Tamil Nadu Lawyers’ mutiny – the Church’s first big step

Tamil Nadu Lawyers’ mutiny – the Church’s first big step
13/03/2009 03:03:02

By Radha Rajan

The drama unfolding in the Tamil Nadu Bar and judiciary is uncannily like
the drama which is even now unfolding in Pakistan and India after the Mumbai
terror attacks on 26 November, 2008; the serial rapist is successfully
playing virgin victim. The US has given the world another new phrase for
parroting obediently – ‘good Taliban/bad Taliban’ which is a bold and
original departure from good cop/bad cop. From good Taliban it is only a
small step to good jihad, good church, good rapist and good genocide. Now
permit me to coin a new word – good lawyers.

The irony of the ‘good’ will be better understood if we grant the Tamil Nadu
Bar to be part cut-throat and part craven, albeit in unequal parts while the
judiciary, and this includes the Supreme Court, is almost wholly craven. The
craven lot in the Bar comprises of the so-called ‘decent’ lawyers who have
not summoned the courage to take a stand against the rowdies, goondas,
hooligans and thugs in the Bar; these are lawyers funded by known
anti-social and anti-national groups at home and abroad while deriving their
impunity from dravidian anti-national polity and Tamil-chauvinist (read
crypto-Christian) political parties. The Tamil Nadu judiciary has been a
sometimes silent, sometimes benign and even indulgent spectator of this long
history of rampant goondaism bordering on terror tactics by a section of
Tamil Nadu lawyers. It is a history going back to over a decade. As Justice
Srikrishna put it in his report, “Suffice it to say that a number of
criminal cases were registered by the police against several advocates for
indulging in activities that amounted to criminal offences”.

This section of goonda lawyers emboldened by the political clout of the
Presidents of the Madras High Court Advocates Association and the Tamil Nadu
Advocates Association, RC Paul Kanagaraj and S Prabakaran respectively, have
not only publicly affirmed the cause of Velupillai Prabhakaran who is a
notified fugitive Sri Lankan Tamil terrorist wanted in India for the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, they have gone so far as to celebrate the
terrorist’s birthday within the High Court premises. Dravidian (by
connotation secessionist) politics has equated the extremely complex and
civilisationally troubling Sri Lankan Tamil issue with the LTTE; this
simplistic diminution of the issue has however exposed the Church in Tamil
Nadu and also exposed in the process the cold and calculating ways of the
White western church of all denominations.

It is not simply coincidence that all processions and demonstrations in
support of the LTTE and Velupillai Prabhakaran, in the guise of support for
Sri Lankan Tamils have a Christian padri leading from the front. Roadside
meetings addressed by politicians belonging to the ‘Viduthalai Chiruthai’
(Leopards for Freedom, a name closely resembling the Tamil appellation for
the LTTE, ‘Viduthalai Puli’ or Tigers for Freedom or simply Tamil Tigers)
are also organized near churches; the flock in these churches constitute the
audience at these meetings. A few years ago a Christian nun was arrested in
South Tamil Nadu for distributing inflammatory pamphlets in support of the
LTTE and Tamil Eelam (the secessionist Tamil state). Velupillai Prabhakaran,
and his son who has been anointed terrorist-heir apparent, are both
Christian; the LTTE’s verbose supporter in Tamil Nadu, the notorious Vaiko
or Vai. Gopalaswamy is also allegedly Christian. Vaiko, chief of MDMK, yet
another secessionist dravidian Tamil political party was incarcerated by
Jayalalithaa under the NSA for sedition. He is now her devoted Walter
Raleigh.

The most striking tell-tale sign of the hand of the church in the cause of
the Tamil secessionist movement is Jayalalithaa’s endorsement last week of
Tamil Eelam; she had been vehemently opposed to the idea of Tamil Eelam and
had staunchly maintained that she was as committed to the territorial
integrity of Sri Lanka as she was to the resolution of the civil war with
justice for the Sri Lankan Tamil people. This radical departure on
Jayalalithaa’s part of endorsing Eelam is only a continuum of the radical
departure she made in December 2008 when several Christian padris, which
included one Bishop, conducted special Christian prayers on Christmas day
followed by special service in her home at Poe’s Garden. This went far
beyond the usual Christmas festivities in which Hindu political leaders
participate for their Christian cadre and for secularism. Needless to say it
was Vaiko who offered Jayalalithaa lemon juice after her day of fasting for
the well-being of the LTTE.

