For 76 days in a row, in self-im­posed soli­tary con­fine­ment in a small thatched hut in the Desa­bandu ground of Virud­hu­na­gar dis­trict, Tamil stal­wart Sankar­alin­ga­nar fasted to death to fo­cus at­ten­tion on re­nam­ing Madras as Tamil Nadu. To him, like many oth­ers, im­posed nomen­cla­tures struck at the so­cio-cul­ture and po­lit­i­cal roots of a peo­ple. See­man-led Tamil Na­tion­al­ist party -Naam Tami­lar Katchi will rekin­dle the flame of Tamil na­tion­al­ism on 13 Oc­to­ber in Chen­nai to mark the 75th mar­tyr­dom an­niver­sary of Thiru Sankar­alin­ga­nar and also to pass on the legacy of Tamil he­roes to the next gen­er­a­tion, amidst eth­nic na­tion­al­i­ties and re­gional iden­ti­ties from other parts of the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent. WSN re­ports.

STAUNCH TAMILIST AND IN­DIAN FREE­DOM FIGHTER THIRU SANKAR­ALIN­GA­NAR of the Viruduna­gar dis­trict of Tamil Nadu, who was im­pris­oned for six months in Tiruchi­rap­palli (Trichy) for his in­volve­ment in the in­de­pen­dence move­ment had con­stantly urged the Con­gress party to ful­fil his 12-point agenda, the prime de­mand of which was to re­name the erst­while ‘Madras State’ as ‘Tamil Nadu’.

As no po­lit­i­cal body re­sponded af­fir­ma­tively, he re­sorted to the last weapon of Satya­graha, launch­ing an in­def­i­nite hunger strike in Viruduna­gar on July 27, 1956.  78-year-old Thiru Sankar­alin­ga­nar even wrote to Prime Min­is­ter Jawa­har­lal Nehru and Chief Min­is­ter Ka­ma­raj, but to no avail.  Though his de­mand was un­ful­filled, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the 1940s  -Chief Min­is­ter K. Ka­ma­raj, P. Kakkan, DMK founder, leader C.N. An­nadu­rai, Com­mu­nist party leader P. Ra­ma­murthi, Jee­vanan­dam, and M.P. Sivagnanam (Ma­PoSi) per­suaded him to give up the fast, which he re­lented and passed away at a Madu­rai hos­pi­tal on 13 Oc­to­ber 1956.  

On Oc­to­ber 14, 1956, The Sun­day Stan­dard (the Sun­day edi­tion of The In­dian Ex­press) de­scribed the last hours of Sankar­alin­ga­nar in a re­port, say­ing, “He de­manded that Madras State should be re­named Tamil Nadu, crit­i­cized the lav­ish ex­pen­di­ture by high dig­ni­taries and wanted the lot of po­lit­i­cal suf­fer­ers im­proved.” 

“On Oc­to­ber 10, 1956, Sankar­alin­ga­nar was forcibly taken to the Er­sk­ine Hos­pi­tal in Madu­rai by the au­thor­i­ties only upon his rel­a­tives’ re­quest. He was un­con­scious when he was taken to the hos­pi­tal and put un­der treat­ment at the Madu­rai Med­ical Col­lege. He was given glu­cose in­jec­tions on the first day of his ad­mis­sion and milk and fruit juice on the sec­ond day.”

“Though he re­gained con­scious­ness, he was very weak and died this morn­ing. A large crowd gath­ered at the hos­pi­tal here on hear­ing the news of his death”, the re­port read. 

Sankar­alin­ga­nar willed his body to be given to the Com­mu­nists to bury in a place where Gandhi had stayed dur­ing his last visit to Viruduna­gar. 

It took 12 years af­ter his demise for Sankar­alin­ga­nar’s de­mand for a name change to be ful­filled, when the DMK changed Madras to Tamil Nadu, fol­low­ing which the Union gov­ern­ment adopted a bill to le­galise it in 1968.