The ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu, which is also a key partner in the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) coalition, is asserting itself in the political arena with renewed gusto by directly hitting out at the BJP and going back to its roots. To prepare its foot soldiers for the electoral battle ahead, it has called a youth conference at Salem on Sunday, expecting a throng close to four lakhs. With the twice-postponed conference — two spells of rains played spoilsport — dwelling on “state rights”, which could be a touchy subject for any ruling dispensation in New Delhi, the DMK will revive its traditional demand for state autonomy.More than that, party president M.K. Stalin has specifically dispelled a rumour that was doing its rounds in the media and political corridors ever since the conference was first announced way back in August last year. He ruled out the possibility of anointing his son and state minister of youth affairs, Udhayanidhi Stalin, as his heir apparent since the speculation was that the meet was to prepare the ground to crown him as the deputy chief minister. Instead, he made it clear that the event would be a harbinger for the retrieval of the state’s rights, which Stalin bemoaned had been taken away under the present BJP government, through an epistle to party brethren, a tradition that he has inherited from his father M. Karunanidhi.It was Karunanidhi’s celebrated “epistle to co-borns” that had held the party together and kept its cadre moored to their ideological persuasions when the DMK was in the wilderness from 1977 after acceding the reins of the state to the AIADMK and it had enabled its bouncing back to glory in 1989, despite the long sabbatical. That power of Karunanidhi’s pen is being invoked now by reproducing in the party newspaper, Murasoli, 25 articles written in which during the first youth conference catapulted Stalin to great heights in the party and government. So the party plans to forge ahead in popularity by remaining rooted in its core ideology, espousing causes like social justice, language rights and state autonomy.
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