“Unlike in north India, the environment in the southern states are more conducive for people who wanted to step out on the roads and claim their rights. In two years, the party came to power ending the Congress rule in the state.ĭMK spokesperson KS Radhakrishnan is expansive on the subject. The anti-Hindi agitations of 1965 were to the DMK what the Kallakudi protest was to Karunanidhi. The agitations which lasted for two months ended only after an assurance from then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri that English would continue as the preferred language for Centre-state and intrastate communications. Not having learnt their lesson, the state made efforts to make Hindi the sole official language in 1965 the DMK led another round of anti-Hindi agitations in the State. When his Justice Party launched a protest against then chief minister C Rajagopalachari’s move to make Hindi compulsory in 1937, the protests (consisting of students conferences and rallies) lasted three years until compulsory Hindi was withdrawn. More recently, Tamil Nadu’s establishment that ruled the state for five decades is rooted strongly in the anti-establishment protests of the Dravidian movement, when Periyar started the 1925 self-respect movement against the oppressive Brahmin hegemony in the State. After proving her husband’s innocence, she avenges him by burning down the city of Madurai. When its heroine Kannagi hears that her husband was wrongly accused of stealing the queen’s anklets and is awarded the death sentence, she doesn’t take it lying down. Silappadikaram, one of the five great Tamil epics, is a testimony to the unfairness of rulers and the rebellion of Tamils. On Chennai’s Marina Beach, home to every manner of protest from the independence movement to Jallikattu in 2017, stands a statue of the woman who is arguably Tamil Nadu’s most famous protester. Tamil Nadu has topped the list since 2009, when the ongoing anti-Sri Lankan protests rocked the state. The two states that are conventionally considered as hotbeds of agitations don’t even feature in the top 10 - Kerala registered 3,371 protests and West Bengal registered 3,089. (This is according to the data released early this year by Bureau of Police Research and Development, Ministry of Home Affairs.) In that one year, the State recorded 20,450 protests while Punjab came a distant second with a little over 13,000 protests. In 2015, Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of protests among all states. Tamil Nadu farmers, protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar pressing for various demands, had recently resorted to dramatic steps from eating dead rats and drinking urine to running nude, all to attract the attention of the Centre. They were eventually arrested and remanded to jail and the protests were a defining moment in Karunanidhi’s political career.įor political bards, it isn’t that Tamil Nadu is exactly short of material these days. When protestors were pasting papers carrying the name Kallakudi all around, 29-year-old Karunanidhi and four others laid themselves on the tracks, just when a train was approaching. Back then when the DMK launched an agitation to change the name of a railway station in a small town near Tiruchi from Dalmiapuram (named after a North Indian industrialist) to Kallakudi (the original Tamil name), Karunanidhi did the unexpected. One of the protests that Hanifa sings about dates back to 1953. Through these songs, the late Hanifa passes down to younger generations the story of legendary protests that made an ordinary Karunanidhi into Tamil Nadu’s grand old man - Kalaignar.
It’s difficult to find a DMK cadre not overwhelmed to tears when Hanifa sings ‘Kallakudi konda Karunanidhi Vaazhgave’ (Long live Karunanidhi who conquered Kallakudi) in his inimitable style. In every conference of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the tone is inevitably set by propaganda songs in playback singer Isaimurasu Nagoor Hanifa’s shrill permeating voice.
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