“…hatred for a particular religion” Annamalai slams Udhayanidhi Stalin for ‘Sanatana Dharma eradication’ remark

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India]: Tamil Nadu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief K Annamalai on Sunday launched fresh attacks on DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin over his remarks on ‘Sanatana Dharma’ and said that the eradication of a particular culture is called genocide.

“What Udhayanidhi spoke yesterday should be condemned by the 142 crore people of the country because hatred for a particular religion came out yesterday. He was reading the speech from a text, which was consciously prepared and he was reading it line by line. The eradication of a particular culture is called genocide,” Annamalai told media.

Addressing a conference on Saturday, Udhayanidhi, the minister for Sports and Youth Affairs in the Tamil Nadu government, equated ‘Sanatana’ (Sanatan Dharma) with “mosquitoes, Dengue, Malaria, fever and Corona”, adding that it should be stamped out like these ailments.

“The word ‘Sanatana Dharma’ was there even before the Christian religion or Islamic religion came. ‘Sanatana Dharma’ means eternal, timeless dharma. It has been there for a long long time,” Annamalai added.

“If you have to eradicate ‘Sanatana Dharma’, you have to finish off all the temples and people’s essential religious practices. Who is Udhayanidhi Stalin to abolish ‘Sanatana Dharma’, he added while speaking to media today.

Railing against Sanatan Dharma in Chennai on Saturday, Udhayanidhi said, “Few things cannot be opposed, they should only be abolished. We can’t oppose Dengue, mosquitoes, Malaria, or Corona, we have to eradicate them. In the same way, we have to eradicate Sanatana (Sanatan Dharma). Rather than merely opposing Sanatana, it should be eradicated.”

BJP leader Annamalai also said that this action of DMK minister shows that it is an anti-Hindu party and they have hate for Hindus.

“Udhayanidhi is there in politics because of his grandfather and because of his father Stalin, if he had come the hard way, seen real people, be a part of the struggle, he clearly knows what to speak and what not,” Annamalai added.

Earlier, BJP’s Tamil Nadu chief K Annamalai tore into the DMK leader over his statement, accusing him of peddling a “bought-out idea from Christian missionaries”.

Annamalai took to his official handle on X to post, “The only resolve that the Gopalapuram Family has is to accumulate wealth beyond the State GDP. Thiru @Udhaystalin, you, your father, or his or your idealogue have a bought-out idea from Christian missionaries & the idea of those missionaries was to cultivate ******* like you to parrot their malicious ideology.”