50 years since Madras was renamed as Tamil Nadu

It was on this day (January 14, 1969) that Madras became Tamil Nadu, following a unanimous resolution moved in the State Assembly in July 1967 by then Chief Minister C N Annadurai.

The inexperienced DMK regime, which stormed to power riding on the anti-Hindi wave in 1967, managed to replace what was believed to be a colonial name with one inspired by the classical language.

However, the historic renaming did not happen overnight. The DMK endured a decade of snubbing at the hands of the then mighty Congress, which had even turned down the request of its own party men to rename the state.

It is to be noted that 78-year-old Congress worker ‘Thiyagi’ Sankaralinganar died after a 76-day hunger strike, which he observed pressing for the demand in 1956 during the Congress government headed by Kamaraj. The issue found support even in West Bengal. Senior CPM MP Bhupesh Gupta had moved a private member’s Bill in March 1961 for renaming the State as Tamil Nadu.

The issue echoed again in the Parliament two years later when the predominantly Hindi-speaking MPs of the North witnessed the oratorical flourish of Annadurai, who quoted from classical Tamil literature to convince the Congress government.