In a recent interview with TOI, DMK Youth Wing leader Udayanidhi Stalin gave an interesting reply when asked if he visited temples. When we, as children, played cricket in front of our Gopalapuram house, the ball would often land on the premises of a temple opposite the house. I would go in to fetch the ball, he said, asserting that he is a rationalist.

Last week, Vaiko bowled a full toss for Udayanidhi to go over the fence when he said the Dravidian parties should revise their strategy and drop their criticism of religious faith. Crores of people visit temples, Vaiko said. If you are not a believer dont go to temples, but dont ridicule believers who do.

It was one of the sanest things Ive heard Vaiko speak. Some analysts think Vaiko shouldnt have made such a statement in public, that he couldve discussed it in a closed-door strategy meet. But Vaiko chose to make it a public statement with a double intent: He wanted to be both the medium and the message. The message was something waiting to be delivered. And it makes M K Stalins and his son Udhayanidhis job easier. Vaiko was merely being a friendly facilitator, in the process buttressing his utility as the home-againthough-estranged son of the DMK.

Vaiko was not telling anything new to Stalin, who has long realised the need to go slow on rationalism in the changing times of religious polarisation where the prime beneficiary is the BJP. He set tongues wagging in September 2015 when he visited the Sowmya Narayanaswamy temple in Sivaganga. Dravidian purists frowned again in June last year when Stalin accepted honours from Hindu priests at the doors of the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple. Those were definite attempts to erase the anti-Hindu blot the DMK has been carrying from its previous avatar of Dravidar Kazhagam that broke idols on streets and cut brahmins sacred threads.

The AIADMK, right from its birth, had no rationalist pretensions. MGR made no effort to hide his belief and, in fact, reminded believers that Karunanidhi had called them fraudsters. Jayalalithaa revelled in public display of Hindu rituals, often kickstarting her election campaigns from temples. Periyars atheism that celebrated insults of the faithful stemmed from his belief that the Hindu religion was the root of casteism that gave minority brahmins the upper hand. It served its limited purpose, as Stalin & Co have realised, and its time to be inclusive. To justify this inevitable change, Vaiko rightly offered the argument that how DMK founder C N Annadurai has altered his stands with changing social realities.

Probably the first atheist Indian politician who spoke openly about the need to respect someones faith was communist leader E M S Namboodiripad. His cerebral take on secularism and religion was ahead of its times and god-fearing communists took a long time to visit temples without a towel to hide their face. There was a time when Karunanidhi asked one of his party leaders wearing a saffron tilak on his forehead if he was bleeding. It will be a while before DMK leaders would wear their belief on their sleeves, but Stalin is unlikely to chide if any of his comrades dares to do that.

M Karunanidhi just loved to make fun of Hindu rituals. The master of repartee could not resist the temptation to take an occasional dig at Hindu gods, but he notes in his autobiography Nenjukku Neethi his visit to the Srirangam temple where accepted the parivattom (religious headgear). The son may go the extra mile and show respect for the faithful. And the grandson could well get into temples for reasons other than fetching the cricket ball.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Dravidian atheism on a wing and a prayer - Times of India