The news of Hindus threatening to convert to Islam

Chennai. The news of Hindus threatening to convert to Islam in tiny village of Pazhangallikkadu in Nagappattinam District of Tamilnadu was disturbing, but the dust has been settled down peacefully and mischievous anti-Hindu forces were shown exit door.

A visit of Sri Sendalankara Sampathkumara Ramanuja Jeeyar into Pazhangallikkadu village and his interaction with villagers all day long have changed the things. Distribution of notebooks to school kids and performing an Homam at Mahalakshmi with all villagers settled the rising dust.

For this Homam, Jeeyar graciously called one Senthil who was spearheading the revolt and goading the people to convert, and honoured him to be the head of the ritual and made him take the oath to be responsible for the smooth conduct. After the successful conduct of the Homam, the Jeeyar distributed the ‘prasad’ to all villagers as the benign grace of the Goddess.

Recently, Tavheed Jamaat volunteers, in Pazhangallikkadu artificially generated caste conflicts with purpose of creating religious unrest and inducing the hapless villagers to convert to Islam on the reason of social injustice in Hindu society.

Going into the details of the trouble, the village Pazhangallikkadu comprises people of many communities prominent among them being the Pillai. The festival in the Tamil month of Adi (July-August)  is very famous there as it is elsewhere in the State. The people of the Pillai community have, for years, been conducting one of the three mandakappadis, a part of the festival at Pazhangallikkadu in their age old  traditional customary way, the other two are the prerogative of the HR & CE Board. The other communities like Mukkulathor, Vanniyar, Adi Dravidar and etc participate wholeheartedly in the other regular temple rituals like pal kudam etc.

There has never been any objection whatsoever of all involving in the temple rituals or worship. If and when the government decides to offer its right to perform the mandakappadi to the Adidravidar community, whatever simmering remonstration that would arise occasionally, would be quelled by amicable means and temple festivities continued to everyone’s content.

But this year witnessed an unsavoury development. Aided and abetted by VCK (a political party said to be fighting for social justice), the Tamil Nadu Tavheed Jamaat (an Islamist outfit known for its anti idol worship propaganda) created a rift among the communities citing non-existent religious intolerance and have managed to hoodwink the villagers to go to the extent of converting to Islam.

The activists of Hindu organisations have, for the last one month, been meeting people on both sides and striving their every nerve in order to unearth the root cause of all these troubles and finally it ended in exposing the anti-Hindu forces to villagers.