Smt Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister visited Hindu Munnani Office in Chennai, offered floral tributes to Sri Ramagopalan today. Hindu Munnani State leader Shri Manohar and BJP State leaders were present.
Some anecdotes from Gopal Ji’s life:
** This happened in Sathyamangalam near Coimbatore. Hindus ,in that town were suffering due to Muslim belligerence. Local Hindu Munnani unit invited Ramagopalan to give hope to Hindus. Ramagopalan reached the town. A certain police officer there asked Ramagopalan to avoid speaking about Muslims. To that Ramagopalan’s reply was: “I have come here precisely to speak about the atrocities that Muslims commit on the Hindu population; if I should not speak about that, do you expect me to speak about how to prepare brinjal sambar?” The policeman was taken aback at this. Hindus were infused with the Hindu Unity message of Ramagopalan that day.
** At a press conference held in Erode, the reporter of a Tamil evening daily asked Ramagopalan why he remained a bachelor. To that Ramagopalan replied (like Deendayalji did once), “See, I have the kind attention of caring sisters in thousands of families throughout Tamilnadu; that prevents me from thinking about the need for my marriage. Also, married life does not always give you to full time to devote for society. That’s why I remain unmarried.”
** The Chennai police department has a peculiar idea of “sensitive area”. Ganesh Visarjan procession was prevented from passing through such an area in Triplicane locality in sputh Chennai. Ramagopalan declared that every citizen of the republic of India has the right of way as a fundamental right. To demonstrate that he will take a small Idol of Ganesha on his shoulder and perform the individual Satyagraha of trying to walk through the so-called sensitive area (read Muslim dominated locality)and get detained by the police and released later on. Thus he built up police records over 30 consecutive years (during Ganesh Visarjan Utsav) by repeating this assertion of Hindu right of way.
** Atheist groups in Tamilnadu used to bombard questions on Hindus like “why costly jewels for devi devatas?”; why Kalyana Utsav for Devi Devatas every year?” Polite Hindu used to explain things to them. Ramagopalan completely overturned this process; he posed questions to the atheist groups which they found difficult to answer! Ne of his questions was: “DK leaders have amassed wealth worth crores of Rupees. What do they do with it? What sort of a welfare activity do you do? Come on, explain!” For the first time in 50 years DK was forced to put up huge banners listing the number of education Institutions run by it.This role reversal relieved Hindu public from the nuisance of DK’s vilifying anti Hindu propaganda.
** During the dark days of 1975 – 77 emergency, Ramagopalan was active as an underground organiser of the struggle against the totalitarian regime. He used to meet editors of popular publications and inform them about the ongoing resistance movement in the country. He has recorded such meetings with journalists. A.N. Shivaraman, editor of Tamil daily Dinamani assured Ramagopalan that he will cast one ‘stone’ on the despot everyday and he added that when a day comes when he is prevented from doing this, he would end his life by touching the live electric wire. Cho Ramaswami, the well known editor of THUGLAK, was a close friend of Ramagopalan for decades; when it comes to the uncompromising assertion of Hindu consolidation work, Ramagopalan was unsparing in his words in discussions during his visit to the THUGLAK office. The exchange usually ended without any conclusion. Satya, an employee of the magazine now says, “Cho Sir would vehemently oppose Ramagopalan’s stand on this, but after Ramagopalan leaves the office he would tell us all that Ramagopalan was right and he simply provoked him to come out with his statement in a powerful manner!”
