C N Annadurai 56284i

C.N ANNA DURAI

BY M.SABARISHWARAN 121ME237

EARLY LIFE Annadurai was born on 15 September 1909 in Kanchipuram (then called Conjeevaram), Tamil Nadu in a lower-middle-class family. His father NatarajaMudaliar[1] was a weaver whereas his mother BangaruAmmal was a temple servant and they had an intercaste marriage.[2] He was raised by his sister RajamaniAmmal. At the age of 21, he married Rani while he was still a student. The couple had no children of their own, so they later adopted and raised Rajamani's grandchildren. He attended Pachaiyappa's High School,[3] but left school to work as a clerk in the town's Municipal office to assist with the family finances. In 1934, he graduated with a B.A. degree (Hons) from Pachaiyappa's College in Chennai.[3] He then earned a M.A degree in Economics and Politics from the same college. He worked as an English [4]

• He was well known for his oratorical skills and was an acclaimed writer in the Tamil language. He scripted and acted in several plays. Some of his plays were later made into movies. He was the first politician from the Dravidian parties to use Tamil cinema extensively for political propaganda. Born in a middle-class family, he first worked as a school teacher, then moved into the political scene of the Madras Presidency as a journalist. He edited several political journals and enrolled as a member of the DravidarKazhagam. As an ardent follower of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, he rose in stature as a prominent member of the party.

• With differences looming with Periyar, on issues of separate independent state of Dravida Nadu and on inclusion in the Indian Union, he crossed swords with his political mentor. The antipathy between the two finally erupted when Periyar married Maniammai, who was much younger than him. Angered by this action of Periyar, Annadurai with his ers parted from DravidarKazhagam and launched his own party, DravidaMunnetraKazhagam (DMK). The DMK initially followed ideologies the same as the mother party, DravidarKazhagam. But with the evolution of national politics and the constitution of India after the Sino-Indian war in 1962, Annadurai dropped the claim for an independent Dravida Nadu.

• Various protests against the ruling Congress government took him to prison on several occasions; the last of which was during the Madras anti-Hindi agitation of 1965. The agitation itself helped Annadurai to gain popular for his party. His party won a landslide victory in the 1967 state elections. His cabinet was the youngest at that time in India. He legalisedSelf -respect marriages, enforced a two language policy (in preference to the three language formula in other southern states), implemented subsidies for rice, and renamed Madras State to Tamil Nadu

• Though Anna initially belonged to the openly atheist DravidarKazhagam he later announced his stance towards theism as "One race, One god" (OnreKulamOruvanaeThevan).[5][6] Though secular to the core, he later described himself as a Hindu sans the sacred ash, a Christian minus the holy cross, and a Muslim without the prayer cap[7]

• However, he died of cancer just two years into office at 3 February 1969 . His funeral had the highest attendance of any to that date, earning it a Guinness record. Several institutions and organisations are named after him.

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