The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : A heady brew of religion, law and politics

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Saturday, Nov 27, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

A heady brew of religion, law and politics

By N. Ravi

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... ..it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity... .. we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way"
— Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities.

THIS ABOUT sums up the contradictions in the political discourse on the rule of law and the uncertainty over what is considered right and what is wrong in the arrest of the Kanchi Sankaracharya. The well worn cliché that the law should take its course has been pulled out and used by politicians of different persuasions to mean diametrically opposite things — either that the law should go soft or that it should come down like a sledgehammer. Also under siege are two other maxims, that all are equal in the eyes of the law and that one should hold one's judgment till a court pronounces its verdict, a person being presumed innocent till proved guilty.

That the law would take its constitutionally ordained course is broadly true only after a case reaches the court. Before it reaches the court, and to an extent even after it does, there is a dominant element of executive discretion at play. The government of the day has to decide which cases to take up and investigate, how much of resources to bring to bear on the investigation and prosecution and how fast to complete the process. While more and more of judicial oversight is being brought into this area of prosecution since the Supreme Court's decision in the Jain Hawala cases, such monitoring extends to just a handful of cases.

It is this element of discretion in investigation and prosecution which has drawn the Jayalalithaa Government into the debate. After a dissident from the Kanchi Mutt was murdered by a hired gang in a temple office, could her Government not have pushed this case under the carpet, could it not at least have gone slow in arresting the Sankaracharya till it investigated the people around him and tried to eliminate his involvement? At least after five persons surrendered, owning up to the murder, could the Government not have charged them and taken them to trial? The followers of the Kanchi Mutt would have expected one of these courses and now see the arrest as a betrayal. On the side of the opposition parties, there is an element of disbelief that someone like Ms. Jayalalithaa who is seen as religiously inclined and close to the Kanchi Mutt would have gone to the extent of arresting the Sankaracharya in the murder case without a strong personal motive that could override her religious sentiment. This scepticism stands in contrast to her own categorical assertion that the Government acted to uphold the law after a careful consideration of the evidence, after getting "shocking" and "solid" proof. In the midst of the anger of the devotees, the scepticism of the Opposition and the Government's righteousness, where exactly the public come down will become clear only as the story unfolds and goes through its various twists and turns.

Interestingly, the arrest has so perplexed political parties that they have had to stand their traditional attitude to crime and tough state action on its head, guided in their reaction by their attitude towards religion and its role in politics. The DMK, the MDMK, the PMK, and the Left, for instance, who are normally opposed to any measure that would enable the state to act tough on crime at too heavy a cost in terms of a person's rights, were one in opposing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) both because of its inherent affront to civil liberty and because of the danger of misuse. Now, with their disdain for religion in politics, they were among the first to defend the arrest of the Sankaracharya as an instance of the law taking its course. Civil liberties organisations that usually defend the rights of the accused against an all powerful state were this time vocal in justifying the arrest and have expressed themselves against any special treatment. On the other hand, the BJP, the staunch defender of POTA and which is also identified with a tough line against crime has been the most vocal opponent of the arrest.

The Congress party spoke in three different voices through different functionaries, first expressing its shock, then justifying the arrest, and still later turning critical of the treatment meted out to the Sankaracharya. The Prime Minister in his letter to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has described the arrest as an "extreme step" and has said "an investigation involving a person of his eminence needs to be conducted with extreme care and consideration" — a measure of solicitude that comes close to challenging the notion that all are equal before law. While in practice the law defers in varying degrees to power, position in society and wealth, such deference offends the notion of equality and can hardly be elevated as a general principle to guide state action.

The issue of treatment is one that virtually all political parties have found easy to pick up without compromising their stands on any of the other issues. And criticism of the treatment has been one way of expressing support for the Kanchi Mutt and a concession to religious sentiment without at the same time challenging the case on its merits or questioning the justification for the arrest. For it is unexceptionable that the Sankaracharya should be treated with due regard to his age and health and should be allowed to observe the religious duties and rituals as well as ways of living ordained by the ancient order. A contrast is often drawn between the detention of high profile politicians such as Mr. Lalu Prasad and Ms. Uma Bharti in the luxurious confines of large, specially vacated houses and the detention of the Kanchi Sankaracharya in the Vellore prison, and there is an element of justification in the demand for similar treatment. Yet, it needs to be noted that such special treatment is a relatively new phenomenon, and even in the freedom movement the leaders spent time in ordinary prisons. In Tamil Nadu itself, both Ms. Jayalalithaa and Mr. Karunanidhi were taken to a regular prison when they were arrested rather than to a guest house.

It is one small step from criticising the treatment meted out to the Sankaracharya to objecting to the arrest itself. Indeed, such distinctions have not bothered the BJP whose objections to the treatment, the arrest and the very charge are combined into one indistinguishable mass of protest in defence of religion. When Mr. Advani blamed the "politics of vendetta, confrontation and one-upmanship and social divisiveness that had marred the society in Tamil Nadu" and the "general climate of pseudo-secularism" for the present situation in his address to the party executive committee at Ranchi, he was objecting not just to the treatment, but to the very arrest of a spiritual leader in a criminal case. Mr. Vajpayee went so far as to demand "a different set of guidelines for religious leaders."

With faith-based assertions of innocence and shock contending with swift condemnation and gloating over the discomfiture of a religious leader, the notion of holding one's judgment till the trial is concluded is receding. The maxim that one is innocent till proved guilty seems to apply only to the legal arena while in the public domain opinions are formed almost as soon as the charge unfolds. Here too, as in the case of support or opposition to the arrest, opinion on guilt or innocence is divided on the lines of faith — the followers of the Mutt and those who fear that Hindu religious institutions would come under a cloud remain convinced that the whole case is false and foisted while others seem to believe in the charges to different degrees. The common sense based view that the Government would not have gone to the extent of arresting the Sankaracharya without strong evidence has to contend with the quite different view, also based on common sense, that confessions and statements of accused and witness are changeable, subject as they are to the changing political winds and other pressures, and cases based on them and little else are notoriously unpredictable.

Clearly these are extraordinary times which have put public and political commitments to the basic tenets of the rule of law to a severe test. And this is not just because a saint revered till the other day is suddenly accused of something so heinous as murder. Sankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi is no ordinary saint, his role has extended far beyond the traditional duties of a preceptor and head of a mutt and he has brought to his position an evangelical fervour, social service orientation and political activism whose most visible manifestation was in his mediation in the Ayodhya dispute. He himself lives a simple and austere life of prayer, ritual and meditation but he is also the absolute master of a vast empire of religious, charitable, educational and medical institutions that he has built out of a lean and relatively low key mutt. No wonder the sudden turn in his fortunes has created a wave of disbelief, confusion and disorientation in the polity.

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A heady brew of religion, law and politics