Author: Amrita

The new amma in Karunanidhi’s life

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi, said to be a hardcore atheist and who had on several occasions reprimanded party men for flirting with religion now seems to have no problems with spiritual leaders.

A few weeks ago Karunanidhi shared the stage with godman Sathya Sai Baba and this time it was with spiritual guru Mata Amritanandamayi.

So unlike Tamil Nadu’s political amma, former chief minister Jayalalitha, this amma has struck the right chord with the Chief Minister.

“Mata Amritanandamayi was born in coastal Kerala and she is like a pearl that the sea gives us. A pearl who takes care of the needy around the world,”Karunanidhi says.

The octogenarian Chief Minister had a battery of state and Central ministers at the function in Nagapattinam for tsunami victims.

Karunanidhi now boasts of a different image, of a man who had once told his ministers that wearing a tika on their forehead was an insult to Tamil rationalist leader Periyar’s ideology.

2 Feb 2007, Chennai
Moneycontrol.com
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/newsarticle/stocksnews.php?cid=1&autono=32594&source=ibnlive.com

…..

. . . . . Some of the fisherfolk had come to attend a congregation at which the saint from Kerala, Mata Amritanandamayi, handed over the keys of 400 houses her trust had built for the fishermen of Keelapattinamcherry village.

In a symbolic gesture, she gave 10 keys to chief minister M. Karunanidhi, who presided over the function.

The 324-sq ft houses cost Rs 1.80 lakh each. The trust has pledged to build about 6,200 of them for tsunami victims in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar islands, earmarking 650 for Nagapattinam.
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5 Feb 2007, Nagapattanam

M R Venkitesh, The Telgraph

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070206/asp/nation/story_7355372.asp