Chennai, January 11
After spending two months in jail the Kanchi Shankaracharya today afternoon walked out of the Vellore Central Prison with a smiling face.
He had been in jail since November 11 last year in connection with the Sankararaman murder case.
A beaming Shankaracharya came out of the jail exactly at 4.35 pm though his release papers were ready much before. He decided to wait till the inauspicious period of “rahu kalanam” according to the Hindu calendar from 3 pm to 4.30 pm was over.
The seer was greeted at the prison gate by former Union Ministers and BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Mr S. Thirunavukkarasar,VHP leader Ashok Singhal and a large number of Kanchi Mutt employees. Many of the devotees touched his feet .
The Hindu pontiff slowly walked clutching the holy stick and got aboard the van belonging to the mutt and drove 40 km away to a Vedic “pathshala”, school at Kalavai. The Supreme Court while granting him bail has debarred him from entering the mutt at Kancheepuram.
As the van came out of the prison premises, thousands of devotees and followers of the Shankaracharya chanted the mutt’s slogan, “Hara hara Shankara, jai jai Shankara.”
Though extremely media —friendly, the Shankaracharya just sat smiling and waived at his followers and did not make any statement.
All necessary utensils were transported from the Kanchi Mutt to Kalavai where the Shankaracharya tonight performed the century- old “Chandramouleeshwar puja”.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa today justified the arrest of junior seer Vijayendra Saraswati, and said it would not break the traditions and affect the daily “pujas” at the mutt.
In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, she described such fears as “incorrect and “unfounded” and stated: “It is not as if both swamijis have not been away from the mutt at the same time in the past .There have been innumerable occasions when both the pontiffs have been away from the Sankara mutt at Kancheepuram. While both pontiffs have been away from the mutt, arrangements have been made for the conduct of the daily pujas in the past.”
“It would be invidious to construe this as breaking the tradition and affecting the daily pujas at the mutt, while expressing the apprehension that the arrest of both pontiffs and their being away be labelled as breaking the tradition of daily puja,” she said.
Ms. Jayalalithaa pointed out that in fact when Sri Jayendra Saraswati was arrested on November 11 last year, both he and the junior seer were at Mehboobnagar, near Hyderabad, being away on camp for several days.
She said the arrest of Vijayendra Saraswati was in furtherance of the due processes of law.