If we take into account the fact that south of Chennai, almost every single
fishing hamlet on the Tamil Nadu coast is wholly Christian and/or Muslim and
that the Muslims of Sri Lanka are almost wholly Tamil speaking, and if after
taking into account the fact that Jayalalithaa allowed World Vision,
ActionAid and other rabid Christian NGOs to run amok in Tamil Nadu after the
tsunami, were it to be said that Tamil Nadu is sitting on a political
volcano waiting to erupt, it would not be overstating the situation. Well
organized fishermen’s organizations and unions in Tamil Nadu have now
stepped forward publicly to demand Tamil Eelam.

Pope John Paul II abusing the hospitality of the Indian state and Indian
people declared on Hindu-majority Indian soil, on the sacred Hindu day of
Deepavalli that he intended to plant the church in Asia in the third
millennium. China , India , Nepal , South Korea and Sri Lanka , stubbornly
Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian, are top on the agenda of the Catholic,
Protestant and other primitive, uncivilized denominations like the American
Baptist, New Life and other freewheeling churches belonging to no known
denomination but flush with dubious money. Tamil Nadu is the largest
recipient of foreign funds and this money, coming from White Christian
American and European government and non-government donors is being invested
with great foresight and calculation by local Churches and Christian
agencies in several sectors ranging from real estate, banks, television
channels, TV soaps and other serials on television, penetrating the Tamil
film world with growing numbers of Christian actors, musicians and technical
support staff, giant jewelry outlets, religious conversion through
allurement, buying hugely expensive time for tele-evangelising in several
Tamil satellite channels, starting more and more educational institutions,
funding political parties, creating NGOs, the list is endless and their
determination to penetrate and influence all aspects of public life,
alarming. (

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)

Church activity and investment in Tamil Nadu is directly linked to the
continuing civil strife (I refuse to call it ethnic conflict because it is
palpably false and misleading) in Sri Lanka . The church is working towards
the creation of a pan-Tamil nation out of the territories of Tamil Nadu in
India and the North and East of Sri Lanka; and the useful idiots in Tamil
Nadu and Sri Lanka, facilitating the diabolic objective, must wake up to the
truth that the pan-Tamil nation they are working for is a Christian state
like East Timor. (Give url of monograph) The church penetrated the Maoists
of Nepal and Kandhamal in Orissa, the church’s creepy fingers have touched
Chandrababu Naidu, Jayalalithaa and now Navin Patnaik; if the communists are
Patnaik’s new bed-fellow, the Christian Maoists of Kandhamal probably played
pimps. It is time the so-called decent elements in the Tamil Nadu Bar and
judiciary realized that their reputation has been held hostage and their
strings pulled by the invisible hand of the church in India and foreign
churches.

A sizeable segment of the well-educated, social and political Sinhala elite
in Sri Lanka is also Christian but the Christian segment, while visible and
powerful, is still in a minority vis a vis the Sinhala Buddhists; the
Sinhala Christian political ruling class is tamed by its dependence on the
powerful Buddhist clergy for its legitimacy. The invisible church behind the
Sinhala Christian ruling elite seeks to control the state apparatus even as
the visible and assertive church seeks to control the voting populace among
the Tamils. The church, with Machiavellian intent, is thus playing both ends
of the game. The civil war in Sri Lanka while seemingly between the Sinhala
and Tamil speaking people, now being given the brazenly false Hindu-Buddhist
conflict colour, is actually the Church manipulating the people of Sri
Lankathrough well-directed and choreographed civil strife aimed
ultimately at
creating a separate and secessionist Christian Tamil state.

