The present generation people of Tamil Nadu are made to believe that DMK only fought for the Tamil cause, made the re-naming of Madras state as ‘Tamil Nadu’ possible, way back in July 18, 1968 when first DMK government lead by CN Annadurai came to power in the state.
The first time voters of the state must remember that Sankaralinga Nadar went on indefinite fast for 77 days and died for the cause of renaming the Madras state as Tamil Nadu way back in 1956. Sankaralinga Nadar was a true Gandhian, a freedom fighter from Virudunagar district. When he fought for the Tamil cause, he was 78 years.
Sivagnanams’s Tamilarasu Kalagam demanded the name change and invoked the contributions of Sankaralinga Nadar when CN Annadurai came to power in 1967 and that is how the name change happened. However the subsequent DMK government muddled the identity of Tamil as Dravidian and to destroy the great Bhakti tradition and constantly propelled anti-God, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin hatred in the state.
It was Amma J Jayalalithaa took initiatives to build Manimandapam for Sankaralinga Nadar to commemorate his contributions to the present and future generation. The history of demand for the state goes back to middle of 19th century. The ancient Tamil literature has several mentions of ‘Tamil pride’.
The anti-God, anti-Hindu, anti-Brahmin politics of EV Ramasamy Naicker and DMK carefully drifted people away from the real glory of Tamil tradition and culture. Thanks to the significant contributions of the two Tamil scholars such as Suryanarayana Sastri and UV Swaminatha Iyer, both belonged to Brahmin community, today several Tamil literary work are preserved from palm leaf manuscripts. Further Suryanarayana Sastri was the first to demand Tamil language to be declared as classical language.
Way back in 1938, Marimalai Adigal and Somasundara Bharathi raised the slogan of Tamil Nadu for the first time but which was stolen by Dravidian party and projected as if they were the true crusader of Tamil cause. C. Subramaniam the then Finance Minister of Madras state announced in the assembly in February 24, 1961 that the state Chennai Rajyam would thereafter be referred as Tamil Nadu. However this proposal had a limitation that the above reference could be used only within the state and not in the official correspondence to the central government and foreign countries.
The above issue was raised in Parliament by Bupesh Gupta of communist party and introduced constitution (amendment) Bill in 1961 in Rajya Sabha which sought to change the name of Madras state to Tamil Nadu. Subsequently Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also placed their demand for name change. This preamble work, CN Annadurai materialized in 1968 and then the DMK lead by Karunanidhi milked the same politically.
The term similar to Tamil Nadu has been mentioned in Sangam literature Parippadal and also in Silappathikaaram. The term was also referred in Aganaanuru and Purannanuru. Further in 1910, the poet Bharathiyar has reiterated the term in his poem as Senthamizhnadu. C Rajagopalachari was the one who made suggestion to the end the grammatical dispute in the nomenclature and thus Tamil Nadu with the addition of ‘u’ at the end was finalized whereas many other regions chosen the term Pradesh as suffix.
Neither the Justice Party nor EV Ramasamy Naicker or DMK has done anything great to the state instead they capitalized the efforts of great Tamil leaders and scholars for political gain and finally the politics of the state has been reduced to politics of dynasty and travesty.
Today the history is portrayed in such a way that it was only DMK and Karunanidhi made the language Tamil grow and the landmass called Tamil Nadu to happen.
In fact the true culture, sacredness and Bhakti tradition of Tamil Nadu was completely destroyed by EV Ramasamy Naicker, abused God, Hindu religion, Brahmins, several Tamil scholars and spiritual leaders of the state including Tiruvalluvar and spread negativity, atheism and hatred in the name of rationalism and self-right. Self-right and rationalism could have been brought without abusing the sacred culture or renaming the Tamil culture as Dravidian culture just because people like EVR might want to hide his non-Tamil identity as postulated by several Tamil scholars like Maniarasan and Sakthivel.
It was Amma and MGR who really revived the ancient tradition of the state by re-consecrating the contributions of Muthuramlingam Thevar, Sangaralinga Nadar etc.
Tamil Nadu can be saved and developed to meet the aspirations of millions of educated youths of the state only when the agenda of development initiated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is elected back to power.
Amma’s dream and PM Modi’s vision of New India must win in 2019 and not the politics of dynasty if Tamil Nadu has to be saved.
