Today, with the 'Cauvery row' in full flow, the DMK has managed to wrest the 'pan-Tamil initiative' for the Dravidian polity as a whole. What more, the DMK has also stolen much of the 'Tamil thunder' that had belonged to peripheral pan-Tamil groups over the Jallikattu protests in January 2017, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'If you impose Hindi, not just Tamil Nadu, no southern state will accept that. Many states in northern parts will also not accept that'
India was an 'excellent feast' and that such imposition would lead to 'nausea', he said.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to permit 'Jallikattu' event, involving bull fights, ,during the Pongal festival in Tamil Nadu.
The historic coastal town is witnessing a flurry of activity, including infrastructure development in view of the high-level meet between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping next week.
'Violence is the only answer to violence.'
The history of the Cauvery and Mullaperiyar cases has shown how helpless the constitutional processes and judicial verdicts have been in enforcing the law of the land in inter-state and state-Centre disputes, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Tamil Nadu is a state of temples, it's a holy land. People don't seem to realise that.'
'The judicial procedure was influenced which led to no convictions in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984'
Barely hours after the Supreme Court banned the conduct of Jallikattu' (bull fights), villagers at Soorakkudi near Singampunari in Sivaganga district conducted the village sport as part of a local religious festival on Friday.
The superstar blamed anti-social elements for the anti-Sterlite protests last week that resulted in 13 deaths in police firing, and called for a Jayalalithaa-style 'iron fist' policy to crush such people in the interest of Tamil Nadu.
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Founder-director of the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Ingrid Newkirk, and two functionaries were arrested on charges of blind-folding statue of Mahatma Gandhi at Gandhi Park in Coimbatore as part its campaign against the nod given by Supreme Court for conducting Jallikattu.
The event -- held as part of the harvest festival, Pongal, with fanfare -- attracted hundreds of people from the district as well as from the neighbouring areas. It was the first such event held after the apex court reversed its order and granted conditional permission following a petition by the state government.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted conditional permission to the Tamil Nadu government for holding the event of Jallikattu involving bulls during the Pongal festival.
Jallikattu is a four century old tradition and the Supreme Court can go take a walk. This is the mood in Alanganallur, A Ganesh Nadar says.
Fifteen villagers in Alanganallur tonsured their heads as a mark of protest. Most shops in these areas remained closed and black flags were hoisted atop houses.
Two days after the Supreme Court banned Jallikattu (bull fight), the residents of Alanganallur and Palamedu villages in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu observed a one-day fast on Sunday morning, pleading the apex court to vacate the ban. Over 500 villagers, including 100 women and children, began the fast near the old police atation at Alanganallur. The shopkeepers downed their shutters, for the second day, as a mark of protest against the ban.
The contemporary problem with the BJP in Tamil Nadu is that it has been trying hard to package the DMK especially as anti-god and anti-Hinduism, and seeking it to link to Periyar and M Karunanidhi, and by extension to Stalin, the latter's son and successor to the party mantle. Their hope was to consolidate the perceived 'pro-god, pro-religion votes', which they saw returning to the fold post-MGR, post-Jayalalithaa. But no such substantial vote-bank existed even in Periyar's time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
A possible, easier and less-complicated way for the Centre would have been to approach the SC with the same queries much earlier, before a ground-swell of popular sentiments and consequent political tensions had built up in Tamil Nadu, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
A call by the Traders Federation in Tamil Nadu to ban sales of Coca Cola and Pepsi soft drinks came into effect on Wednesday with its president A M Vikrama Raja declaring drinks as 'toxic' for consumption.
A time has thus come when state encouragement for rural students led to empowerment of the socio-economically marginalised sections of the population. It included women. Today, with greater exposure and consequent enlightenment, it has gone beyond 'empowerment' to become 'entitlement', says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Different petitions for and against Jallikattu were posted for hearing in the first week of February.
Interlinking of rivers, retrieval of Katchatheevu island and inclusion of fishermen in the Scheduled Tribes list are also listed in the memorandum.
Since the Supreme Court has banned the bull-taming sport of Jallikattu, normally conducted on Mattu Pongal day, the festival is expected to be low-key in Madurai and neighbouring districts, where it is widely popular.
"I myself come from a non-Hindi state of Gujarat. If some people want to do politics, it is their choice," Shah told reporters in New Delhi.
Pon Radhakrishnan also stated that Naxals, Maoists and Muslim extremists may have intruded into some of the media houses too.
Police said nearly 400 bulls from Virdhunagar, Madurai, Theni, Dindigul and Sivagangai districts were used in the event. \n\n
'Don't try to impose anything on us.'
The squatted there, raised slogans against the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test and demanded justice for Anitha, a Dalit medical aspirant and anti-NEET court petitioner who committed suicide on Friday.
On planes, on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, Zee5, Hulu, MUBI, Kanopy, film festivals... Aseem Chhabra tell us how he watched 309 films in 365 days.
'Vijay acts as himself, so you cannot expect variety from him.' 'He dances the same way, bashes up villains the same way, woos the heroine the same way and says his dialogues the same way,' notes A Ganesh Nadar.
What will the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government do to answer the queries and fears of investors who will want to be doubly sure they would not be harassed at a later date, as has been happening to Sterlite, should be interesting to watch, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP chief condemned the arrest of over 2,000 devotees, including Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Sangh Parivar activists, across the state agitating against the entry of women of all ages into the temple.
The proposed changes, as per the draft, could continue some of the existing conflict between wildlife protection regulations with the implementation of Forest Rights Act, 2006, which gives rights to tribals in all kinds of traditional forest lands -- including the wildlife zones, such as national parks. The new proposed law, just as the original one from 1972, does not explicitly recognise these rights in all wildlife areas.
The Madras High Court Bench in Madurai on Thursday dismissed a couple of public interest litigation petitions filed against the supply of Tamirabarani surface water to industries set up by co-packers of Pepsi and Coca Cola at the Industrial Growth Centre established by SIPCOT at Gangaikondan in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.
'If majority of the country's population is sentimental about a certain species, why are we so ashamed to say that we want to give it statutory protection?'
DMK Working President MK Stalin is worried about divisions in the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam after the death of Jayalalithaa and keen that it should not affect the functioning of the administration.
Aseem Chhabra picks the finest Indian films in the 2010-2019 decade.
'It would be interesting to see how Yogi Adityanath is received in Tamil Nadu, where he is due to end his Ram Rajya Rath Yatra in Rameswaram on March 23.'
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