Sanatana Dharma judgement: Madras High Court carries out multiple corrections to the verdict

Madras High Court corrects judgment on writ petitions against Udhayanidhi Stalin, P.K. Sekarbabu, and A. Raja.

The Madras High Court has carried out multiple corrections to a judgment delivered by it on Wednesday on a batch of three writ of quo warranto petitions filed against Ministers Udhayanidhi Stalin and P.K. Sekarbabu and the Nilgiris Member of Parliament A. Raja in connection with the Sanatana Dharma row.

Justice Anita Sumanth had pronounced the verdict on Wednesday afternoon and a web copy of it was made available on the High Court website on Thursday morning. However, on Friday, the first web copy was taken down from the website and replaced with another copy containing multiple corrections.

In paragraph number 43 of the first web copy, the judge had recorded the writ petitioners’ submission that the State of Tamil Nadu had a list of 184 castes falling within backward and most backward classes but such divisions were a creation of recent times and not that of vedic literature.

There was no in-text reference in that copy mentioning the source from which the petitioners had made the claim about the existence of 184 castes. However, in the second web copy, an in-text reference had been added indicating the data to have been sourced from the Tamil Nadu government website

Further, in paragraph 121 of the first web copy, the judge had stated that a sample study of the original vedic texts was carried out, at the court’s request, by senior professors at Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute in Chennai and the study confirmed that the phrase Sanatana Dharma was always used in the context of high moral values and virtuous living.

“My thanks to them for this timely assistance. There is absolutely no material to lead to the conclusion that that phrase was used in the context of the Varna system or to propagate unfair and inequitable divisions of society in any manner,” the judge had said.

However, in the corrected web copy, the word ‘only’ had been added to the second sentence which read: “There is absolutely no material to lead to the conclusion that that phrase was used only in the context of the Varna system or to propagate unfair and inequitable divisions of society in any manner.”