Ayyappa devotees gathered at Pandalam on Monday in a counter-event to the Global Ayyappa Summit organised by the Kerala LDF government and Travancore Devaswom Board at Pamba. Led by the Sabarimala Karma Samithi, the Sabarimala Samrakshana Sammelanam was attended by political, spiritual, and Hindu organisational leaders. BJP figures including Karnataka MP Tejasvi Surya, former TN BJP chief K. Annamalai, and Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of hypocrisy, alleging attempts to hoodwink devotees and commercialise Sabarimala.
Speaking at the gathering, BJP MP from Karnataka Tejasvi Surya launched a scathing attack on the Kerala government, calling the Global Ayyappa Sangamam organised by the LDF regime and Travancore Devaswom Board “ironic” and “hypocritical.” He said that an atheist communist government holding an Ayyappa conference was equivalent to “the devil quoting scripture” or “a mutton shop organising a welfare programme for goats and chickens.”
Surya, who attended the event alongside former Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai, began his address by paying respects to the puja swamis on stage and the Ayyappa devotees present. Speaking on the first day of Navaratri, he described the occasion as the start of establishing a dharma samraajya in Kerala.
He said he was surprised to learn that the atheist, anti-Hindu communist government was organising a global Ayyappa conference and called it a “drama” aimed at hoodwinking devotees. Citing Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin’s description of religion as “the opium of the masses,” he argued that communists, by doctrine, opposed faith in God, and therefore had no moral right to organise a religious conference.
Surya claimed that photographs of the state-sponsored conference showed empty chairs, while the Pandalam event was filled with thousands of genuine devotees. He accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of inviting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin to the Sangamam, and questioned why Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was not invited. Surya remarked that had Siddaramaiah joined, the list of “anti-Hindu leaders” from the three southern states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka would have been complete, calling them “the trimurtis of anti-Hindu politics.”
He drew parallels between the Kerala event and the recent controversy in Karnataka’s Dharmasthala temple, where allegations of mass burials were raised by a YouTuber and a masked former employee. Surya alleged that activists, lawyers, and journalists with communist leanings created a conspiracy to discredit the temple by demanding an SIT probe into claims of “1,000 murders.” He recounted that despite 16 days of police excavations across identified sites, not a single bone or skeleton was recovered. Tejasvi said that the Siddaramaiah government’s anti-Hindu mindset was exposed, and its subsequent attempts to portray devotion were merely political drama.
VIDEO | Pathanamthitta, Kerala: BJP MP Tejasvi Surya (@Tejasvi_Surya) says, “Communists protesting against Dharmasthala appealed to anti-Hindu nature of Kerala, TN CMs when Siddaramaiah initially denied formation of SIT.”
(Full video available on PTI Videos -… pic.twitter.com/RNqewr7v5C
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 22, 2025
Extending the comparison to Sabarimala, he said that the same “duplicity” was at play in Kerala, where those who once attempted to destroy temples were now claiming to protect traditions. He stated that both he and Annamalai had come not as guests but as representatives of millions of Ayyappa devotees from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Turning to infrastructure issues, Surya criticised the Kerala government’s 50-year master plan for Sabarimala. He said the temple receives donations of around ₹400 crore annually, yet the government had budgeted only ₹1,000 crore over five decades. He argued that in four years, donations would surpass that figure and accused the government of showing more urgency in scams than in providing basic facilities like clean toilets, a maintained Pamba River, and adequate dharmashalas for pilgrims.
He described the communists as “fraudsters” who mask themselves with words like “democratic” and “liberal” while being neither. He asserted that leaders such as Siddaramaiah in Karnataka, Stalin in Tamil Nadu, and Vijayan in Kerala were “wearing the same anti-Hindu mask” and needed to be exposed.
Surya demanded that before the Kerala government claimed moral authority to organise a global conference, it must first withdraw its affidavit in the Supreme Court opposing Sabarimala traditions and file a fresh one supporting them. He also called for the withdrawal of thousands of cases filed against devotees during the 2017–18 namajapa protests.
Concluding his address, Surya declared that without fulfilling these conditions, the “atheist communist and anti-Sanatana dharma government” of Pinarayi Vijayan had no right to speak about Ayyappa or his devotees. He pledged that the “dharma yudha” that began on Navaratri would continue until the communist government in Kerala was “booted out” and replaced by a BJP government that respects traditions, with the blessings of devotees.
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