Karunanidhi was one of the Indian politicians vocal about being an atheist and once famously asked if Ram was a civil engineer. The incident took place in 2007 at the height of the Sethusamudram project.
In 2007, he famously came down hard on ‘communal forces’ for using the ‘myth’ of Ram Sethu to stall the Sethusamudram project and had famously said: “Who is this Raman (as Lord Ram is referred to in Tamil)? In which engineering college did he study and become a civil engineer? When did he build this so-called bridge? Is there any evidence for this?"
On the withdrawal of the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project – to create a shipping route in the shallow straits between India and Sri Lanka, he had said: “The withdrawal of the affidavits does not mean that the project is being withdrawn," Karunanidhi told reporters at Yercaud near Salem. "If it amounts to the project itself being shelved, then the DMK, which adheres to scientific, rational and progressive ideals, will not accept it."
He went on to call Ramayana a piece of fiction that represented the conflict between Aryans and Dravidians.This had led BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad to retort: “We would like to know from Karunanidhi if he would make a similar statement against religious head of any other religion; chance are he may not."He even went on to claim Ram was a drunkard and he was quoting Valmiki’s Ramayana.
Pointing out that the Constitution didn’t bar his remarks, he had said: "I have not hurt anyone by my remarks. Expressing the views which are already in writing cannot be termed as wounding the sentiments of somebody else. The DMK has never done anything which would hurt the sentiments of either the Hindus or anybody else and the party would not do so in the future."
