![]() ![]() 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. 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.One of the protests that Hanifa sings about dates back to 1953. 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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May 2023
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