The ruling Sinhala Buddhist and Christian elite has thus fallen into the
diabolic Christian trap of seeking Pakistan’s aid to break the LTTE
backbone, something which India ought to have done had the Congress Prime
Minister not been pulled by his strings by the hand of Italian Christian
Sonia Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi’s UPA abandoned Sri Lanka to Pakistan (read Chinaand
USA ) just as it had abandoned Nepal to the Maoists (read China and
USAagain). The Sinhala Sri Lankan government is playing the foolish
game of
pitting the potentially secessionist Tamil Muslims of the Muslim-majority
Amparai district in the East against the other Tamils of the region hoping
to keep Amparai as a thorn in the flesh of the Tamil-majority region. A
beginning was made when the North was separated from the East for the first
time in any calculation towards a political settlement of the issue. This is
a foolish hope because ultimately, the Muslims, like the Christians owe
their allegiance not to their native country but to their religion.

No political commentator or terrorism expert has pointed to the significance
of an LTTE suicide bomber killing 15 people and wounding several others,
including Sri Lankan Postal Services Minister Mahinda Wijesekara, on the
12th of this month outside a mosque in Akuressa in southern Sri Lanka . The
occasion was Milad-un-Nabi, – the birthday of Prophet Mohammedi. The LTTE
was targeting both Sinhala politicians who were present in large numbers at
the mosque and also the Muslims.

The Sri Lankan Tamil issue is therefore not simply ‘spilling over’ into
Tamil Nadu in India but has always been inextricably linked with Tamil Nadu.
Tamil politics, unless the caste Hindus of Tamil Nadu and the Tamil (Saiva)
Hindus of Sri Lanka wake up, is all about intra-Christian political tussle
between the Sinhala ruling Christian elite and the Tamil commoner Christian.
It is also the Asian theater in the never-ending Christian-Muslim cosmic
war. It bears repetition that Tamil Nadu is being increasingly, visibly and
aggressively Islamised and Christianised with astronomical amounts of
foreign money pouring into the state legally through foreign donors and NGOs
and illegally through Hawala and other routes. A similar scenario has
already unfolded in Kerala.

The violence let loose with impunity by the Christian and dravidian Tamil
chauvinist section of the Madras High Court lawyers is Christian investment
in education yielding political interest. Fewer than a hundred lawyers, the
history-sheeters with a long history of crime were let loose in the state by
their handlers and this murderous, criminal gang brought the Tamil Nadu Bar
and judiciary to its knees. The Supreme Court fared no better. The Church is
well-organized and well connected. Having triggered the sequence of violence
on the 17th of February, this group provoked the volatile CJI to put his
foot in the mouth when he committed the ultimate impropriety of lashing out
at the police without allowing the police to present their version of the
events of February 19. The CJI, like most of the country was intentionally
kept in the dark about February 17.

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Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, heading a three-Judge Bench, told Solicitor
General G.E. Vahanvati, appearing for the State: “The police entering the
court halls, attacking judges, lawyers, staff and causing damage is a very
serious matter. We are serious about it. Even if the police wanted to arrest
some lawyers, in all fairness they should have informed the acting Chief
Justice or at least the Registrar-General. We want to know under whose
instance the police entered the premises. Give us the names of the officers
who asked helmet wearing policemen wielding lathis to enter the court halls
and we will deal with them firmly.”’

“We will ascertain from the government who is responsible for this mess. If
it is not possible for the government to tell us at whose instance the
police entered the HC premises and used force against the lawyers, then we
will find it out. We don’t want any cooperation from the police. We know how
to handle such situations.”

(In)famous last words! The incumbent Chief Justice of India, KG Balakrishnan
like another of his colleagues in the Supreme Court is given to emotional
outbursts and indiscreet, even intemperate statements.

