A self-styled spiritual speaker’s lecture at a premier government girls school in the city wherein he said misery, including physical deformities, diseases and poverty, were due to one’s sins committed in previous birth has stoked a raging controversy with the state government transferring two head masters and ordering a probe into the incident.

The Headmaster of Ashok Nagar Government Girls School, R Thamizharasi, and the Headmaster of Saidapet Government Model School, Shanmughasundaram, involved in organising the lecture, have been transferred.

Meanwhile, the police carried out a search on the NGO, Paramporul Foundation, run by the speaker, Mahavishnu, near Tirupur.

“If God is the embodiment of compassion, why are some born rich, some in absolute poverty, some with deformities and diseases and some without homes? Some are born as heroes … Why are these happening? It is because your present life is given according to the sins committed in the previous birth,” the speaker, Mahavishnu, told the students at a recent event at the school in Ashok Nagar.

Though invited to deliver a talk on self-confidence, it digressed into supporting regressive and unscientific beliefs.

While the speaker went on supporting fate and rebirth, a visually challenged teacher, Sankar, dared to confront him and asked not to preach superstitious beliefs as scientific truths among the students. But, the teacher was abused by Mahavishnu, who asked him “Are you more knowledgeable than the officials who had invited him and gave permission for the lecture?”

With clips of the lecture and Mahavishnu abusing the teacher going viral, the Students Federation of India (SFI), the students wing of the CPI(M), resorted to a protest in front of the school on Friday. There was a growing demand for action against the speaker and school authorities.

School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, who visited the school in connection with an event, said an inquiry has been ordered into the incident and the government has decided to formulate rules on the conduct of such events in schools. Honouring the disabled teacher

Sankar on the dais, he said, “I will not leave the speaker just like that. He had come to my school and abused my teachers. It is my Department. Stern action will be taken against him. There is video evidence.” “Sankar is a Tamil Teacher and ‘Tamil’ has questioned superstition. And, I am proud of that,” he added.

Advising students not to take everything as universal truth, he asked them to analyse rationally and accept what is correct. “This is what Periyar (rationalist reformer and Dravidian icon E V Ramasamy) had taught us. Spreading regressive ideas among students is unacceptable. For, it is schools which have to inculcate scientific temper and rational thought.”

Then, he asked teachers to invite only those who are knowledgeable after a background check.

Chief Minister MK Stalin, who is in the US on an official visit, took to ‘X’ saying, “The path of science is the path for progress. Students should be inculcated about individual progress, ethical and virtuous living and ideas on social development. I have also directed to formulate rules for the conduct of events in schools which would further scientific temper and a pedagogy through progressive ideas.”