Anti-Hindu tag poses stiff challenge to Oppn

The we-are-not-against-Hindus assertion, pioneered and practised by the Congress under Rahul Gandhi as a counter to the BJP’s Hindutva narrative, seems to have seeped into Tamil Nadu’s political narrative as well.

Breaking away from the state’s tradition of rationalistic political debates, the constituents of the DMK-led alliance were forced to explain their affinity towards Hindus thanks to the AIADMK-BJP combine attempts to project the Opposition-led alliance as anti-Hindu in the Lok Sabha election campaign.

The BJP and its allies launched an attack on the DMK-led alliance after Dravidar Kazhagam president K Veeramani’s remark on Lord Krishna. Citing the DK’s support to the Opposition-led alliance, BJP supporters used the social media to project the DMK as anti-Hindu party.

To counter the BJP, DMK president MK Stalin continuously asserted that his party is not against Hindus. Accusing the BJP of spreading a canard in a planned manner against his party, he said that his wife goes to temples and he does not prevent her. Meanwhile, VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan, who is contesting from Chidambaram LS seat and CPM’s Madurai Lok Sabha candidate Su Venkatesan are also forced to negate the anti-Hindu tag bestowed by the Saffron party. Venkatesan on social media page twitted a video of him explaining the highlights of the famous Madurai Chithirai Thiruvizha, while Thirumavalavan claimed that 90 per cent of his supporters are Hindus.

An FIR has been filed against BJP’s state secretary R Srinivasan on the complaint of CPM over spreading false news alleging that Venkatesan spoke ill about the Chithirai Thiruvizha and women visiting Sabarimala.

CPM state secretariat member K Kanagaraj said that the BJP is trying to increase its strength by projecting the non-believers as anti-religious. “It is a strategy to create a divide between the believer and the non-believers,” he said.

When asked about the trend among the political parties, Prof Ramu Manivannan, HoD Politics and Public Administration, University of Madras, said that it is a counter strategy against the BJP, which is exploiting the religious identity.

“Everyone was pushed to counter the Hindutva strategy,” he said, adding that they should not get into the discourse.