010. The sadas was convened by Kanchi Acharya upon learning that the dharmacharya sadassu scheduled to be held on Tirumala Hills on November 29 and 30, 2010, had been abruptly called off by the Specified Authority which currently administers the Tirumala Venkateswara (Tirupati Balaji) Temple.
The dharmacharya sadassu scheduled for 2009 was also cancelled, not once but twice. After announcing the dates for the dharmacharya sadassu the first time it was cancelled by the TTD Board headed by Chairman Adikesavulu Naidu without explanation; announcing new dates for the sadassu for the second time, it was cancelled again. The tenure of the TTD Board headed by Adikesavulu Naidu ended in August 2010 and in the wake of serious allegations of corruption involving TTD funds and abuse of schemes and tickets for Arjitha Sewa, the then Chief Minister K Rosiah dissolved the Board and constituted the Specified Authority to cleanse the administration of all corruption and malpractices.
Shri Rosiah, a good and decent man and a devout Hindu also constituted a two-member Commission of the Vigilance and Enforcement Department comprising two senior IPS officers to investigate every charge and allegation of corruption and abuse of power levelled against not just the 15 member TTD Board but the entire TTD administration. It is not surprising that, forced to cancel the dharmacharya sadassu for the third time, a wounded Rosiah, unable to deal with the pressure being brought to bear upon him by Christians and other minorities in the state and in Delhi, chose to step down as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh rather than endure being constantly undermined and humiliated by the anti-Hindu elements in his party.
The Specified Authority TTD comprises three IAS officers-Dr J Satyanarayana, Special Chief Secretary, Medical and Health, as Chairman TTD Board, IYR Krishna Rao as Executive Officer and V Nagireddy, Managing Director of AP Industrial Development Corporation (APIDC) as the third member; the last two are IAS officers of the rank of Principal Secretary. The writer has it on excellent authority that all three officers are fine and decent officers who however are not being allowed to function in the best interests of the temple and the temple’s bhaktas. While the TTD Board is a willing and happy puppet body manipulated by the president of the Congress Party, the Specified Authority is a helpless entity subject to enormous pressure to do the bidding of Madam and all Madam’s men.
The Specified Authority was ordered to cancel the dharmacharya sadassu scheduled to take place on November 29 and 30, 2010 by the same forces that compelled Shri Rosiah to step down as Chief Minister. The writer’s source claimed that one of the three officers requested in total despair that the dharma sadas to be held in Chennai should sharply rebuke all of them for canceling the scheduled sadassu in Tirupati.
The presence of revered Acharyas Pujya Viswesha Teertha Swamiji of Udipi Pejawara Math, Pujya Vidya Narasimha Bharati Swamiji of Pushpagiri Matham and Pujya Dayananda Saraswati Swamiji of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam at the dharma sadas in Chennai is an indication of the nature of the outrage. Lest any Hindu fails to comprehend the enormity of this adharmic action, India’s anti-Hindu polity which controls our temples in several states including Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, decided that Hindu Dharmacharyas cannot be allowed to meet in the Tirupati Balaji Temple, the richest temple and historically one of the most important Hindu temples in the country.
A small group belonging to the Congress party in Delhi (one, allegedly a person close to the party president and the other, a Congress functionary in charge of Andhra Pradesh) arrogated to itself the extraordinary and aasuric power to cancel the dharmacharya sadassu. Sonia Gandhi effectively rubbed the Hindu nose in the dirt when she and her minions in the Congress demonstrated their control over Hindu temples.
It must be added that the Congress in its entirety and shameless Hindus belonging to political parties, which have prided themselves at one time or the other in being allies of the Italian Roman-Catholic led Congress party, must try playing this game with the Catholic Bishops Conference or the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board or even the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee. Hindus, for their part, must ask themselves how Muslims, Christians and Sikhs would have reacted under similar circumstances. The root of the problem of repeated slight offered to Hindu sensibilities by India’s politics of minorityism lies in the answer to this last question.
