Atul Prasad, There is merit in your post. The Shankaracharya episode was totally unexpected. A legally doubtful case. Therefore, rumours abound as to the "real reason" behind the appalling treatment of a Sanyasi, who, sadly, did not know how to handle politicians. Can you imagine, "Dravidian" lawyers in the Madras H.Ct. took out a noisy procession against bail for him!! They viewed him as a brahmin, not as a Sanyasi (A sanyasi has no caste!!) BUT Jayalalitha lost votes because of it. Some of my villagers said to me in Tamil, "We do not vote for people who trouble Sanyasis". In some ways, rural Tamils are intensely Hindu. Very conservative, very devoted, imbedded in Hindu traditions. But don't understand Hindutva. It has some appeal in Coimbatore (where an Islamic baazaar bomb killed 80 people) in Madurai and one or two other places where muslims have bought up a lot of land with gulf monies. But in TamilNadu, the Dravidian parties have built up strong "patronage" groups. From govt.contracts, to taking sand illegally (very profitable business), cancelling murder cases, share of bribes from local land-registration offices and so on - the "DMK families" and "AIDMK families" with their goondas will make it hard for other parties to get votes. Villagers are threatened by them. Post-election violence is known to happen. There is still "block voting" as the caste-elders direct. None as yet grasp the national level politics.
