Why a conference on the deity Murugan has drawn flak for the DMK – even from its allies

Murugan became the focus of another controversy this month as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-run Tamil Nadu government organised a two-day conference about the deity on August 24-25.

Four years ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party was accused of attempting to appropriate Murugan to gain a foothold in the state by organising a yatra to sites associated with the God of the Tamil People.

This fortnight’s conference put the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam under fire as it appeared to be using the deity to help it shed its image as an anti-Hindu party. It was not only the Tamil party’s political rivals that voiced their objections to the event. Even the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s allies noted that the idea of such a conclave was contrary to the party’s secular ideology.

After all, they note, the party has its origins in the Self-Respect Movement championed in the early 20th-century movement by EV Ramaswamy “Periyar”. It was a rationalist movement that championed atheism and opposed caste.

“We are not against worshipping of any gods,” K Balakrishnan, the state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) told The Hindu. His party had fought the Lok Sabha elections as an ally of the Dravidian party. “But, the government should not directly organise such events.”

Strong backlash

The Muthamizh Murugan International Conference brought together devotees and scholars from across the globe to discuss Murugan’s principles and philosophical doctrines. The Tamil god of victory and war, also known as Kartikeya or Kandhan, is also worshipped in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar and other countries with Tamil populations.

The deity is intrinsically linked with Tamil culture. “Sangam literature, dated back to 300 BC, describes Murugan as the Tamil god who presided over one of the three Sangams, an ancient seat claimed to have been established by poets and kings for the development of Tamil and its literature,” journalist AR Meyyammai wrote in an essay in The News Minute.

The conference took place in Madurai’s Dindigul town, in the shadow of the hill on which stands the Arulmigu Dhandayuthapani Swamy Temple, which is dedicated to Murugan. It was organised by the government’s Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, which manages the administration of temples in the state.

Attempting to protect itself from the backlash, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam maintained that the conference was not a religious event but instead was a celebration of Tamil culture and spirituality.

"Our government, through the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, has always placed great importance on the preservation and promotion of Tamil culture and spirituality,” said Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, at the inauguration of the conference.

He added, “There’s nothing high or low about it. The Dravidian model of government has never been a hindrance to those beliefs but is striving for overall development based on the concept of ‘everything for all’.”

This cut little ice with the BJP, which has long attempted to paint the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam as anti-Hindu. It used the opportunity to attack the Dravidian party for staging the event.

The president of the state party unit, K Annamalai, noted that Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s leaders had only last year spoken about eliminating Sanatana Dharma, a term some use as a synonym for Hinduism. In September 2023, Udayanidhi Stalin, the son of the Tamil Nadu chief minister and party’s youth wing president, had called for the “eradication of Sanatana Dharma”.

BJP members latched on to that remark, claiming that Udayanidhi Stalin was calling for the “genocide of Hindus”.

“...But now they are doing this political comedy,” Annamalai said.

BJP member and former Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan alleged that the conference was an attempt to win votes. “It shows that the time has come for those who opposed the principles of BJP and Hindu ideals to shift their stance,” she said.

Soundararajan also criticised Stalin and Udayanidhi for failing to attend the event themselves. “Skipping the event suggests that the DMK regime was organising the conference only as a token gesture,” she said.

In 2020, the BJP had attempted to use the deity to score political points for itself. L Murugan, who was the party’s state president at the time, announced that he would embark on a Vetri Vel Yatra that would visit the six Murugan abodes in the state.

His journey was to end on December 6, the day the Babri mosque was demolished in Ayodhya in 1992. However, due to Covid-19 restrictions, L Murugan and other party workers were detained on the first day of the yatra.

To some allies and supporters of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the conference was a sign of the Dravidian party succumbing to the BJP’s attempts to put Hindutva on the agenda.

But this would not help the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s election prospects, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee head K Selvaperunthagai declared. He told The Federal that the April-May Lok Sabha polls “disproved the myth that Hindu votes are a consolidated segment. Trying to appease voters with spiritual initiatives will actually backfire.”

K Veeramani, president of the Dravidar Kazhagam, the social movement founded by Periyar, and from which the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam splintered, said that the mandate of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department is only to protect temples and maintain temple accounts.

“It should not get involved in organising such events,” he said in Viduthalai, the publication of the Dravida Kazhagam.

Contentious resolutions

Also coming under fire were some of the 21 resolutions adopted at the conference, ostensibly to promote awareness about the deity, Siddha medicine and revitalise Murugan temples across the state. One contentious resolution called for holding Murugan-themed competitions in schools and colleges that are under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.

Another resolution was passed to train students to sing Kanda Shashti Kavacham, a devotional song, during the Murugan festival in temples, while a third resolution spoke about including “spiritual studies” as a course in colleges.

“This is nothing but an attempt to implement the BJP government’s Hindutva agenda of making education secular in the name of Murugan,” said D Ravikumar, member of parliament from the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, also an ally of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. “This is reprehensible.”

Prince Gajendra Babu, the general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System Tamil Nadu, an organisation of educationists and education activists, said classrooms should remain secular spaces and that scriptures considered holy should not be a part of school activities.

“The academic activities are decided by the academic bodies under the Department of School Education and Higher Education, more particularly in the higher education concerned universities,” Babu said. “Hindu Religious Endowment Department should not intrude in the academic issues that include curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular.”