http://www.newagebd.net/print/article/24505 Kalaignar Karunanidhi is a warrior for future peace.
English provided a lifeline for upwardly mobile non-Hindi peoples when New Delhi wanted to close all avenues of progress for them. That struggle, which ought to have been fought by all non-Hindi people, was fought by Tamils, for the rest, writes Garga Chattejree
இந்தியாவின் கூட்டாட்சித் தத்துவத்தின் தரத்தைக் கற்பனை செய்ய முடியாத அளவுக்கு உயர்த்தியவர் கலைஞர் கருணாநிதி.
அவருடைய உயரத்தை வங்காளிகளான நாங்கள் இதுவரை எட்டவில்லை. சுதந்திரம் அல்லது சுயாட்சி என்ற வார்த்தைகளே இங்கு பேசப்படக் கூடாதவையாகப் பார்க்கப்படும் சூழலில், அவற்றை உயிர்மூச்சுபோல ஆக்கிக்கொண்ட பேரறிஞர் அண்ணா, கலைஞர் கருணாநிதியின் போராட்டங்களை இன்று தமிழ் மக்களுக்கான போராட்டங்களாக மட்டும் பார்க்க முடியவில்லை.
நாட்டின் கூட்டாட்சி அமைப்பை வலுப்படுத்துவதற்கான, இந்தி பேசாத ஒவ்வொரு மாநிலத்துக்குமான போராட்டங்களாகவே பார்க்கிறோம். நான் தமிழனாக இல்லாமல் இருக்கலாம்; இப்போது வங்க அரசுக்கென்று சில தனி உரிமைகள் இருக்கின்றன என்றால், அதற்கு கலைஞர் கருணாநிதி தமிழ்நாட்டுக்காகப் போராடிப் பெற்ற உரிமைகள்தான் காரணம் என்பதை உணர்கிறேன்.
கலைஞர் கருணாநிதியைப் போல எங்களுடைய உரிமைகளுக்காக, நலன்களுக்காகப் போராட எங்களுக்கு ஒரு தலைவர் கிடைக்கவில்லையே என்று ஏங்குகிறேன்.
அதனாலேயே கலைஞர் கருணாநிதியை எங்களில் ஒருவராகப் பார்க்கிறேன். இந்தியைத் தாய்மொழியாகக் கொண்டவர்களுக்கு இணையான மரியாதையும் கண்ணியமும் எங்களுக்கும் வேண்டும் என்று கருதும் கோடிக்கணக்கான பிறமொழி பேசும் இந்தியர்கள் ஒவ்வொருவராலும் கலைஞர் கருணாநிதி ஒரு போராளியாக நெடுங்காலத்துக்கு நினைவுகூரப்படுவார்!
கர்க சட்டர்ஜி
வங்கத்தைச் சேர்ந்த ஆய்வறிஞர்
தி இந்துவில் இருந்து..
Muthuvel Karunanidhi
English provided a lifeline for
upwardly mobile non-Hindi peoples when New Delhi wanted to close all
avenues of progress for them. That struggle, which ought to have been
fought by all non-Hindi people, was fought by Tamils, for the rest, writes Garga Chattejree MUTHUVEL Karunanidhi, the eldest statesman of the Tamil nation and multiple times chief minister of the state of Tamil Nadu, will complete 60 years in public political life this year. In 1957, he was elected as a DMK MLA to the Tamil Nadu assembly. In Delhi media and in Anglo-Hindi imagination, he is an old man, a corrupt and nepotistic dinosaur who is not in touch with the fast moving times when people are expected to give up their own language and identity for progress and assimilation. In the Indian Union parlance, this means giving up being Tamil, giving up being Bengali, giving up being Kannadiga and becoming an Anglo-Hindi tricoluor creature who can move seamlessly between Delhi, Bengaluru, Gurgaon, NOIDA and Mumbai. We are living in sad times, incredibly sad times. For Kalaignar is no random old man.
