Kamal Haasan, Tamil actor, a full-time Hinduphobe, and an atheist who once admitted to spreading the word of Christ has expressed his desire to ‘’break the chains’ of Sanatan Dharma.

Addressing a gathering at the Agaram Foundation event in Chennai on 3^rd August 2025, Haasan said, “Education is the only weapon that can break the chains of dictatorship and Sanatan.”

The founder of Makkal Needhi Maiyam (MNM) added, “Don’t take anything else in your hands, only education. We cannot win without it, because the majority can make you lose. Majority Fools (Moodargal) will make u lose; knowledge alone will seem defeated. That’s why we must hold on to it Education firmly.”

“Education is the only weapon that can cut off chains of dictatorship and Sanatan.” – KAMAL HAASAN pic.twitter.com/vGOf3WRXzM

— Times Algebra (@TimesAlgebraIND) August 4, 2025

Haasan’s remarks have triggered outrage among Hindus and received backlash from political opponents as well.

Reacting to the Hinduphobic remarks by Kamal Haasan slandering Sanatan Dharma some sort of oppressive religion, Tamil Nadu BJP leader Tamilisai Soundararajan said, “Kamal Haasan is more thankful to DMK than its own cadres. First, he raised the language issue, dividing people of different states. Now, he is raising the religious issue to create division based on religious sentiments. I am asking why you are talking about Sanatan. If he speaks about Sanatan, Udhayanidhi and Stalin will be happy. However, Tamil Nadu people will be unhappy, and not only Tamil Nadu, the sentiments of all Indians who follow that ideology will be hurt… I strongly condemn this…”

#WATCH | Chennai, Tamil Nadu: On MNM chief & Rajya Sabha MP Kamal Haasan’s statement, BJP leader Tamilisai Soundararajan says, “…Kamal Haasan is more thankful to DMK than its own cadres. First, he raised the language issue, dividing people of different states. Now, he is… pic.twitter.com/3QuN9yMGtH

— ANI (@ANI) August 4, 2025

Before Rajya Sabha MP Kamal Haasan, Tamil Nadu minister and DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin had in 2023 sparked outrage by giving open calls for ‘eradication’ of Sanatan Dharma.

“Mosquitoes, dengue, flu, malaria, corona – we should not oppose these things. They’ve to be eradicated completely. The same is the case with Santanam (Hinduism). Our first work should be to abolish/eradicate Sanatanam instead of opposing it. So, my appreciation to you all for giving an apt title to the meeting,” Stalin said back then.

Despite the outrage and blatant disrespect to Hindu religion in a Hindu-majority country, Udhayanidhi Stalin, who claims to be a Christian, not only doubled down but was also joined by other DMK leaders in making anti-Sanatan remarks.

Unsurprisingly, Kamal Haasan had back then supported Udhayanidhi Stalin. Haasan said that Udhayanidhi Stalin is a young child being targeted over this issue. However, a 45-year-old (at that time) Udhayanidhi was as much a young child as a 55-year-old Rahul Gandhi is decribed as a youth leader by Congress IT cell.

“Today, a young child is being targeted because he has spoken about Sanatan Dharma. Several leaders of the Dravidian movement like Udhayanidhi’s grandfather and late DMK leader M Karunanidhi have also spoken about it in the past. The extent of reformist leader Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy’s resentment towards social evils can be understood from his life,” Haasan said at a public event.

Notably, in Tamil Nadu, ‘Sanatan’ is also often associated with ‘Brahminism’, which again, is wrongly used synonymously for casteism. Thus, Kamal Haasan is vilifying Sanatan, which the Dravidians associate with Brahminism, and they consider ‘Brahminism’ as the root of all ‘evils’. It all boils down to the very core of Hinduism.

Kamal Haasan has a penchant for making anti-Hindu remarks

Incidentally, this is not the first time that Kamal Haasan has made anti-Hindu remarks, in fact, he has been doing so for years now. Back in 2019, the MNM leader had said that independent India’s first extremist was a ‘Hindu’.

“I am not saying this because this is Muslim-dominated area, but I am saying this before a statue of Gandhi. Free India’s first extremist was a Hindu, his name is Nathuram Godse. There it (extremism, apparently) starts,” he said during a poll rally in Aravakurichi.

In 2017, Kamal Haasan labelled Hindus as ‘extremists’ and Hindu groups as ‘violent’ and said, “Hindus cannot challenge others to show extremists among them since extremism has spread to that extent even among the Hindus. Hindus are losing faith in the principle of satyameva jayate and instead, they were subscribing to ‘might is right’. In the past, Hindu right-wing groups would not indulge in violence. They would hold a dialogue with opponents. But now they resort to violence.”

In October 2022, amidst row over Tamil movie director Vetrimaaran’s claim that Chola king Raja Raja Chola I was not a Hindu, Kamal Haasan claimed that here was no Hindu religion during the time of the Chola king. 

“There was no name called ‘Hindu religion’ during Raja Raja Cholan’s period. At that time there were Vaishnavas and Shaivites. It was the British who coined the term ‘Hindu’ because they did not know how to express it collectively. It’s just like they turned Thoothukudi into Tuticorin,” Haasan said even as in reality, Vaishnavs and Shaivs have always been integral sects within Sanatan Dharma.

In May 2023, Kamal Haasan labelled the film The Kerala Story, which was inspired from real events involving proselytization and brainwashing of Hindu and non-Christian, their conversion to Islam and subsequent manipulation into joining Islamic terror outfits like ISIS, as a ‘propaganda’ film.  Haasan, however, never labelled his own films as piece of propaganda despite their themes being deeply anti-Hindu and outrageous in all respects.

In fact, Kamal Haasan’s filmography shows that the veteran actor has been using movies to push anti-Hindu agenda for long. From mocking Lord Murugan in the film ‘Kaadhala Kaadhala‘ (1998), portraying Lord Shiv as a comic character blowing bubbles with his bubblegum in Pammal K. Sambandam‘ (2002), to vilifying Shaivites, Kamal Haasan’s movies often feature anti-Hindu themes.

Apparently, Kamal Haasan wants students to ‘eradicate’ Sanatan through education while he makes his bid in this direction through his movies.

Desperate for political clout or perhaps driven by deep-seated disdain for Hinduism, Kamal Haasan has wrongly reduced Sanatan, which implies the eternal principles and timelessness of Hindu Dharma, to some sort of oppressive force that needs to be broken free from.

While the actor-politician equated Sanatan to dictatorship, Sanatan, rooted in the eternal principles of Dharma (righteousness), Karma (duty) and moksha (salvation) is itself a profound liberator, unshackling people from material bondage and evils of all sorts.

Haasan, who enjoys a vast fan base among Sanatan-believing Hindus, is perhaps deliberately disparaging Sanatan Dharma since he knows he can get political gains due to it. He can expect praise from anti-Hindu Dravidian intellectual circles, can come across as a ‘progressive’ leader’ and get away with it without any serious consequences. Had Kamal Haasan called education an effective weapon against Islamic terrorism, he would have started getting ‘Sar tan se juda‘ threats by now.

Earlier, Islamo-leftists and liberals claimed to fight against ‘Hindutva’ and now they want to break shackles of ‘Sanatan’, it is but an allusion for Hinduism. The strategy may have changed, however, the target remain Hindus and Hinduism.