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Not stopping with playing to the gallery with this highly improper
outburst against the police, the CJI took a leaf from out of Alice in
Wonderland and off-ed with the heads of five highly respected police
officers of the rank of Joint Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner and had
them summarily transferred out of Chennai. Thus did the highest officer of
the country’s judiciary dispense justice; by listening to just one side of
the story, the criminal lawyers’ side. The scumbag lawyers indicted by a
Division Bench of the Madras High Court for physical and verbal violence
against Dr. Subramaniam Swamy and other litigants in Court hall 3, and
indicted by Justice Srikrishna in the interim report, are still unpunished.
They have not even been found guilty because for the Madras High Court and
the Supreme Court, notwithstanding the Srikrishna report which has described
the events of February 17 in great detail, February 2009 never had the 17th
day.

“My view, albeit prima facie, is that the soft-pedaling policy followed by
the Madras High Court Judges has led to the present piquant situation. The
lawyers appear to have been encouraged by the wrong ‘signals sent out and
seemed to think that they could do anything and get away within the Court
premises. Regretfully, far from being the upholders of the rule of law, the
lawyers seem to have behaved as hooligans and miscreants. The incidents that
transpired over a last month or so make it clear that the lawyers seemed to
be under the impression that, because they are officers of the Court, they
are immune from the process of law and that they could get away with any
unlawful act without being answerable to the law enforcing agency. It ismost
unfortunate that the soft policy adopted by the Acting Chief Justice of
Madras High Court and its administration sent out clearlya wrong message
that encouraged and emboldened the lawyersinto becoming law breakers”.
(Excerpt from Justice Srikrishna’s interim report)

*The Supreme Court by abusing the police through punitive transfers has thus
facilitated the transformation of the rapist into victim.*

Pandering to the hysterical demand by the lawyers for a judicial commission
to go into the events of February 19 in the Madras High Court, the CJI
constituted the one-man Justice Srikrishna Commission. Mandated by the
Supreme Court to submit an interim report within ten days of commissioning,
Justice Srikrishna submitted his interim report on the 4th of March, 2009 .
The findings of the Srikrishna Commission shocked the nation. The blatantly
one-sided anti-police version peddled by the lawyers and a section of
complicit print and electronic media was beginning to tilt rapidly to
achieve a state of relative balance.

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Notwithstanding the damning indictment of the conduct of the lawyers by
Justice Srikrishna, the Tamil Nadu Bar and the judiciary remained craven and
did not summon the courage or the will to bring the criminal lawyers to
justice. Confronted by the extremely hostile reception to his findings,
Justice Srikrishna withdrew from the commission and the CJI, just as craven
as the Tamil Nadu judiciary, instead of holding the Tamil Nadu Bar
responsible for Justice Srikrishna’s withdrawal, and instead of constituting
another Commission with two or three retired judges, abdicated his
responsibility and threw the case back into the lap of the Madras High
Court.

For its part, both the Madras High Court and the state government have now
committed themselves to act as per the findings and recommendations of the
Srikrishna Report to probe police action in the court premises on February
19. Both have chosen to remain ignominiously craven and have not brought the
events of February 17 into the ambit of the probe. If the CJI was going to
pass the buck to the Madras High Court to probe the events of February 19,
then he ought not to have transferred senior police officers punitively out
of Chennai with unseemly haste. If the responsibility for pinning blame for
February 19 was going to be left to the local judiciary, then the Supreme
Court ought to have restrained itself from needless activism, encroaching
into the Executive domain. Investigating police action and dealing
appropriately with the results of the probe ought to have been left to the
state government.

The Church has succeeded on all fronts – penetrated law colleges using
admission norms in its favour, getting these students, irrespective of their
merit, into enrolling themselves as practicing lawyers in the Bar, using
such members to gain control of the city and state Advocates Associations,
using these associations and Dravidian, Tamil chauvinist, secessionist
political parties beholden to the church for its munificence to paralyze the
system, sowing discord between different pillars of democracy, and finally
to bring the judiciary to its knees. This is just the first step – testing
the waters, so to speak, before taking the plunge to set events in rapid
motion to culminate in the Christian Tamil state called Eelam. Unless the
useful idiots mindlessly serving church interests wake up now, they will
wake up one day to find that Eelam is a fait accompli like East Timor .

Radha Rajan,

14th March, 2009 .

The writer is Editor, http://www.vigilonline.com