Author: Krishnanand Sagar
Publication: Organiser
Date: December 26, 2004
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=56&page=29
The day the people were preparing
for the Deepawali festival, the Tamil Nadu police arrested Jagadguru Shankaracharya
Shri Jayendra Saraswati at midninght from Andhra Pradesh on fictitious
ground.
This reminds me of the inspiring
story of another Shankaracharya during the British Raj. He was His Holiness
Shri Bharati Krishna Teertha, the then Shankaracharya of Sharada Peeth,
Dwarka, who later on in 1925 became the Shankaracharya of Goverdhana Peeth,
Puri (and the renowned founder of Vedic mathematics).
At the time of the non-violent cooperation
movement in 1921, Bharati Krishna Teertha delivered a speech in the Khilafat
Conference held at Karachi. The subject of the speech was 'Rajadharma and
Prajadharma'. The speech was considered to be seditious by the government
of the day and so he was arrested and kept in the Karachi central jail.
The warrant of arrest served on
him stated: "Venkataraman alias Bharati Krishna Teertha, a Hindu, who calls
himself a Shankaracharya."
Assailing this in his address to
the jury, His Holiness thundered: "The veriest Tyro in Indian religious
technique knows that while an English commoner on being raised to peerage
has the liberty to and does often voluntarily, assume a new name, a Hindu
on entering Holy Orders, has not the liberty to but must necessarily and
as a religious rule discard the old name, and not assume but accept the
name newly conferred on him by his guru, in accordance with the rules celebrately
laid down for this purpose in the Hindu scriptures. Thus, whereas Sir Rufus
Issac had the liberty to and actually did assume the name Lord Reading,
Prof. Venkataraman Shastri on taking sanyas had not the liberty to assume
but had perforced to and did therefore accept the new name 'Swami, Shri
Bharati Krishna Teertha bestowed on him by his guru. Under these circumstances,
it was obvious that to speak of us as 'one Venkataraman alias Bharati Krishna
Teertha, a Hindu, who calls himself (or has assumed the title) Shankaracharya'
is no less reprehensible than to speak of 'one Rufus Issac alias Reading,
a Jew, who calls himself (or has assumed the title) Viceroy of India'."
Ultimately the government had to
release him. Again in December 1922, Bharati Krishna delivered a series
of public lectures in Monghyr (Bihar) on 'Dynamic Hinduism'. The topic
of one of the lectures of the series was 'Dharma, Swarajya, Raj Bhakti
and the heinousness of British Raj'. British officials were very perturbed
over it and arrested him on December 26, 1922. As a Dharma guru of Hindus,
he was offered a chair to sit upon in the court, but he told bluntly that
as the post of Shankaracharya was much higher than that of a magistrate,
his seat should also be higher and if that was not possible, he would prefer
to stand. He then carried on his arguments in the court, standing all the
time. He defended his actions for three weeks. He was asked to give a surety
not to deliver lecture for one year or undergo imprisonment for a year.
Shankaracharya preferred to undergo imprisonment. He was kept in Bhagalpur
jail, from where he was released in 1924.
In 1925 Prince of Wales visited
Bharat. The British government wrote to Shankaracharya that the Hindus
considered the king of the country the representative of Lord Vishnu, therefore
he should ask his disciples to welcome the Prince of Wales as such. Shankaracharya
fearlessly wrote back:
"The work of Vishnu is to work after
the well-being of his people. One who can do so can only be called a representative
of Vishnu according to Hindu shastras. A king, who instead of looking after
the welfare of his subjects, exploits them can never be the representative
of Lord Vishnu."
The government was terribly annoyed
at this bold answer. High government officials complained about this to
the aged head of Goverdhana Peeth, Shri Madhusudan Teertha. But Madhusudan
Teertha replied that he also accepted the views of Bharati Krishna as authentic
as far as Hindu Dharma was concerned.
At that time Bharat was under foreign
rule. Shankaracharya Bharati Krishna stood against foreign rule and did
not bow his head even in those adverse circumstances. That is the tradition
of our dharmacharyas.
Now the time has changed and we
have our own government. People expect from this government not to toe
the line of foreign rulers. It should behave according to the Indian traditions
and try to become the representative of Lord Vishnu by its deeds. Lord
Vishnu gives full respect to the dharmacharyas; he gave respect even to
Bhrigu Rishi who strode with his foot on the chest of Lord Vishnu.
Unfortunately, in the present context,
the behaviour of the Tamil Nadu government and the Central Government towards
Shankara-charya Shri Jayendra Saraswati is un-Vishnu like. They should
stop to denigrate him.
(The author can be contacted at
F-109, Sector-27, Noida-201 301.)