Testing Round

The DMK’s top post came easy to Stalin, but the road ahead is fraught with challenges

- Lakshmi Subramanian

IN THE RUN-UP to the 2016 assembly elections, when THE WEEK asked him about his son’s elevation to the party’s top post, DMK president M. Karunanidhi, in his trademark style, said, “One cannot tell the time when a flower will blossom.”

Though he had not said it in so many words, Karunanidhi had, over the years, hinted that M.K. Stalin would be his successor. It was a given when he was elected as working president last January. On August 28, three weeks after Karunanidhi’s death on August 7, he was elected unopposed as the party president, a post held by his father for 49 years. “Karunanidhi did not name Stalin directly as the next leader of the party, but he knew what his son was capable of,” said retired professor M. Naganathan, who was a long-time friend of Karunanidhi.

Stalin, Karunanidhi’s second son from his second wife, Dayalu Ammal, was named after Soviet communist leader Joseph Stalin. Initially though, Karunanidhi wanted to name him Ayyadurai, after rationalist E.V.R. Periyar, who was fondly called ‘Ayya’, and his mentor and DMK founder C.N. Annadurai. Though not named after the duo, Stalin grew up listening to their fiery speeches.