The Tirupati Balaji temple is administered by the all-powerful Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD) Board. The functioning of the Board is governed by the TTD Constitution which is a separate chapter in the Andhra Pradesh Hindu Religious, Charitable Institutions and Temples Act. The TTD Board is supposedly an autonomous board; a patently false and laughable claim considering the fact that the Board with a tenure of two years, comprises 15 members whose Chairman, like the CJI, CEC, CVC, NSA, CBI and PM, is directly appointed by Sonia Gandhi; and also considering the antecedents of past Chairmen of the TTD Board thus hand-picked by Madam.
The TTD Board, besides the Chairman, who is a political appointee, comprises 11 members chosen from different walks of life and three members who are MLAs belonging to the ruling party in the state. This corrupt political body wears a virtuous fig-leaf of mandatory inclusion of a SC, ST and woman member in the team. The 11 members are like some members of the Rajya Sabha who, although they may represent a diverse non-political segment of civil society, nevertheless require political backing to become Members of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha. All members of the TTD Board are thus political appointees, no less. The TTD Board is therefore not an autonomous entity owing allegiance to the presiding deity; it is a political body owing allegiance to the Chief Minister of the State and if the state is ruled by the Congress, to Sonia Gandhi.
In recent years the choice of two persons as Chairman TTD Board deserves special mention – Bhumanna Karunakara Reddy and Adikesavulu Naidu; both of them were given the golden goose called TTD as reward for services rendered. Bhumanna Karunakara Reddy was rewarded by Y Samuel Rajasekhara Reddy (hereafter Samuel Reddy) for Bhumanna’s devotion to Samuel Reddy’s father Raja Reddy who lived a chequered and violent life until 1998 when he was allegedly murdered by workers belonging to the Telugu Desam Party.
In the late 1970s decade both Karunakara Reddy and Samuel Reddy’s late father Raja Reddy were serving sentences for different crimes in the same prison. Karunakara Reddy’s initiation into Samuel Reddy’s family began then. After his release from prison, Bhumanna Karunakara Reddy hitched his wagon to the rising star of the politically ambitious Samuel Reddy family. One of Samuel Reddy’s first acts as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 2004 was to make Bhumanna Subramanya Reddy, Karunakara Reddy’s elder brother, Director of Sri Venkateswara Employees’ Training Academy or SVETA. Karunakara Reddy was made Chairman of Tirupati Urban Development Authority or TUDA.
Through a Government Order (GO) Samuel Reddy introduced a new custom by which the Chairman of TUDA would now be an ex-officio member of the TTD Board; this unprecedented move was effected only to place both family minions within the TTD empire as an interim measure in some capacity before presenting younger brother and family faithful par exemplar Karunakara Reddy with the prestigious Chairman of TTD Board Golden Goose Award in 2006. Karunakara Reddy succeeded Subbarami Reddy, Congress Rajya Sabha MP to the post. Subbarami Reddy in TTD was akin to Sharad Pawar in the BCCI, now ICC and that should say it all. Political power driven by money power bestows more power to the same individual enabling the making of more money. It is a dichotomous self-perpetuating creature.
It is not mere coincidence that during the tenure of the three Reddys – Samuel, Subramanya and Karunakara as Chief Minister Andhra Pradesh, Director SVETA and Chairman of TTD Board respectively that Christian missionary activities in the TTD administered universities in Tirupati and missionary activities on Tirumala Hills gathered unchecked momentum culminating in a situation where Christians were employees of the TTD on Tirumala Hills! Whether the Christians used SVETA to infiltrate the Tirumala Hills or whether Samuel Reddy politely looked the other way as evangelists climbed the seven hills to convert TTD employees to Christianity is not clear but what was established beyond dispute was that evangelism and Christian missionary activities had not only begun but were visibly increasing in Tirupati-Tirumala courtesy Samuel, Subramanya and Karunakara Reddy.
(To be concluded)
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