Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K. Selvaperunthagai on Wednesday, May 29, 2024 strongly condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s planned visit to Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanniyakumari on May 30, where he is expected to meditate. He said this would infringe on the rights of tourists who will be barred from visiting the memorial for three days.
In a statement, Mr. Selvaperunthagai charged that Prime Minister’s visit to Kanniyakumari after the conclusion of the campaign for Lok Sabha 2024 is meant to gain a ‘political advantage’ in the 57 constituencies, which are going to the polls in the final phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
“The decision to orchestrate ‘meditation drama’ shows that he would stoop to any level to retain political power,” he said.
Mr. Selvaperunthagai added, “Swami Vivekanandar propagated religious bonhomie and spread Hinduism around the world. He was loved by people of other faiths. He was a kind man. At the same time, he got the attention of people across the globe through his persuasive skills. In his famous speech in Chicago on September 11, 1893, he said, ‘I am proud that I belong to the nation that has provided refuge to the persecuted of all religions in the world.’”
Mr. Selvaperunthagai also pointed out that Swami Vivekananda said, “If anyone dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart” and that he concluded his Chicago speech by saying that ‘Harmony and peace, not dissension’ should be written on the banner of every religion.
However, when Prime Minister Modi was earlier Chief Minister of Gujarat, thousands of Muslims were killed in riots and he behaved like ‘Nero who played the fiddle while Rome was burning’., the Congress leader claimed.
“PM Modi who joined the RSS as a young person and grew up reading the divisive works of RSS ideologue Golwalker, wouldn’t have read Swami Vivekananda. Even if he had read them, there is no way that his heart would accept his ideas,” he further alleged.
The ‘meditation drama’ is not just an insult to Tamil Nadu, but it is an insult to the whole nation, the statement said.
