Balaprajathipathi Adigalar, the head priest of the Ayyavazhi cult, was involved in the anti-Koodankulam protests since the days when the first stirrings against nuclear energy were felt in the three districts of Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi. He still believes that running a nuclear reactor is fraught with danger but keeps out even as the agitation in Idinthakarai village gains momentum as he feels that he has been sidelined by the organisers. The sixth descendant of Ayya Vaikunta Swamy, who started the religious cult in 1818 at Swamithope in Kanyakumari district mainly as a movement against caste discrimination in the times of the Travancore kings, he is now planning to start an engineering college in a remote village, Urumankullam, near Radhapuram in Tirunelveli district.The simple man, who travels unaccompanied in a Nano car, is sceptical about the motive behind the Idinthakarai protest and fears that the coastal people could be trying to appropriate the movement to themselves.Balprajathipathi, who claims to have the following of at least 25 per cent of the people living in-land in the region, feels that people who are afraid of security being tightened in the sea around the plant could be fuelling the protests. There is a possibility of illegal activities like smuggling happening along the coast and those who benefit from that may resent the plant coming up, he says sitting on the premises of his temple in Urumankullam. Another possibility is that the fishing community wants to grab all the concessions that may be offered as quid pro quo by the government to make them agree to the commissioning of the plant. He claims that he has been sidelined of late. When he was invited to join the team that went to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he had expressed his inability in view of the short notice. “I do not fly. I travel only by land. So I could not go. But I gave in writing that I will go by the Tamil Nadu panel.”After that, the attitude of the leaders changed and they started taking arbitrary decisions, he says, adding, “One is not sure who actually pulls the strings from behind.”But the swami’s commitment to the cause remains the same, though he feels that it is now a bit too late to ‘shift the reverse gear’.
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