With the acquittal of Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati and his followers, in the Sankararaman murder case by a court in Puducherry, fingers are now pointing towards the conspirators in the case. This has definitely cheered majority of Indians who have their indelible faith in the Hindu tradition and sanctity of one of the oldest Hindu mutts like Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham. As the complainant had failed to support the prosecution and there was no substantive evidence to corroborate hostile witnesses, now the question arises as to why this conspiracy to denigrate Hindu beliefs was hatched and who can be behind it.

To understand why Kanchi Shankaracharya was implicated, we need to understand his work and approach. Swami Jayendra Saraswati has been concerned about the fate of Hindus and is critical about the Missionary activities in India, especially in Tamil Nadu. Through his Jana Kalyan Jagaran he has been awakening the masses against the flow of foreign funds and its misuse for conversions. His Mutt also extended its activities for upliftment of Dalits, who were the prime targets of Missionaries. He also headed a State level committee on protection of temple property and due to his persistent efforts, the State government brought in an Act in 2002 to prevent “forcible” conversions. His endeavours to mediate in the Ayodhaya dispute were highly regarded by all the parties. Due to his social and compassionate approach through religious activities, he developed enemies in the secular establishment.

The whole drama of arrest and investigation of Kanchi Mutt seers was based on the confessions of murderers who were at large when the Shankaracharya was arrested on Deepavali night in 2004. There were demands by the so-called Dravidian ideologues to takeover the Mutt. The investigative reporter of Nakkeeran, Damodar Prakash who developed this sellable story of alleged malpractices in the Kanchi Mutt as the motive of murder could not prove his claims. The media who was running the stories of Hindu vilification is silent now. The time has come that police, state, media and liberal intellectuals apologise to the Kanchi Shankaracharya and the collective Hindu psyche. There is also a need to investigate the conspiracy behind such acts of Hindu denigration.

Time to Reject Blackmailing of Conditional Citizens

The country’s largest Muslim charity organisation ‘Zakat Foundation has shockingly linked Muslim support to the UPA in the 2014 general elections to a demand list to be fulfilled in the next few months.  The twenty point agenda prepared by the Muslim representatives in a meeting chaired by the Zakat President Syed Zafar Mahmood and attended by 19 leaders, threatened to reject all parties if the charter is not met.

The blackmailing of the most privileged community among the so-called minorities is not new. From Khilafat to Sachar, every movement and committee has focused on the issue of minority rights with the sole focus on Muslims. Every time Muslims played the card effectively the Congress responded positively with appeasement politics. The regional messiahs of secularism go one step ahead and dole out anti-constitutional moves of religious reservations and minority institutions with state funding.

The whole discourse of majority-minority is a misplaced one in India. The collective wisdom of the Constitution makers is undermined by religious minoritism and erroneous interpretation of Fundamental Rights, namely right to equality and educational and cultural rights. The question is how long the political parties in India are going to succumb to such blackmailing. Has Indian ethos forgotten the fact that religion based reservations and demand for separate constituencies was the starting point of Partition in 1947? When will the common Muslim masses in India realise that such politics of blackmailing has not helped them much but on the contrary hampered national reconstruction. If they do not comprehend this fact and keep falling in line with the clergies, then nationalist forces will be left with no option than to come together and reject the blackmailing of conditional citizens.