Born as Dakshinamurthy to his parents Muthuvel and Anjugam, on 3rd June 1924, in Nagapattinam’s Thirukkuvalai, Karunanidhi joined politics at a very young age of 14 years, when he joined the Justice Party which claimed to represent Non-brahmins. He had also started to take part in Anti-Hindi movement. Later on, Justice Party became Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), which was split and the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) came into existence.
The DMK was formed by C N Annadurai, who had parted ways with Periyar E V Ramasamy – the founder of DK. Periyar was also the one, who had started the politics of anti-Hinduism, and instigating hatred against Hindi and northern India in the people of Tamil Nadu while propagating the Aryan-Dravidian theory, which has been proven fake and unscientific in recent study carried out in Rakhigarhi – a site of the Indus Valley civilization in Haryana. He was particularly hostile towards Brahmins.
His Guru and mentor Periyar, had once said, “If you see a snake and a Brahmin, kill the Brahmin first.” In 1956, Periyar even took out a rally and burned the picture of Lord Rama. He had also garlanded the idols of Hindu deities with slippers, in the name of ‘Atheism’. Karunanidhi and DMK were an extension of Periyar’s ideology. Secessionism was also a commonality, as DMK government had to be dismissed by the centre in 1991, for being close to the Sri Lankan terror group LTTE.
Periyar also wanted a separate country called ‘Dravida Nadu’. The demand was ‘rejected’ by the non-Tamil speaking south Indians, as it was felt that Tamil would be forcefully imposed on them and their languages like Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam would be lost – ironically, it was the same concern, Tamil people had with Hindi. Though the demand was forgone by Annadurai and DMK in 1963, the party and its leaders continued with other hateful campaigns.
1965’s anti-Hindi campaign brought the party to power in the 1967 assembly elections, and Karunanidhi who was the deputy leader of the opposition, became a minister. The man went on to become an MLA for a record 13 times and also became CM of Tamil Nadu for 5 times. In 2007, he had infamously questioned the existence of Lord Ram only to provoke sentiments of Tamil Hindus, while speaking at a function in Erode, as the then Chief Minister of TN.
He had said, Who is this Raman (as Lord Ram is called in Tamil)? In which engineering college did he study and become a civil engineer? When did he build this so-called bridge? Is there any evidence for this?” He also said, that Ramayana was only a piece of fiction that allegorically represented the conflict between Aryans and Dravidians. Apart from the hate against Hindus, people also pointed out his promotion of dynasty politics and corruption.
He married thrice and had 6 children. In 2013, he had named his son M K Stalin as his successor. In 2009, under Congress led UPA coalition’s government, his elder son M K Alagiri was Union minister for chemicals and fertilizers, daughter Kanimozhi was a Member of Parliament (Rajyasabha), and Grandnephew Dayanidhi Maran was the Union IT and telecom minister. Maran faces charges in ‘telephone exchange case’ and ‘Aircel-Maxis case’.
Stalin, Kanimozhi, Alagiri, and Karunanidhi’s wives Dayalu Ammal and Rajathi Ammal’s names have featured in the ‘Radia tapes’ and the ‘2G spectrum case’. Most of his critics on social media, also questioned the hypocrisy of DMK supporters, who were demanding a Jayalalitha like memorial for him, reminding that memorials and iconoclasm is not atheism, as Periyar and then Karunanidhi used to ‘preach’.