At a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) local body representatives gathering in Namakkal, Tamil Nadu, Member of Parliament A Raja warned the Centre ‘not to compel’ the party to resurrect the demand for a separate Tamil Nadu.
Speaking at the function, Raja said, “DMK has given up the call for separate Tamil Nadu and has come for State autonomy. But our ideological godfather Periyar demanded a separate Tamil Nadu till his death, but we have kept aside that demand and accepted Federalism for the country’s integrity and democracy.”
“Very humbly I’m requesting PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah not to make us revive the demand for a separate Tamil Nadu, please give us state autonomy,” he further said.
A Raja is the Member of Parliament for the Nilgiris electorate and the DMK’s deputy general secretary. Raja was advocating for an independent Tamil Nadu, as proposed by Periyar, recognised as the “Father of the Dravidian Movement.” It is pertinent to mention that A Raja was the Information Technology minister under Manmohan Singh’s UPA government when the 2G spectrum fraud was exposed.
Rahul Gandhi’s version of India as a ‘Union of States’
It should be noted that the DMK partners with the Indian National Congress in the state government. It is also worth noting that Rahul Gandhi, the Gandhi scion and Congress MP from Wayanad, recently asserted that India is not a nation. Rahul Gandhi told The Print columnist Shruti Kapila at a Cambridge University event that India is more like a ‘union of states’ like the European Union than a nation like Britain. A Raja’s views appear to be in line with Rahul Gandhi’s remarks.
For the past several months, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been promoting a Balkanised version of the so-called ‘idea of India,’ characterising it as a union of states rather than a nation. According to Rahul Gandhi, India is not defined as a nation in our constitution, but rather as a confederation of states known as Bharat.