Responding to the report, “PMK’s claim on Dalits ‘abducting’ Muslim women draws flak” published on August 16, 2016, PMK president G.K. Mani clarified that neither PMK founder S. Ramadoss nor the party was an enemy of Dalits.
“We only condemned some youths belonging to that community who play with the lives of women at the instigation of the VCK,” he said .
Mr. Mani said representatives of Muslims on January 20, 2013 at the district-level meeting of the Forum for Safeguarding All Communities (which was launched by the PMK) in Erode accused Dalits of enticing their women.
“At the meeting, they said that in Erode, Dalit youths enticed 150 to 200 Muslim women. In Gobichettiypalayam, 42 women were enticed. The girls’ relatives had offered to marry them to the youths if the latter converted to Islam. But the Dalits refused and married the girls on their own. Later, the men harassed the women asking them to get money from their families. They appealed to Doctor Ayya to put a full stop to this,” Mr. Mani said, adding that Abdul Hakeem of the Darussalam Islamic Centre reiterated this charge at a PMK meeting on August 9.
