Tamil Nadu’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Thursday said that a judge’s personal beliefs or ideology should not influence court rulings, calling a recent Madras High Court observation that described Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks on Sanatana Dharma as hate speech “wrong”.
In a social media post, DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai said: “[The judgement] does not adhere to a cardinal principle in jurisprudence…nobody should be condemned unheard.”
On Tuesday, the Madurai bench of the High Court quashed a 2023 case against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Malviya for allegedly distorting the comments made by Stalin about “eradicating” Sanatana Dharma.
Justice S Srimathy had observed that Stalin’s statement amounted to hate speech.
In September 2023, Stalin, at a press conference, said that Sanatana Dharma must be eradicated, and not merely opposed.
“We can’t oppose dengue, mosquitoes, malaria or corona [Covid-19], we have to eradicate them,” the DMK leader had said. “In the same way, we have to eradicate Sanatana [Dharma], rather than opposing it.”
Udhayanidhi Stalin was a state minister at the time and became the deputy chief minister in September 2024.
While some understand the term Sanatana Dharma to mean Hinduism as a whole, others interpret it as a reference to the varna system and the propagation of caste supremacy.
Shortly after Stalin made the remarks, Malviya had alleged that he was calling for a “genocide” of Hindus. The Tiruchi city police in Tamil Nadu had filed a case against the BJP leader for alleged hate speech.
Srimathy, however, said on Tuesday that when the Tamil Nadu minister had engaged in “hate speech”, the person opposing it could not be said to have committed a crime.
On Thursday, responding to a social media post by Union minister Piyush Goyal who said that the High Court’s ruling was a “strong rebuke to the DMK’s narrow, anti-Hindu mindset”, Annadurai said that Tamil Nadu’s ruling party has not acted “against Hinduism”.
Goyal is in charge of the BJP’s election campaign in Tamil Nadu.
“DMK is the party which ensured 69% reservation for the Hindus,” the DMK leader said. “How can this be against Hinduism? This can be viewed as against Hinduism only if you oppose reservation. And you cannot oppose reservation, as it’s guaranteed by the Constitution.”
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