This is my World

I write this article after I read a post in one of my facebook groups. The group is called Ponniyin Selvan , named after the greatest Tamil historical fiction written in modern times.  The beginning: I saw Baahubali 2 a few days ago. One of the scenes in the movie disturbed me. When Ballala is crowned the king of  Mahishmati (Magizhmathi in Tamil version) , various wings in his army offer their salutations. In this scene and in the first movie too, Kattappa is introduced as "Karikala" Kattappa (in both Tamil and Telugu versions), a slave to the kingdom who bows to the feet of the Ballala. Now, anyone familiar with Tamil history will know that Karikalan (lived in the 2nd century) was one of the greatest Tamil kings. He built a dam across Cauvery that the British called the Grand anaicut because it was superior in technic to other dams from the period.  Now, naming a slave Karikalan and making him bow hurt me very badly.  However, I just let it go then until...

In the late 1940s, when Potti Sreeramulu began protests to carve out a separate state for Telugu speaking people from the Madras presidency, he demanded(more like pitched in for a demand that had been there since 1920) that Madras be made the capital of Andhra. Though the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, favoured reorganisation of states based on administrative convenience rather than on linguistic lines, he promised Potti Sreeramulu a separate state, but there was little progress made because of the demand for Madras. Tamils were opposed to annexing Madras with Andhra and this led to stalemate. It was during this time, the Telugu leaders launched Madras Manade(Madras is ours, in Telugu) movement. Countering this, another movement was launched in Tamil Nadu by the organisation Tamil Arasu Kazhagam. It was called Madras Namade(Madras is ours, in Tamil). The Tamil Arasu Kazhagam under the leadership of its founder organised various protests and rally against annexing Mad...