CN Annadurai 
Thursday (February 3, 2022) marks the 53rd death anniversary of CN Annadurai — former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, founder of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and one of the most beloved leaders of the State.
Born to a weaver family in Conjeevaram (now known as Kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu) in Madras Presidency on September 15, 1909, Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai’s parents Natarajan Mudaliar and Bangaru Ammal gave their son to be raised by their eldest daughter Rajamani Ammal because of abject poverty. Annadurai — or Anna, as he was popularly known — was often ridiculed by his petty-minded political rivals for his undistinguished parentage. However, a man is what he chooses to be, and Anna went on to finish his BA (Honours) and MA degree in Economics and Politics from Pachaiyappa’s College in Madras. He briefly worked as an English teacher in Pachaiyappa High School before switching to journalism and eventually politics.
Anna — the diminutive of ‘Annadurai’ also means “respected elder brother” in Tamil, and this is what he was to become to the people — an elder brother they could always approach. He was the first leader of post-Independence India who had not played a role in the freedom struggle, again something for which he was often ridiculed by his snooty political rivals. Anna, instead chose education — he proudly tagged the “MA” to his name and it was his first claim to respect.
His language skills were legendary and first came to the fore when he translated into Tamil the high-flown public speeches of the Justice Party leaders. Subsequently, as Periyar EV Ramasamy’s lieutenant, Anna’s literary skills were flaunted during the anti-Hindi agitation of 1937-39, on the stage as speeches, in print as the articles he wrote on the agitation, and eventually film scriptwriting. These were the films that were deeply rooted in the Dravidian ideology.
Eventually, he broke away from his mentor Periyar’s Dravida Kazhagam social movement to launch the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam as a political outfit in 1949. Anna strove to make the party rise in the State and by 1967 Madras Legislative Assembly, the party of the rising sun (DMK’s symbol since then) was the first one, other than the Indian National Congress, to win Assembly elections with a clear majority on its own in any state in India. Even though DMK was a part of the coalition called the United Front, DMK alone, under Anna, won 137 (of the 234) seats and the coalition bagged 179 seats. The primary opponent was Congress that managed to scrape through with a measly 51 seats. From that day till now, Congress has never come back to power in Tamil Nadu.
Anna groomed and mentored two Dravidian stalwarts who would shine in cinema and go on to become the future Chief Ministers — M Karunanidhi and MG Ramachandran. After Anna’s death, MGR would break away from the DMK and float his independent party, AIADMK — All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam — named after Anna.
While his political acumen forms tales of yore, Anna’s foray into politics comes from the deeply-invested cause of the anti-Hindi imposition cause. The Centre’s Hindi supremacist attitude began to grow, pushing for Hindi as the national language. Even the member of Constituent Assembly of India that was discussing the future Constitution of India — RV Dhulekar — from the United Provinces, actually said that those in India who do not know Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu were widely referred to by the common term ‘Hindustani’) have no right to be in the Assembly which was making the Constitution of India. Those from the non-Hindi speaking States were evidently incensed and Tamils could see how all opportunities would be closed off to their youths. Anna led the second anti-Hindi imposition agitation from 1948 to 1950 protesting against Hindi being made compulsory in the State during the 1948–49 academic year, and the minimum qualification in Hindi for students to be promoted to higher classes. With an acute understanding of the political dynamics in a multi-national, multi-lingual polity, the Tamilians under Anna reacted both with reason and passion.
A stalwart in Tamil, a proficient English scholar, powerful writer and magnetic orator, Anna professed English as the link language between the Hindi and non-Hindi speakers. “Since every school in India teaches English, why can’t it be our link language? Why do Tamils have to study English for communication with the world and Hindi for communications within India? Do we need a big door for the big dog and a small door for the small dog? I say, let the small dog use the big door too! All that is needed is the big door. Both the big and the small dog could use it!” he said.
Eventually, the intense resistance against the plan to make Hindi the sole official language was postponed to a time when non-Hindi people would agree to it — in short, never.
Anna’s English proficiency was no less. He was awarded the Chubb Fellowship at Yale University —the first non-American to receive this honour. In fact, when he was on the world tour as an invitee of the Chubb Programme and as the guest of the US State Department in April–May 1968, Anna was asked a quirky question: Can you construct a sentence in English by using ‘because’ three times in it? Without batting an eyelid, Anna reportedly said, “Not only thrice, but I’ll use it thrice consecutively. Here: No sentence ends in because, because, because is a conjunction.”
During another interaction with students at Yale, one fellow asked Anna: “Can you say a hundred words in English which don’t contain the alphabets A, B, C, or D?” Pat came Anna’s reply: “one, two, three, four, five, six…” all the way till ninety-nine. The students waited with bated breath because if Anna had said “hundred” he would have been wrong. But then, he smiled after “ninety-nine” and ended it with “zero”.