Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has hit back at BJP leader V. Muraleedharan’s claim that the CPM leader’s recent remarks on Sanatan Dharma were intended to garner voter support.

Former Union minister Muraleedharan commented on Wednesday, following Vijayan’s speech at the Sivagiri pilgrimage at the Sivagiri Mutt on Tuesday. Vijayan had said: “Sanatan Dharma is synonymous with or inseparable from the Varnashrama Dharma, which is based on the Chaturvarna system. What does this Varnashrama Dharma stand for? It glorifies hereditary professions. What did Narayana Guru do? He called for defiance of hereditary professions. When that’s the case, how can Guru be an advocate of Sanatan Dharma?”

He added: “Narayana Guru’s ascetic life was a constant questioning and defiance of the Chaturvarna system. How is it possible for Guru to be an advocate of Sanatan Dharma when he stood for, ‘one caste, one religion, one God for humankind’? He stood for a dharma that opposed thecaste system.”

On the allegations that he was insulting Sanatan Dharma for vote-bank politics, Vijayan said: “Shouldn’t I be saying something else if I’d aimed at vote-bank politics? I’m against Sree Narayana Guru being cast as the spokesperson of Sanatan Dharma.”

BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla accused Vijayan of targeting extremist votes by denigrating Hinduism.