After Udhayanidhi Stalin expressed his remarks against Sanatana Dharma, Ayodhya’s Tapasvi Chhawani Temple’s seer Ramchandra Das Paramhans Acharya, through a video, announced a reward prize of Rs 10 crore for anyone who would behead the Tamil Nadu Minister. In response to the video, Udhayanidhi in a statement on Monday, September 4, raised the question of how a seer would possess such huge sums of money to which the seer responded, “I am the owner of Rs 500 crore and paying Rs 10 crore is nothing for me.”
The seer set fire to a photo of Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin in which he had announced the reward money and then ‘beheaded’ the picture with a sword. He had also said that if no one dared to do so, he would behead Udhayanidhi himself.
Statement of Paramhans Acharya. pic.twitter.com/AFoBTMeQAa
— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) September 4, 2023
The controversial seer has in the past made similar announcements over others including the Samajwadi Party leader Prasad Maurya after his comment on Ramcharitmanas and over actor Shahrukh Khan for wearing saffron clothes in his film Pathaan. He had also made headlines in 2020 announcing that he will take ‘Jal Samadhi’ in river Sarayu if Prime Minister Modi didn’t declare India as a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ by October 2, 2021. However, in October 2021, he announced that he had called it off.
Meanwhile,security has been stepped up at the Minister’s residence in Chennai as he has reportedly received several threats over his comments.
Previously, on September 2, Udhayanidhi spoke at a Sanatanam (Sanatan Dharma) Abolition Conclave organised by the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers Forum. At the event Udhayanidhi had said, "I congratulate the organisers for calling the conference as 'eradication of Santana dharma' instead of 'opposing Sanatana Dharma'... There are certain things which we have to eradicate and we cannot merely oppose. Mosquitoes, dengue, corona and malaria are things which we cannot oppose, we have to eradicate them. Sanatanam is also like this. Eradication and not opposing Sanatanam has to be our first task.” His remarks drew falk and were condemned by BJP leaders and other right-wing groups as they interpreted it as advocating for ‘genocide’ of the followers of Sanatana Dharma.
The DMK Minister clarified that he had not called for genocide. He said that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had regularly called for ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ but it doesn’t mean that all Congress leaders are to be killed. He further accused the BJP of twisting facts as a “regular habit.”