When Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India for the first time in 1966, the DMK coalition party won the state assembly election in Tamil Nadu by defeating Indian National Congress the very next year.
CN Annadurai took oath as the chief minister of the state in 1967. In 1969, his death brought a revolutionary man in power, who had joined politics in 1949 and became chief minister in 1969.
The man who never lost election. A poet, playwriter and politician who was elected as a legislator for the first time in 1957.
On July 15, 1953, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader M Karunanidhi led a demonstration opposing the renaming of Kallakudi to Dalmiapuram near Trichy to protect the state’s Dravidian culture.
According to a recent report by Scroll, when the opposition questioned the leadership of government in 1969 and called the DMK government third rate, Karunanidhi stood up after breaking his silence and said, “Sorry, this is not third-rate government. This is fourth rate.” For a while, the house was stunned but then he explained that his was a government of Shudras, the fourth class in the Brahminical social order. According to him, his government was dedicated to the backward. A man who faced many ups and down in politics but never step back from his main motto.
DMK was the only ruling party that opposed the Emergency. For this, Karunanidhi’s government was dismissed by the Indira Gandhi government. Later on, after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, the TN government was again dismissed by Central Government for a degrading law and order situation in the state.
But that did not slow Karunanidhi down, he became the CM of Tamil Nadu in 1989, 1996 and for last time in 2006 by defeating AIADMK.
Kalaignar was also a journalist and his media house celebrated its platinum jubilee last year. He was a pioneer in bringing in the idea that CMs should hoist the national flag on Independence Day as well.
The hope of thousands took his last breath in Kaviri hospital and left hundreds of story behind him.