Atheist Stalin visits temple to rid himself of a curse!

The DMK which has always prided itself in being an atheist party, has come out with a controversial and hypocritical gesture. Its working president, MK Stalin on Friday visited the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangam near Trichy in Tamil Nadu, much to the annoyance of senior party leaders. DMK has traditionally been known for taking an anti-religion stand and especially ridiculing Hinduism and Hindu Gods. DMK patriarch Karunanidhi has been known in the past for making all kinds of Hindu-hating statements on a regular basis in the past. This is one of the major reasons why the DMK has slowly gone down in popularity.

Stalin was given a ceremonial welcome by the priests of the prestigious temple. It is being reported that Stalin visited the temple to get rid of ‘shukra dosha’ (curse of Venus). The temple is considered as ‘shukra sthal’ (the place of Venus) and people routinely visit the temple to get rid of ‘shukra dosha’. The curse is related to illness, struggles and hard work.

The DMK is an offshoot of Dravida Kazhagam, whose founder EV Ramaswamy Naicker “Periyar” had called god-worshippers fools. The DMK by its very nature believed in staunch atheism and of late, the party’s atheism was more or less centred around anti-Hindu propaganda. Karunanidhi, had time and again, come under the scanner for making objectionable remarks against Hindus. One therefore finds it amusing how the idea of a curse even struck a “non-believing rationalist”. This shows that the entire hoopla around the DMK propagating atheism is a facade. It propagates atheism, but practices theism.

This is not for the first time that DMK’s hypocrisy as far as claiming to be rationalist and atheist has come to fore. Karunanidhi’s practice of wearing a yellow shawl (yellow clothes is seen as auspicious in the Hindu faith) has always been seen with suspicion. A few months ago, a video came into circulation in which Hindu priests were seen reciting shlokas (hymns) at the patriarch’s residence. Apart from this, Stalin’s wife Durga was spotted visiting temples before the Tamil Nadu assembly elections in May 2016. This had also raised serious doubts over the Dravidian party’s non-believing tenets.

Interestingly, the temple which Stalin visited had also been a victim of his father, Karunanidhi’s ire against Hinduism in the past. It is the same temple which Karunanidhi had once wanted to blast with a cannonball. Now, his son who seems more like a devout Hindu is visiting the same temple in order to get rid of a curse. The joke is on the DMK for visiting the same temples that it once wanted to destroy.

Stalin has shown his true colours and it is clear that at the end of the day he is a god fearing man. And there is nothing wrong in being a god fearing man or believing in religious tenets. However, it is atrocious how they have misled everyone in order to make political gains. While they claim that those who worship gods are fools, they themselves are paying temple visits. Now, Stalin should take off his party’s atheism mask and perhaps admit that the DMK has been thriving on double standards.