Ondriya Arasu a conflicting phrase in the TN politics

Annamalai's response to Mk Stalin's Ondriya Arasu remark for the central govt

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Team PGurus
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Ondriya Arasu a conflicting phrase in the TN politics
Ondriya Arasu a conflicting phrase in the TN politics

Ondriya Arasu is being propagated & cheered by DMK cadre

The upcoming leader of Tamil Nadu BJP, Annamalai had this to say about the speeches being made in the TN assembly by DMK leaders [1].

The word ‘Ondriya Arasu’ is being propagated & cheered by the new Arivalayam govt. It’s time to reflect on how India & our state have evolved over a period of time. India today comprises 29 States & 7 U T’s. However, the political map of India has been changed a couple of times [2].

When the United States of America was formed as a union of states, one by one, under very different circumstances starting from 1776. Nationalists – most of them war veterans – organized in every state and convinced Congress to call the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. The delegates from every state wrote a new Constitution that created a much more powerful and efficient central government! From Dec 16, 1977, each state in the US was asked to ratify the Articles of Confederation & it went on till March 1, 1981. Till then the USA didn’t come into existence. India is far different. With a provincial parliament created for drafting the constitution in 1946, all existing Part A, B, C & D states came into existence on the appointed day of Aug 15, 1947. Later it took 3+ years for our rights to come into shape in the form of the Constitution.

During this time we fought a war with Pakistan to defend our territory, put down secession in some parts of India, and made the transition from a British-controlled region to an independent country. All states on the day of independence became part of Bharat as in Art 1.

Later, the next major changes in the form of the States Organization Act 1956 brought into effect the concept of linguistic states. Madras province (in which the existing TN was a part) gave away its territories for the formation of new areas including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka etc.

In 1967, the new state government changed the name of this state from the existing name Madras state to Tamil Nadu. Officially the name Tamil Nadu came into existence then. Later the state capital, Madras has renamed Chennai in honour of the Telugu ruler Chennappa in 1996.

One can clearly understand that the TN now is far different from the province that it was on Aug 15th, 1947. The union is an indestructible part but at the same time, the states clearly enjoy constitutional powers as mentioned in the state list & shared powers under the concurrent list.

Let Arivalayam not write a new history for the state. A party can speak for the state – no doubt about that – but not at the cost of glorifying a false narrative. Tamils are unique and as our Hon PM Shri Narendra Modiji has mentioned, ours is the oldest language in the world.

Let the new govt not play with fire by playing with words. When the word central govt was mentioned in their previous DMK’s rule (2006-11) & when they were in power in the central government from 2004 to 2014 as part of UPA, why do they have to resort to the word ‘Ondriya’ now?

Is it because they are hollow in their developmental agenda or to hide their inefficiency in controlling the 2nd wave of COVID or the very poor vaccination drive in the state?. I’ll leave you to ponder & to find the reason behind their new drama.

To set the context of Ondriya Arasu for the benefit of the readers:

‘Ondriya Arasu’ much before Stalin, former DMK chief ministers of Tamil Nadu Annadurai and Karunanidhi had used the term ‘Ondriya Arasu’ to address the Centre during their regimes.

The DMK-led Tamil Nadu govt believes that the Central Government is no superior to the State Government. The State Governments enjoys equal rights and power as the Centre govt.

However, BJP members do not approve of this term. How can a power entitled Central government can be addressed as ‘Ondriya Arasu’?

References:
[1] Annamalai Twitter thread – twitter.com

[2] Revisiting the journey to 29 states – Nov 1, 2018, Deccan Herald

Team PGurus
Team PGurus
We are a team of focused individuals with expertise in at least one of the following fields viz. Journalism, Technology, Economics, Politics, Sports & Business. We are factual, accurate and unbiased.
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6 COMMENTS

  1. Myopic leaders can not show any development except distribution of freebies and division of people besides encouraging antinationals for their survival

  2. Dear PGurus,

    Kindly do fix the following web page ?format error prevalent in Android web browsers: while THIS article, upon being clicked open, morphs into right-click disabled (= ‘protected content’) wherein the ‘Comments’ section gets open to read-write, most other articles haven’t done so, whereby the right click persists to be operational but the ‘Comments’ section fails to get read-write enabled.

    In brief, most articles stay in the ‘unprotected’ mode and don’t allow commenting. This is apparently atleast a fortnight long story.

  3. We miss Cho in this new fake narratives from DMK.

    50 years ago Tamil word such as ‘Maththiya Arasu’ ‘Maiyya Arasu’ or ‘Naduvan Arasu’ used to refer to the Central government.

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