M Karunanidhi, the nonagenarian president of the DMK, surprised his rivals on Sunday by writing to President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding the conferment of Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, on C N Annadurai, former chief minister of Tamil Nadu and the founder of the DMK.
According to Karunanidhi, the DMK founder was a 'great social reformer, great writer, orator and litterateur of Tamil Nadu'. "His literary and political works both in Tamil and English has been acclaimed as among the best in Tamil Nadu," claimed the DMK chief in identical letters to the President and the Prime Minister. Karunanidhi wants the government to bestow Annadurai with the highest honour in the next Republic Day.
What is of interest in the demand by Karunanidhi is that he was silent about this honour for Annadurai for the last nine years (2004-2013) when the DMK was the second biggest constituent of the UPA. "A small letter from Karunanidhi would have made the UPA to bestow Bharat Ratna on Annadurai. But the DMK chief was more interested in cornering high yielding portfolios for his nominees in the union council of ministers," said a political observer in Chennai about his latest demand.
Annadurai, who broke away from his Dravida Kazhakam mentor EV Ramasamy Naiker and launched the DMK in 1949 led the party to power in the 1967 assembly elections held in Tamil Nadu (then known as Madras State ). He was in power for two years before succumbing to cancer in 1969. Annadurai's major achievement was in defeating the Congress in the 1967 elections and renaming the southern State as Tamil Nadu.
He was the master brain behind the agitation against Hindi in the State. His party stormed to power on the basis of the anti-Hindi agaitation of the 1960s which claimed hundreds of lives in the State.
Immediately after the Indian independence, Annadurai called for secession of the Dravida Nadu from the union of India . In 1962 he declared in the Rajya Sabha that Dravidians want the right of self- determination. "We want a separate country for southern India," he said in the Rajya Sabha. Following the 16th amendment of the Constitution which banned parties with sectarian principles from participating in elections, the DMK had to put the demand for a separate Tamil country in backburner.