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Even during the recent Ayodhya temple foundation stone laying function, there was no palpable celebration across Tamil Nadu as in the north where Ram politics is the main staple for the BJP. The Murugan cult has long been associated with Tamils, just as Ram worship is with north Indians. Vel, ‘spear’ in English, is considered the main weapon of Lord Muruga, symbolising the destruction of evil.
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The AIADMK government was forced to take action against the group, even arresting a few of the YouTubers and detaining them under the draconian Goondas Act. The DMK had denied it, saying it was a party with Hindus as the majority.
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In fact, well before the BJP could think of the Vel Yatra, DMK leader M Karunanidhi took out a similar yatra during MGR’s reign in 1982, but by foot – ‘Long March to Tiruchendur’ – from Madurai seeking justice regarding the mysterious death of a temple officer and the alleged missing diamond spear of Lord Muruga.Īfter the ‘Kanda Sashti Kavasam’, a devotional rendering on Lord Muruga, was mocked at by a YouTuber group called Karuppar Koottam (Black Group), the Hindutva forces saw in it an opportunity and shifted the blame on the DMK. It has only become another addition to the party’s burgeoning list of flop shows held to gain a foothold in the state where the seven-decade-old Periyarist self-respect movement is deeply entrenched in the socio-cultural-political ethos of the Tamil society. But this ‘yatra’ by the BJP, ostentatiously organised for a ‘political-spiritual renaissance’, has no traces of such piety and devotion. Lakhs of Tamil devotees take a vow and embark on a long and tedious journey by walk, barefooted, from their native places to different Murugan temples in the Tamil month of Thai every year. In fact, the BJP, unlike the devout Murugan devotees of Tamil Nadu, has not set out on a pilgrim’s progress. They were detained again and released later only to return the next day. Upon release in the evening, they recommenced the yatra two days later from a different place. On the first day of the yatra, BJP State President L Murugan and a few cadres were taken into preventive custody for defying the government’s COVID-19 restrictions in Tiruttani where the yatra began. The Vel Yatra aimed to cover the six abodes of Lord Murugan in the state, called the arupadai veedu in Tamil, and it has been planned to culminate on December 6, the Babri Masjid demolition anniversary, in Tiruchendur, which boasts a sea-shore temple for the deity. The apprehension of the state and its institutions that it might create communal disturbances in an otherwise peaceful land was not unfounded given the precedence of the rath yatra undertaken by BJP leader LK Advani to reclaim the Ram Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya in 1992 and the subsequent violence in many northern states in which thousands were killed. Besides people’s response being lukewarm, the Madras High Court rapped the party and expressed its strong disapproval, while the ruling AIADMK government in the state too told the court that there was nothing ‘spiritual’ about the yatra. The BJP’s grand design to stir Hindutva ideologies for a political harvest through its Vel Yatra in the Dravidian land of Tamil Nadu has turned out to be a damp squib.