From 50 Years Ago: Anna for Lunch

Anna for Lunch

How can a party in power, its leaders preoccupied with administration ita the capital city, still retain its “Common Touch’? In its awn limited sphere, DMK has shown remarkable success in this direction. But then it could be quickly pointed out that this success springs precisely from the fact that the sphere is limited and provides such highly effective points of mass contact, as Anna and the Tamil Language. These advantages have been exploited through various and diverse rituals of hero worship and sustained work at altering names and devising nomenclatures with an authentic Tamilian flavour. Sometimes the two operations can be happily combined, as in the proposal to name a new paddy strain after the late leader, Annadurai.