The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday quashed the FIR registered in 2023 by Tiruchi city police against BJP leader Amit Malviya for “distorting the comments” of Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin on Sanatana Dharma. Justice S. Srimathy went on to state that what Mr. Udhayanidhi had said amounted to “hate speech”.
“To consider the issue (at hand), the alleged speech of the Minister ought to be seen, wherein he said ‘Sanatana Dharma should not be resisted or opposed, but has to be abolished/eradicated’. In Tamil, it is stated not as Sanatana ethirppu (opposing Sanatana), but Sanatana ozhippu (eradicating Sanatana),” the judge said.
“The entire case is on the word ozhippu, which is crucial. The word ‘abolish’ would indicate that some existing thing should not be there. If it is applied to the present case, if Sanatana Dharma should not be there, then the people following Sanatana Dharma should not be there. If a group of people following Sanatana Dharma should not be there, then the appropriate word is ‘genocide’. If Sanatana Dharma is a religion, then it is ‘Religicide’. It also means to eradicate the people by following any methods or various methods with diverse attacks on ecocide, factocide, culturicide (cultural genocide). Therefore, the Tamil phrase Sanatana ozhippu would clearly mean genocide or culturicide. In such circumstances, the post of the petitioner questioning the Minister’s speech would not amount to hate speech,” she said.
