In a chilling incident, V Ramalingam (48), a Hindu man who countered some Islamic missionaries with a message of respecting all religions, was brutally hacked to death just hours later when he and his 17-year-old son were driving back home. Police has booked four men, whose identities were not released, as accused in the case.

The murder took place on Tuesday night in Tirubhuvanam town in Thanjavur district. V Ramalingam was a small businessman who rented out utensils and shamiana tents for weddings. He was the town secretary of the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) party five years ago, but was currently not active in party affairs.

Ramalingam’s son, in his complaint, said that on Tuesday morning he had accompanied his father to Packiyanathan Thoppu, a Dalit habitation, to take some workers for a function for which they had a contract. Ramalingam saw a group of men there, including one Rasudeen, proselytising Islam. Ramalingam entered into a discussion with them, and everyone dispersed peacefully after a while.

A video of Ramalingam countering the Islamic missionaries has gone viral on social media, and in it he can be seen very calmly challenging the missionaries, even donning the Muslim skull cap & saying salaam alaikum (Muslim welcome greeting) before applying vibhuti (holy ash) on the forehead of one of the Muslim men to drive his point across about respecting each others’ religions.

Ramalingam even asks, “we accept all religions, but do you accept us the same way?” 

PMK Kumbakonam Office Bearer Ramalingam who opposed Muslim conversion in a Dalit colony has been murdered. Looks like radical outfit Popular Front of India is behind the murder. Media, Journos, Liberals & loudmouths who howl for every single thing *silent*? #JusticeForRamalingam pic.twitter.com/9E0xOcMplG

— SG Suryah (@SuryahSG) February 6, 2019

Police sources said the men seen in the video were from Popular Front of India (PFI) and had been on a visit to preach to people from other faiths about Islam.

Later that night, when the father and son were returning from work in their mini-van and passing through a Muslim locality in Tirubhuvanam, a group of friends of Rasudeen waylaid and attacked them, the son alleged in his complaint. The mini-van was blocked by a car, then a group of four came out and attacked Ramalingam with sharp weapons before speeding off in their car.

Based on the son’s complaint, Tiruvidaimarudur police registered a case of murder and launched an investigation.

Tragically, V Ramalingam’s social media posts show that he was a large-hearted man who had many Muslim friends too, yet he was hacked to death merely for asking a few questions of Islamic missionaries.

https://twitter.com/ShivaaBJYM/status/1093402774258077696

Hinduphobic establishment-elites with Hindu-sounding names

The traditional narrative about Bharat is that since Hindus make up about 80% of the population, they enjoy a sort of natural advantage while the ‘minorities’ are marginalized and hence require state support & constitutional protections.

This narrative was driven deep into the heart of our State and institutions during the initial post-independence years under Jawaharlal Nehru, and successive interpretations of the Constitution’s articles 26-30 have bestowed certain rights on ‘minorities’ which have been withheld from the ‘majority’.

But while de jure (by law), it would appear that the Indian state needs to constantly guard against majoritarianism, the de facto (on ground) situation is anything but. Even setting aside the legal discrimination against Hindus which efforts like the HinduCharter are trying to correct, one could be mistaken for believing that Hindus control the levers of power in the country seeing the dominance of people with Hindu names at the top levels of media, judiciary, bureaucracy, business.

But it is those elites with Hindu-sounding names who are some of the biggest enemies of ordinary Hindus like V Ramalingam. These elites are not just apathetic towards Hindus, most of them are downright hostile towards Hindu Dharma which they view, because of their education and upbringing, as the source of all that is wrong with the country today. If you just went by their surnames – Iyer, Misra, Dhawan, Sardesai, Dutt, Roy, Sharma, Chatterjee, Verma, Gupta, Ghosh, Thakur, Singh etc. – you could be mistaken for imagining that Hindus dominate Bharat’s discourse.

Our elites are truly Hindu in name only. Their only allegiance is to whatever Western ‘ism’ has taken their fancy – secularism, communism, liberalism etc. Their only interest in V Ramalingam’s murder will be to either sweep it under the carpet, or dismiss it by labelling as just another episode of political violence. The work has already started –

A Hindu was murdered by Islamists for opposing conversion activities in his colony. Media has blacked out this news, and @timesofindia writes with a secular headline 'Catering contractor hacked to death in Tamil Nadu'. Wah!#JusticeForRamalingamhttps://t.co/Ac5tdxcxay

— Gampa Sai Datta (@GampaSD) February 6, 2019

Have you noticed how every Muslim victim of a communal crime is called by his name by the media, e.g Pehlu, Akhlaq, Junaid, but every Hindu victim is just a ‘RSS man’, ‘PMK man’, ‘BJP worker’, ‘VHP activist’? Excellent way to dehumanise a crime and reduce it to just stats!

— Shefali Vaidya. 🇮🇳 (@ShefVaidya) February 7, 2019

If the middle class and neo-middle class Hindu doesn’t wake up to this reality, men like V Ramalingam will continue sacrificing their lives in vain, Hindu Dharma will one day die out completely from this land, and the world will be deprived of a universal wisdom that offers a real path for harmonious co-existence of various civilizations.

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