TIRUCHIRAPALLI: The DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, has warned that India would have to face “more Kashmir’s’ if the center did not come forward to grant full and genuine autonomy to states.
Virtually launching his election cam BP from the stage of the DMK’s ‘Eighth State Conference, which concluded here, Karunanidhi said a *Yugoslavia like’ situation would develop “in the country if the center failed to concede state autonomy demands. Karunanidhi said the DMK was firm in its Commitment to project the demand for state autonomy, which alone could promote national integration ‘and unity. He urged the center to grant autonomy to all states on the lines of ‘what it was intending to do in the case of Jammu and Kashmir.
The DMK would not give up the “tat autonomy demand in Tamil Nadu Simply because the state was ruled by the AIADMK, headed by MS, Jayalalitha. Karunanidhi said if the center argued that state autonomy could not be granted to Tamil Nadu on the ground that the state was mismanaged by the AIADMK government, the same logic could apply to the Congress regime at the center. “Can anybody say that we should surrender our independence to the Britishers because the Narasimha Rao regime is as corrupt as the Jayalalitha rule?” he asked. Its movement for state autonomy, of Karunanidhi said the demand for Separable Dravida Nadu and separate Tamil Nadu was started long before the demand for Pakistan. The demand for separate Tamil Nadu was advanced. By the Dravidian movement at a Conference in 1940, he said adding the DMK founder, late C.N. Annadurai; aver it up in 1962 in order to protect the DMK, which fought for the rights of the Tamil Ie. However, bet BMK set up a committee, headed by Rajamannar in 1969 to prepare a report on the state autonomy demand, he said. In 1974, during the second tenure of the DMK rule, the Tamil Nadu Assembly a resolution backing the autonomy demand.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 31, 1996
