Guruphiliac: Seer Of Kanchi Blurry To Some



Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Seer Of Kanchi Blurry To Some

File under: Gurus Doin' Time

A quaint quirk of the Indian news media is their tendency to give godmen the benefit of the doubt. The Shankaracharya of Kanchi, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, is a kind of regional pope in South India who just happens to be under indictment for murder and assault. But you wouldn't know it reading this:
Kanchi seer Sri Jayendra Saraswathi honoured 113 musicians, harikatha exponents, Tamil scholars and Sanskrit students at the 113th Jayanthi celebration of Paramacharya Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi organised here by the Sri Kanchi Mahaswami Peetarohana Shatabdi Mahotsav Trust yesterday.
You can find this kind of soft-peddling whenever gurus are being covered by the papers in India. It reveals the power of the concept of guru as it is generally defined within Hinduism. This is the fallow field from which the fauxvatars enjoy their bountiful harvest. Apparently, the media in India don't want to mess with that yet.

That's ok. We'll keep doing it for them.

5 Comments:

At 6/15/2006 10:03 AM, Blogger guruphiliac said...

Actually, you are behind on this news: Jayendra Saraswati was arrested and detained in jail for quite some time last year

Actually, we reported on this last year. Each of these links was present in the latest article.

 
At 6/15/2006 1:17 PM, Blogger Mrinalya said...

Jody,
In this case, I think The swami was not the evil doer, instead it was the people who supposedly working for Him worked against Him.

Those people that were employed by the organization ( The Kanchi Mutt ) got involved with a murder but thought they could get away with it if they could somehow tangle the mutt into it. So this was a clever plot and the swami truly lived up to his image showing no dissent. He is no conman.

Remember how Premananda reacted when he was arrested? That proved he was a con.

-Mrinalya

 
At 6/15/2006 1:31 PM, Blogger guruphiliac said...

I'm not saying the Seer is a con. But there's nothing saying that he wasn't involved in the murder plot as far as I can see. I was noting the Indian media's penchant for giving these guys a break. In the States there are no breaks from the media for these kinds of cases.

 
At 9/30/2006 7:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jody,

I guess your comparison with states is inappropriate. Having lived in both the countries, I know the difference. In states, law enforcement agencies by and large enjoy people's trust. In India, it is the reverse. Law enforcement agencies are known to be the puppets of the ruling party. Filing a chargesheet by police, does not anyway imply any wrongdoing on the person's part. All it proves is that the person did not play his cards well. Persecution for political opponents is a very real threat. In such cases, the press therefore goes more by the reputation of the person and its own assessment.

As far as this guy is concerned, his record is clean. Shankaracharyas are not supposed to interact much with the outside world. This guy has violated this rule. Apart from this no other breach in his long career of over seventy years. The ruling party tried to use him in elections, but was rebuffed. Immediately afterwards the poor guy is found implicated in a murder that was long forgotten. Sounds more like a personal vendetta. Homegrown indigenous press cannot be unaware of these things.

 
At 12/04/2006 7:30 AM, Blogger Surya said...

Just another ignorant blogger. can you give me the name of a newspaper/media that gave the benfit of the doubt to the Kanchi Mahan? Every paper wrote trash about him, if you followed carefully, maybe bought over by Jaya, the truth was essentially muffled, S Gurumurthy the lone voice writing for Indian Express was served orders not to write against the Govt.(atrocities on the Guru).Kanchiforum has some links to collection of articles that might educate you. http://kanchiforum.org/interesting/
Also visit Kanchi-Sathya.org
Be glad that that Kanchi followers do not follow the Aruval(Sickle) culture of the other periyar following dravidian bastards.

 

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