It could be an ‘ek gaon me ek kisaan Raghu thatha’ situation. Or maybe BJP leaders don’t talk to each other about their public messaging in Tamil Nadu. Either way, Dharmapuri’s Papparapatti witnessed an event on August 16 when BJP leaders collected soil to be sent to Delhi. What is the soil for? According to local leaders, this soil will be used to construct a statue of ‘Bharat Mata’ — the symbolic Mother India. But according to the chief guest for the event, the soil was for Narendra Modi’s next dream project — Amrit Vatika, the nectar garden, which will have soil and plant species from across the country.
Baskar, the president of Dharmapuri’s BJP wing and zonal president P Ganapathy claimed that while no official announcement has been made about the Bharat Mata statue, it will be built in Delhi. The chief guest of the event, Sudhakar Reddy, former BJP MLC from Andhra Pradesh, meanwhile tweeted that the sand and native species of plants unique to districts like Salem, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, and Namakkal were being collected for the Amrit Vatika. The garden will be built in Delhi and the Prime Minister has announced an Amrit Kalash Yatra through which 7,500 pots of soil and saplings will be collected from all over the country.
Whether a Bharat Mata statue is really coming up in Delhi is not known, but the reason the BJP chose Papparapatti as the place to collect soil from is that there is a ‘Bharat Mata’ temple situated here that’s become a point of confrontation between the BJP, the Sangh and the DMK government.
The Bharat Mata ‘temple’ or Bharat Mata Ninaivalayam is a Bharat Mata statue on an elevated platform locked behind a door. It sits in a memorial dedicated to freedom fighter Subramaniya Siva. According to the BJP, Subramaniya Siva wanted a temple dedicated to Bharat Mata. In 2022, the BJP’s Dharmapuri faction wanted to garland and perform pooja for the idol around Independence Day and had sought permission from the police for the same. But permission was revoked at the last minute, though they were allowed to enter the freedom fighter’s memorial and pay their respects. They were not permitted to garland the Bharat Mata idol or perform a pooja. BJP workers allege that permission was revoked after a call to the police from the top brass in the DMK.
Bharat Mata statue inside Subramaniya Siva's memorial in Dharmapuri's Papparapatti
Speaking to TNM, Ganapathy said, “After the initial permission was declined, we politely asked if we could garland the Bharat Mata statue and perform a pooja there. But the police refused. Angered by this, some of our party workers broke the lock outside the statue and paid their respects. There are still cases pending against them.” He says one of the reasons to conduct a programme like this in 2023 was to pressure the ruling government and to flex how the BJP is gaining prominence in the state.
Among the arrested persons in 2022 was former BJP MP KP Ramalingam, who also attended the event at Papparapatti. During his address to the gathering, he took a jibe at the police and his arrest in the previous year and thanked the police for giving them reasons to hold events like this.
Ever since it was inaugurated in 2021, the Bharat Mata memorial has been a tool for the BJP to gain political mileage. These demands grew louder and more visible after A Baskar, former BJP MLA, took over as the party’s Dharmapuri president in February 2022. The district’s BJP faction has been keen on renaming the Bharat Mata Ninaivalayam (memorial) to Bharat Mata Kovil (temple). Apart from that, the party also wants it to be opened to the public so that people can pay their respects and even garland the idol. Ganapathy said, “What is a ninaivalayam? Who is it built for? For the dead. Is Bharat Mata dead? Then why does the temple say Bharat Mata Ninaivalayam? It is like they have killed a mother who is alive by calling it a ninaivalayam.”
On the political front, BJP claims that the DMK is making every effort to silence demands to open the Bharat Mata memorial. The BJP claims that they (DMK) do not want the memorial to be opened to the public as it would be seen as a symbol of how much the right-wing party has grown in the state. Ganapathy said, “The DMK has always been against Hinduism. That is another reason why the party does not want this [Bharat Mata memorial] to be renamed as a temple. If people perform pooja there, it is like them rejecting the DMK and their anti-Hindu ideology.”
Now, the Dharmapuri faction of the right-wing party wants the doors of the Bharat Mata idol to be opened at least twice a week to the public, where they can perform poojas and/or garland the idol. They claim they are making these demands not as BJP party workers but as Indian citizens who simply wish to pay their respects to a revered symbol of the nation.