Stalin asks party cadre to "teach a lesson to Modi government" in his first speech as DMK chief

Hitting out at the Centre and Tamil Nadu government, the newly-elected DMK president MK Stalin today asked the party cadre to "teach a lesson to the Modi government" and remove the “right-wing” Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the Palaniswami-led AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu.

Setting two immediate tasks for his party colleagues, he urged them to join him in the fight against the Modi government and also the "spineless" AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu.

“Come, teach a lesson to the Modi government that is trying to saffronize India. We should remove the right wing Modi government in the Centre and EPS government in the state,” Stalin said in his first speech after becoming DMK president.


"We will oppose any party that wants supremacy of one language," Stalin added.

Calling it a “grave challenge” in the current political scenario, Stalin said: "Education, art, literature, religion are under attack by authoritative and communal forces. Union government is trying to destabilise judiciary, selection of governors. All this has dealt a blow to the secular principles."


Stalin said the rights of state governments were being trampled upon and the Modi government needed to be taught a lesson.

Stalin's attack on the BJP and the central government assumes significance in the context of speculation of late that the DMK may be softening towards the saffron party after it invited BJP President Amit Shah to a memorial meeting to pay homage to Karunanidhi here on Thursday.

Confessing at the outset that he was not like his father and did not have the command of the language like Karunanidhi, the 65-year-old said he would dare to try new things inspired by the late Dravidian legends Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy and C.N. Annadurai.

He said the DMK was a fort founded on four pillars of rationalism, self-respect, social justice and equality.

"But it is painful to see that the (state) government was spineless and without self-respect and the Centre was trying to destroy equality, social justice and rationalistic policies."

He charged the AIADMK government with sacrificing people-centric schemes initiated by the DMK and indulging in "daylight loot" of the state.

"The first duty of the DMK is to remove these social evils and rescue the state from the hands of these thieves," Stalin said, adding that the biggest danger facing the country now was the existence of political parties without any principles with the single aim of targeting offices of power and pelf.

Telling his party colleagues that they would be seeing a 'new Stalin' from now on, he said he dreamt of leading the party treating everyone as equal.

"We are not anti-God. Even if we don't believe (in God) we will respect the beliefs of believers. We will act against whoever commits wrongs, including myself," he said.

Stalin vowed to fight for restoration of individual right of speech and media freedom, protection of right to hold individual views and oppose parties that attempt to obliterate other languages and view the whole of India on the basis of religion.

(Inputs from IANS)