Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue S Gurumurthy denounced the English media and blamed 'secular India' for Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati's plight.

Gurumurthy delivered the keynote address at a function organised by Bharatiya Janata Party think-tank convener Balbir Punj and BJP Secretary Sudheendra Kulkarni on January 30.

Gurumurthy, who is considered close to Jayendra Saraswati, said when the Kanchi seer was arrested, Hindus got 'cerebral paralysis.'

'Thousands of women did not eat for a month,' he said, and added that Hindus were shocked by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's action, as they considered her a 'nationalist.'

Gurumurthy said it took a devotee like him 10 days to write a column against the seer's arrest. He said the shock made it impossible for Hindus to react, and before one could register a protest, the damage was done. He regretted that the damage was so intense that only 10 years from now India will realise the impact.

Institutions like the Kanchi Mutt cannot be created, he said, they can only be destroyed.

Gurumurthy felt the media did more damage than Jayalalithaa or the police. He said the media supported the arrest, abetted the police's efforts and conspired with the law enforcement apparatus.

'Secular India was insensitive to a noble soul who is revered by millions of Hindus,' Gurumurthy said. 'Secular India is feeling threatened by traditional India. Secular India is proving a disaster for the country. Hindus will never get justice in India.'

'Secular India,' he declared, 'only reacts to mobs.'

He pointed out that individuals are not important but institutions are.

Like the President, governors and the prime minister are protected by the Constitution, he felt the seer deserved legal protection.

Although speaking from a BJP platform, Gurumurthy said the BJP did not make a paradigm shift when in power.

'The BJP had difficulty in handling India's secular Constitution.'

English speaking people and opinion-makers, he said, were corrupted.

He praised The Pioneer (New Delhi) and The New Indian Express for reporting fairly on the shankaracharya. But he said The Hindu's readers opposed its editorials on the issue in the Letters column every day.

The shankarcharya's arrest was done by a clique, and not by the system involving all policemen; even Tamil Nadu's attorney general was kept in the dark, he said.

He said just as in the January 1975 murder of then Union minister Lalit Narain Mishra, the police implicated the Anand Margis, Jayalalithaa had fixed the shankaracharya by getting confessions from hardened criminals.

'The shankaracharya deserves our greatest support,' he said, and requested Sangh supporters to spread the message by word of mouth to counter 'fake propaganda' against the shankaracharya.