Published Feb 05, 2026 | 4:01 PM ⚊ Updated Feb 05, 2026 | 4:01 PM
He said election commissions were scrutinising citizens’ right to vote by checking spellings and addresses, often in error.
Synopsis: Actor-politician Kamal Haasan used his maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha during the Budget session to mount a sharp critique of the Union government, warning that the Election Commission was stripping citizens of their right to vote through special intensive revisions of electoral rolls and threatening democracy itself. He also criticised Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for citing remarks attributed to Periyar that he said demeaned the Tamil language.
Actor-politician Kamal Haasan stirred debate with an emotional and fiery speech in Parliament during the ongoing Budget session on Wednesday, 4 February.
The Rajya Sabha MP, delivering his maiden speech in the Upper House, offered a lengthy and impassioned critique of the Union government, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s earlier comments about Tamil.
He said election commissions were scrutinising citizens’ right to vote by checking spellings and addresses, often in error.
“We only want to cast our vote,” he said, adding that spelling mistakes are a curse only for languages, not for democracy.
Modern literature and the internet forgive such errors, but the Election Commission does not, he quipped.
The Makkal Needhi Maiam president warned that Bihar had already become a land of the “living dead”, with people erased from voter rolls on paper despite being alive, and said the same process could spread across the country.
Referring to similar concerns raised by a colleague from West Bengal at the Election Commission’s office, he said the matter was now before the Supreme Court.
Warning of mass voter erasure, Haasan urges the government to act or step aside
Kamal Haasan warned that Tamil Nadu could soon see nearly one crore “living dead” voters on paper, referring to the ECI’s deletions of voters.
“I cannot pray to God to avert this disaster,” he said. “My rationalist mind rejected that idea years ago. I will not pray to those in government either. We cannot wait for miracles. Our lives are being shot at. Act now.”
He said democracy achieves nothing through half-baked, half-finished, illegal electoral victories. “Nobody conquers in a democracy,” he said. “The juggernaut called Democratic India will roll on.”
Urging the government to either provide democratic energy or step aside, he said this was not an attack on individuals or governments but a clash of ideas.
“No one is immortal,” Kamal Haasan said. “No government can or should aim for permanence. None in world history has succeeded, and none ever will. This government too falls under that unwritten universal law of politics.”
Warning that children and young people are watching, he appealed for maturity and growth alongside India’s progressive democracy. “Then,” he said, “at least tomorrow will be ours.”
Haasan rebukes Sitharaman over remarks on Tamil and Periyar
Saying he would now address the House in Tamil for his people, Kamal Haasan launched a sharp critique of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
On 11 March 2025, during a parliamentary debate on the National Education Policy, Sitharaman referred to writings by social reformer Periyar EV Ramasamy published in the magazine Viduthalai on 27 November 1943.
Without naming Periyar, she said the lines were written by a leader often celebrated by opposition parties as an ideological icon. She quoted the passage as saying that learning Tamil would not earn even one alms, and that knowledge of Tamil served little purpose for survival beyond begging. The text argued that the time and money spent learning Tamil could have been better used on pursuits that offered tangible benefits in life, a view she attributed to a Tamil scholar nearly a hundred years ago.
Her remarks triggered a controversy, with critics accusing Sitharaman of denigrating the Tamil language by citing the statement in Parliament.
Referring metaphorically to Saint Tyagaraja’s begging bowl, Haasan said such relics had no place in the modern age. He criticised what he called a colonial education and mindset, saying the old begging bowl had merely turned into a large donation chest.
He asked how those who once broke open that chest to raise funds now demean Tamil by saying it cannot help one beg. He said that while English and Hindi may be used to seek alms or even to steal, Tamil would do neither.
“A Tamilian will not beg,” he said, “and certainly will not accept your alms.”
‘Neither the vote nor the country is for sale’
Declaring that neither the vote nor the country would ever be sold, Kamal Haasan said Tamils have no faith in political curses. Instead, drawing on rationalist thought, he said actions inevitably return to their source.
“This is the law of the world,” he said, “and it is the law of politics too.”
Ending his speech with a call for Tamil to flourish eternally, he closed with a salute to a future rooted in dignity, democracy and justice.
Kamal Haasan said he was introduced to his mother tongue by his Tamil teachers, one of whom was the towering political leader CN Annadurai.
He recalled that Annadurai was not born a king but was crowned in the minds of the Tamil people, teaching generations to resist any assault on language, culture and rights.
That admiration, he said, shaped his ideology. Recalling Annadurai’s death in 1969, Kamal Haasan said that although he was only 14 at the time, the leader left behind a legacy of ideological “brothers and sisters” who continue to live together in the same ideological house.
Speaking in the same Parliament where Annadurai once spoke, he said he was trembling, not from stage fright, but from emotion.
He said he had written his speech carefully so that the emotional storm within him would not offend the House. Invoking Mahatma Gandhi, Periyar EV Ramasamy and Annadurai, Kamal Haasan said:
“Gandhi helped me write this speech without anger. Periyar helped me add logic. Anna helped me understand this house.”
