Chennai:His grandfather had the temerity to question in which engineering college Lord Ram had his engineering degree and remained unscathed. That was during the height of Sangh Parivar's protest against the Sethu Samudram project. The grandson, too, appears to be following in his footsteps with his fiery attack on Sanatana Dharma with the ruling DMK's allies rallying behind him.
For more than a century, the dominant narrative of Dalit leaders and the Dravidian movement has been to debunk Sanatana Dharma as alien to Tamil society. For both, it was a crusade against it. From Pandit Ayothee Das, pioneer of Tamil modernity to Dravidian icon 'Periyar' EV Ramaswamy, the ideology of Sanatana Dharma has been equated with hierarchical Brahmanism. No wonder Udhayanidhi Stalin had reiterated the same. In this, he has found solid support from the VCK, Congress and the Left parties, and the rationalist Dravidar Kazhagam, the parent body and ideological mentor of the ruling DMK.
The first to come to his support was Sivaganga Lok Sabha MP Karti Chidambaram, who found nothing wrong in Udhayanidhi's remarks. Taking to X, he said, “Sanatana Dharma is nothing, but a code for a Caste Hierarchical Society. All those batting for it are hankering for the Good Old Days! Caste is the curse of India.” Then, in a subsequent post, he explained, “In the commonplace parlance of TN “Sanatana Dharma'' means Caste Hierarchical Society. Why is that everyone is batting for “SD” comes from the privileged segment, who are beneficiaries of the “Hierarchy”. There was no call for “Genocide” against anyone, this is a mischievous spin”. Another young woman MP Jothimani, too, has come out in defence of Udhayanidhi.
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Carrying out a campaign against Sanatana Dharma, Thol Thirumavalavan MP and president of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) said, “Eradicating Sanatana Dharma is imperative. And, eradicating it is a task against an ideology that denies equality. After Udhayanidhis's remarks, it has been turned into a national issue. The BJP targeted Udhayanidhi to gain political mileage. Let them come to the courts, we will expose them.” Earlier last year, Thirumavalavan distributed one lakh copies of Manu Smriti as part of his campaign against Sanatana Dharma.
It was the CPI (M)'s art and literary forum, which had organised the event “Conference to Eradicate Sanatana Dharma” in which Udhayanidhi equated Sanatana Dharma to mosquitoes, malaria and dengue and called for its eradication and not just opposition. Condemning the BJP twisting the statement of Udhayanidhi, the Marxist party's state secretary K Balakrishnan said, “From Nirmala Sitharaman to JP Nadda and BJP state president Annamalai, everyone is peddling a lie. Sanatana Dharma stipulates caste hierarchy and the Parivar's campaign against Udhayanidhi is a mischievous and poisonous one.”
“Eradicating Sanatana Dharma means eradicating Varnashrama Dharma, which sanctions birth-based division. Eradicating poverty does not mean the elimination of the rich. Eradicating superstition does not mean killing people, who follow them. Without anything to reach out to the people, the Parivar has taken up communalism and peddling of fake news,” said DK leader K Veeramani.
Analysts are of the view that the BJP stoking controversy in this issue has only helped Udhayanidhi get closer to the Chief Minister's gaddi. “They have made him an overnight celebrity across the nation. Let us not forget that his grandfather had the audacity to debunk the same Sanatana Dharma and had even questioned in which college Ram had got his engineering degree to build the mythical Ram Setu. Now, the campaign against Udhayanidhi has turned him into a vanguard of the Dravidian ideology and he has received the much-needed push to become the successor to the Chief Ministership,” explains senior journalist and author Babu Jayakumar. In his opinion, the BJP might not get any political mileage out of this in the Dravidian heartland.
