Chennai: Udhayanidhi Stalin on Monday spurned the threat to his life issued by a seer in Uttar Pradesh following the DMK leader’s comments on Sanatana Dharma.
Paramhans Acharya, the chief priest of the Tapaswi Chawni temple of Ayodhya, reportedly announced a 10-crore bounty on the head of Udhayanidhi Stalin, NDTV reported.
Stalin on Sunday called for eradicating Sanatana Dharma, sparking widespread protest across the nation.
Following which Paramhans Acharya was quoted by news agency PTI as saying ‘I will pay ₹ 10 crore cash reward to anyone who beheads Stalin and brings his head to me. If no one dares to kill Stalin, I will myself find him and kill him’.
Stalin reacted to the seer hilariously playing on the Tamil word for chop or slice which also means combing hair.
Brushing off the threat, he said he is the grandson of M Karunanidhi who put his head on the rail track for Tamil.
Karunanidhi, five-time chief minister of the state, was at the forefront of Periyar’s rationalist and anti-Brahmin Dravidian movement.
In 1953, Karunanidhi led a protest against renaming of a village after the industrialist family of Dalmias.
As reminisced by his grandson, the former chief minister and his DMK workers lay down on the tracks to ram home their protest.
Udhayanidhi Stalin on Sunday told an event that ‘Sanatana Dharma must be eradicated’, after comparing it to malaria and dengue.
The BJP quickly termed it as a “call for genocide" and Opposition Bloc INDIA found itself in a dilemma.
Its alliance partners like Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress were not in agreement with Stalin’s extreme position on Sanatana Dharma.
However Udhayanidhi Stalin continued to stand by his comments, adding to it he called out the BJP's allegation of genocide as ‘fake news’.
Stalin asked whether PM Modi was calling for the murder of Congress members when he talked about Congress mukt bharat.
Doubling down on his attack on Sanatana Dharma, Stalin reportedly said that Sanatana Dharma is presented as eternal, permanent and unchanging.
‘Our Dravidian model is about change in everything… Some years ago, they said women should not study. Many years ago it was said women should not cover their upper body and that they shouldn't enter temples. We have changed everything. This is Dravidian model," he was quoted as saying.