40. Kalaignar - "The 'great' Tamil artist-writer"

Karunanidhi (Jun 1924 - Aug 2018) was one of the founders of the political party DMK - Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and it's longest serving leader. DMK is a leading atheistic anti-Hindu political party of Tamil Nadu - founded in 1949.

By their very atheistic ideology, DMK has been against religious beliefs and practices and against Hindu temples and Gurus. DMK when in power, brought many temples under the government, destroying and looting the wealths of thousands of temples. He was the tool to start the attack by the extremist militant forces on His Divine Holiness.

Karunanidhi, the founder-leader of DMK, started his career as a scriptwriter. Several movies were made based on novels and scripts written by him from 1947 to 2011. He was extremely popular for his command over the Tamil language. Karunanidhi considered himself - Kalaignar - a great artist a great writer. He believed, it was his

fluency of the Tamil language, that had made him Chief Minister of the State of Tamil Nadu five times - for almost two decades over five terms between 1969 and 2011.

2009 - last days of his 'greatness'?

In 2009, Karunanidhi (85-year-old at that time) had called for an all-party meeting. Even after monetary compensation it saw an attendance of only 24,000 party workers. In the same year, about two months later, His Divine Holiness Paramahamsa Nithyananda (who was 32 years old then) conducted a series of satsangs on the sacred text of Bhagavad Gita in the very same hall where Karunanidhi had called his all party meeting. The attendance for the satsang was more than 50,000. People heard four hour long discourses unmoving from their chairs and even waited 24 hours for personal darshan of His Divine Holiness. Was it too much for Karunanidhi to handle?