A young ex-IPS officer, K Annamalai, was only 36 years old when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), chose him as the party’s president of Tamil Nadu. The Yatra ‘En Mann En Makkal’ that he now started is reported to have been inclusive of Hindutva, Rashtravad and Tamil culture. Wherever the yatra passes in the State, it receives an unprecedented response. The habitual politics of Tamil Elam (nationalism), nursed by family-based parties ruling the roost, greatly amazed everybody in the political realm.
Joined by Children, Women, and common men motivated by the presence of pujaris of religious shrines-temples, the yatra inspires new hope for the emergence of family-free politics based on real issues. Annamalai has decided not to stay in the yatra in any hotel but in the party’s office or the buildings of religious or social organisations.
Making people alert against the British-missionaries invented canard dividing them into Aryan- Dravidian forward-moving Annamalai has sent the wave of concern among the politicians who have so far under the illusion of having held intact in their fists the politics of the State forever. Bringing the opposition leaders under his target on the issue of corruption, Annamalai is said to have invited Narendra Modi to fight the election in Tamil Nadu.
The family of Annamalai Kuppuswami is in the occupation of agriculture and belongs to the backward caste, Konguvillar. After engineering from Coimbatore, Annamalai cleared the CAT exam and earned an MBA from IIM Kolkata. Later, he decided to appear in the UPSC examination to be a part of the administration and became an IPS officer. When posted in Karnataka, he earned the image of ‘Singham’.
Whenever he was made to be transferred, people staged a dharna, blocking the road in protest. In 2019, he went for resignation; perhaps he would not be finding the dream he saw to be materialised by remaining in the job! K Annamalai joined the BJP in 2021 and became the party’s president. He gained national visibility when he put all to their utter surprise by making over 1 lakh people gather in a meeting of Narendra Modi. Apart from Tamil Nadu, his popularity in Kerala and Karnataka led many a political visionary to see him as ‘Himanta Sharma of Dakshin Bharat’.
A section of the people is swayed to polarise into castes-Tamil language-minarchism respectively. Yet, in the politics of the State, there is an influence of 40-45 per cent of such people in whose hearts dwell nationalism predominantly. Only one instance would be enough as evidence; see: In Tamil Nadu lives a caste named Thevar, which is 18 per cent of the State population. They are very nationalist and profess the practices of the Vaishnava cult, smearing the forehead with the sacred mark of sandalwood when going out of the house. Renowned freedom fighter and close associate of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Muthu Ramalinga, hailed from this caste.
He worked for the propagation of ‘Saiva Siddhanta’ and called that ‘Nationalism and Dharma are the two eyes of nation. Politics without divinity is a body without soul’. To inspire the people to join Netaji’s INA, he even started a Tamil weekly, ‘Nethaji’. The poster of Ramalingam with Subhash Chandra Bose attired with a soldier’s uniform is displayed every year on the celebration of ‘Thevar Jyanti’.
