100 days of DMK: Activities of HR&CE are back to life
DMK’s dogmatic rationalist beginnings have been used against it repeatedly, but the party has maintained it respects all religions.
On the third death anniversary of his father M Karunanidhi on August 7, chief minister M K Stalin launched a drive to plant 100,000 saplings of Sthala Vruksham (sacred tree for every temple) on lands attached to temples under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) department. The move is being seen as Stalin’s bid to counter being typecast as anti-Hindu, which has been the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign against the ruling party in Tamil Nadu.

After the DMK came back to power on May 2 after a gap of 10 years, a large portion of the new government’s first 100 days in office had been devoted to firefighting the devastating second wave of Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, the activities of the HR&CE department, which was almost obscure, sprang to life under the new regime. DMK’s dogmatic rationalist beginnings have been used against it repeatedly, but the party has maintained it respects all religions.
Most recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attacked the DMK by labelling it as ‘anti-Hindu’ on the campaign trail for the assembly elections. However, the DMK managed to fend it off as mass politics led the party to be more accommodative. The electorate, too, which is a Hindu majority, has not seen a contradiction as several DMK leaders are practitioners of various religions and faiths. Besides, the women of DMK’s first family are often seen visiting temples.
According to political analysts, Stalin is merely taking forward his father’s schemes with respect to temples, appointments of priests and initiatives for devotees, but with discernible display.
Careful planning has gone into the public image makeover from the campaign trail to the election manifesto to now in office. Stalin picked a trusted aide and a believer PK Sekar Babu, whose phone rings to a devotional Sabarimala Ayyappa caller tune, as minister of the department. Babu, who sports a horizontal vermillion mark between his eyebrows and is always clad in a white shirt and dhoti, has been crisscrossing the state inspecting temples besides inspecting hospitals when Covid-19 cases were peaking. Babu is also the minister in-charge for Covid-19 control in Chennai and was often seen accompanying Stalin during most of his hospital visits and events.
When the DMK was in the opposition, Babu often filled in for Stalin for social events like marriages, housewarming in latter’s Kolathur constituency even though he represented Harbour constituency. “He was the most hardworking person for Stalin in Kolathur,” said a DMK functionary.
Given his proximity to Stalin and his own religious beliefs, Babu is both well aware of Stalin’s expectations and of the operations around temples. “He (Stalin) knows a cadre and a leader in the party alike. He analyses what each person is capable of. So, he handed over this ministry with that faith in me,” said Babu.
The HR&CE manages 44,121 temples in Tamil Nadu. The government is in the process of a mammoth exercise of digitising papers of properties and assets owned by temples to make them available in the public domain. “The idea is to make everything transparent,” Babu said. It was also seen as an effort to blunt a growing campaign to free temples in Tamil Nadu by the BJP and spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev. “Yes, we did focus on this department’s initiatives, and it has silenced that (free temples) campaign, but we didn’t expect the HR&CE to gain so much of popularity,” a DMK leader said on the condition of anonymity.
The initiatives and announcements that steered this department to prominence include, Stalin appointing 24 non-Brahmin trained priests to temples on completion of 100 days in office. On the same day, a woman Odhuvar (one who chants hymns before the deity), 28-year-old Suhanjana Gopinath, was appointed to a Chennai temple. Stalin was implementing an order passed by Karunanidhi (during his tenure in 2006-2011) in entirety to allow priesthood at temples for people of all castes and births for those who are formally trained in the agamas and the other ritual texts. Babu had earlier announced that the DMK government will take steps to provide training to women who are interested in becoming priests.
After the DMK took over the state administration in May, Babu and his team have taken a series of actions to protect the assets of temples. Encroachments have been evicted and 187.9 acres of land, 161.7 acres of vacant plots and more have been retrieved and restored to the control of temples. The revised budget this year allocated ₹100 crore for renovation work of temple this year. An additional corpus of ₹130 crore has been created in the recent state budget to provide assistance to perform one-time pooja in 12,959 temples. According to the budget, training schools will be revived to create a trained pool of Oduvar and Archakas. Master plans are also to be developed for 539 temples to conserve their heritage.
After Stalin made 208 new appointments to various positions in the HR&CE department, including 24 priests from various castes, it was welcomed by all parties, including the BJP. However, there were accusations that several serving priests were asked to make way for new entrants. On Tuesday, Babu dismissed the accusations saying the party has no intention to remove anyone. “Hindus who take up Hindutva are left with no job now, so they are involved in these ill campaigns,” Babu said.
R Kannan, author of books on DMK founder C N Annadurai and ADMK (later AIADMK founder) MG Ramachandran (MGR), recalls that the shift happened with Anna who famously said “ondre kulam oruvane devan”, meaning one religion, one God. And that Karunanidhi bettered him by allotting funds for temple renovation, enhancing temple cars and more in the 1970s. Despite that Karunanidhi had on several occasions made vocal remarks against believers. “But the assertion of a section of the Hindus in the presence of BJP is now compelling a change in narrative from the yesteryears. So the DMK is boxed into a corner where it’s become defensive and it has to constantly say that it’s not anti-Hindu,” said Kannan.
Political analyst Raveendran Duraisamy said, “Stalin is undoing all the anti-Hindu projections made against him in a well-thought-out strategy.”
“In doing so, he is also exposing the looters of temple lands who were spared by the previous government and curtailing the BJP’s growth. However, the BJP is taking a different form in Tamil Nadu, we can’t single them out as a Brahmincal party like in other states because they have supported archakas of all castes but they are campaigning for freeing temples,” Duraisamy added.