SG Suryah, the secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tamil Nadu and one of the Directors of right-wing propaganda website- The Commune Magazine, has been summoned by the Chidambaram police. The police told TNM that he has been summoned along with the other director Kaushik Subramanian for spreading defamatory news about the officials of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) and the police department.
The Commune in an article dated June 28, accused a HR&CE official and the police of having harassed the Dikshithars (temple priests). The article read, “The Deekshithars, who opposed their entry, faced physical aggression, with their clothes torn and their sacred threads (janeu) cut in the process.”
The controversy stems from the Dikshithars denying devotees entry into the Kanagasabai mandapam for four days during the Aani Thirumanjanam festival, starting from June 24. Despite the HR&CE department issuing an order stating that devotees should be allowed to worship at the Kanagasabai during the festival, the Dikshithars continued to deny entry and even displayed a notice board to this effect.
On June 28, an HR&CE official named Saranya, accompanied by female police officers, attempted to remove the notice board but encountered resistance from the Dikshithars. Subsequently, a complaint was filed by the official with the Chidambaram police, alleging that the Dikshithars had obstructed them from performing their duties. As a result, Sivarama Dikshithar, the committee secretary of the Podhu Dikshithar, and 10 other Dikshithars have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including punishment for wrongful restraint, assault on a public servant, assault against a woman with intent to outrage modesty, and criminal intimidation. They have also been charged under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, Section 4.
Notably, this incident occurred a day after the HR&CE department announced that the government would take over the administration of the temple from the Dikshithars. The minister of the department, PK Sekar, during a press conference in Chennai, expressed the government's stance against the Dikshithars treating the temple as their exclusive domain, where devotees' right to worship is denied.