Madurai hotel lands in soup for naming dish ‘Iyer Chicken’, faces flak from Brahmin community

“For business development, we advertised it wrongly as “Kumbakonam Iyer Chicken”. The representatives of the Tamil Nadu Brahmin Association came to the restaurant and raised their objection over the poster we advertised on our social media channels. We take full responsibility for our actions and we apologize for it. We have taken down the advertisement,” the statement read.

The hotel management also assured that they won’t advertise any poster which might hurt the sentiments of any specific community.

Speaking to indianexpress.com, N. Narayanan, the State President of Tamil Nadu Brahmin’s Association, said the poster was put up to popularise the restaurant. “The hotel wasn’t running well so they needed something to make people take notice of them and hence they had come up with this idea of putting up a poster hurting the sentiments of Brahmin community. We are soft-targets; anyone can pick on us, so the restaurant tried their trick.”

Narayanan added that too much publicity was given for people indulging in anti-Brahminism makes restaurants like Milagu to fancy their chances. “I don’t talk for my community alone. I talk for other communities also. We don’t want to give any publicity to these miscreants by reacting to whatever they do but if it’s going beyond a limit then we don’t have any choice but to agitate,” the Brahmin Association president said.