Know Your Past, CM MK Stalin Tells Youth

Chennai:Chief Minister M K Stalin called up the modern generation of youth to know about their past, do research on their history and come out with books enumerating the revolutionary past of the Dravidian Movement, particularly its impact on Tamil society, with a view to letting the world know about its principles and the changes it ushered in.

Speaking at the function organized for the release of the Tamil book ‘Dravidian Movement and Black Movement,’ which is a translation of the English book written in 1998 by State Forest Minister K Ponmudi in 1998 based on his eponymous research dissertation, on Friday, Stalin said both the movements that had been compared in the book for breaking bondages.

While in ancient Indian society, the Sudras were enjoined to work as slaves of the other three caste groupings placed above them, the Blacks in the US were told to be obedient to the Whites and work for them, he said adding that it was the Dravidian movement that brought the people out of slavery in Tamil Nadu, he said.

It was the Dravidian movement that enabled Tamil Nadu to move ahead of all other States on all aspects and also broke all the social barriers erected for the growth and development of the common people, he said and made an indirect reference to Governor R N Ravi for his refusal to use the term Dravidian Model in his address and dropping the word from the Tamil anthem.

Dravidian was today a political name that was used against Aryan domination, though, in the past, it had referred to a place, a race and language, Stalin said. Now the word Dravidian was not used to counter Aryan to pulverize Aryanism, he said.

Though 2000 years of domination could not be done away with in 100 years, the Dravidian movement had set the state on a journey towards achieving self-respect and an egalitarian society, Stalin said.

Ponmudy’s dissertation compares the Black movement in the US between 1909 and 1941 with the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu from 1916 to 1949.