He is not a domesticated animal of the Delhi zoo. He was perhaps a bent but an untamed Tamil. If the Tamils had their fully sovereignty, he would have been a world leader. And with it, Tamil cultural space, something he was very close to, would have found a place in world culture as an expression of a people. Many chief ministers of non-Hindi states were of such a deserving stature but the world at large will never come to know of them. Sovereignty or specifically, the lack thereof, creates this glass ceiling. But when the officially dictated ideology tells you constantly that to be Tamil and nothing but Tamil is bad and so on for all non-Hindi nations, he was part of the political ideology that empowered Tamils to dream of their own destiny, something that is a natural divinely given right of a people.
He has helped Tamils not to be the latest wholesale subject people of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan ideology forces. He is a Tamil giant among Hindustani pygmies. He was legendary Tamil mass leader CN Annadurai’s lieutenant. He is the living embodiment of a plain fact that has been obscured to the point of invisibility, that Indians are not a nation, that the Indian Union is a multi-nation union, that these constituent nationalities predate any idea of India, that the Indian Union is an arrangement and that the nationalities within the Indian Union do not need New Delhi. New Delhi needs them.
The Dravidian movement with its stress on mother tongue rights and an unwavering principled position against Indian state-sponsored Hindi imposition has affected the lives of non-Hindi people like me and our generation of Bengalis does not know. For if it had not been for the likes of CN Annadurai and M Karunanidhi and the millions of Tamil youths they politically directed during the legendary anti-Hindi protests of 1965, Hindi would have been the sole official language of the Indian Union. We, Bengalis, would have become third-class citizens of the Indian Union and not the second-class citizens as we are at present because of the English-Hindi twin official language policy.
English provided a lifeline for upwardly mobile non-Hindi peoples when New Delhi wanted to close all avenues of progress for them. That struggle, which ought to have been fought by all non-Hindi people, was fought by Tamils, for the rest of us. And they were led, among other people, by Karunanidhi. How can we ever forget this, especially at a time when New Delhi does not want us to remember 1965? It does not want us, non-Hindi people, to remember the ideals of 1965 because the ruling Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan forces of New Delhi have started another linguistic war against us by a renewed savage push for Hindi imposition. Especially at this historical juncture, how can we forget Karunanidhi who set the dream higher for Tamils by calling for Tamil being given the same official language status that Hindi enjoys? By doing that, he raised the bar of imagination and politics, something which we have not been able to reach even today. It is a dream, a dream deferred but a dream alive.
For the Tamil nation, fiscally, politically, economically and culturally, the Indian Union is hardly a profitable deal, but it is the reality. Karunanidhi along with Annadurai was at the forefront of that tactical and subsequently ideological adjustment to the superior might of the Delhi establishment and steered the DMK into the Indian republican political mainstream where talk of independence was taboo. Thus, Karunanidhi fought on as the defender of Tamil national rights and the great defender of Tamil national interests at every instance when Delhi wanted to forcibly encroach into state rights by expanding the domain of the union.
In doing so, Kalaignar may have fought for his own people, but that fight held back Delhi from decimating the federal structure. I may not be a Tamil, but today Bengal’s state government has certain rights because Karunanidhi fought for his people and, thus, fought for the rest of us, who were unfortunate enough to not have a guardian of our people as Karunanidhi has been to the Tamil nation. States that are under constant assault today from Delhi which wants to encroach on our turf and can be lured by few crumbs from Delhi might do well to remember his words — ‘Naan statilay irukkiren. Centre vendam (I am in the state. I don’t want the centre)’ He is one of our own.
In an Indian Union, where cow-belt Hindu fascism is a cancer of the body politic of the union, where systematic Hindi imposition aims to destroy the language, the culture, the autonomy, the dreams, the imagination, the future, the possibilities of the non-Hindi nationalities in the union, that geriatric man on a mechanised wheelchair is still the non-playing captain of the union-wide team that strives to defend the federal structure of the Indian Union. In the Anglo-Hindified Indian imaginary, speaking Tamil and only speaking Tamil leader of the Tamil-speaking may appear like an anachronism from a hoary past. But for hundreds of millions of non-Hindi people, with overt and covert dreams of equality and dignity, Kalaignar Karunanidhi is a warrior for future peace.
Garga Chatterjee, an Indian brain scientist at MIT, writes columns from Kolkata for newspapers in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
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