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

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. (http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1073&Itemid=1)

 

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 Lanka

through 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

China

and

USA

) just as it had abandoned

Nepal

to the Maoists (read

China

and

USA

again). 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 12^th 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 17^th 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.

http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1072&Itemid=1

 

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.

http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1038&Itemid=71


 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 17^th 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 4^th 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.

http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1075&Itemid=1

 

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