CHENNAI: The state has seen several padayatras by political leaders, but the record for walking the highest number of miles for the highest number of causes should go to veteran Congress leader Kumari Ananthan, who died late on Tuesday night.
Born to a freedom fighter, Ananthan, a committed disciple of late Congress leader and chief minister K Kamaraj, undertook 17 padayatras throughout his political career, covering a total distance of 5,548 kilometres, according to the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee.
The causes he took up for these yatras included imposition of total prohibition, construction of memorials of various freedom fighters , and for the reestablishment of “Kamaraj’s (style of) regime” in Tamil Nadu.
The last major yatra he attempted was when he was 82, demanding prohibition, during which he fainted and had to be hospitalised. It was in a way befitting that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who commenced his country-wide Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanniyakumari in September 2022, paid respects and took blessings of Ananthan in the district after starting the yatra.
With his father being a freedom fighter, the 1933-born Ananthan was already inclined towards the Congress movement, but it was Kamaraj’s influence that pulled him to the public life and the Congress party, to which he remained a staunch loyalist throughout. As Kamaraj, Ananthan - rooted in Gandhian ideals - shunned luxury and remained a man of simplicity.
One of the Congress state general secretaries, GK Muralidharan, told TNIE, “Even during his tenure as an MP, he remained accessible to the public, travelling without a convoy and staying in modest accommodation.”
Endowed with Tamil prowess, Ananthan became one of the most recognisable faces of the Congress in Tamil Nadu, especially in the southern districts.
His reverence towards Kamaraj was evident when he followed the late leader when he left Congress in opposition to Indira Gandhi and formed National Congress (Organisation).
In 1980, after the demise of Kamaraj, when many of his colleagues went back to Congress, he thought of it as a betrayal of his ardent leader and instead floated Gandhi Kamaraj National Congress (GKNC).
When Congress allied in 1980 with DMK that uprooted the national party from power in 1967, GKNC allied with AIADMK and won six of the ten constituencies.
He eventually returned to the Congress. He showed his loyalty to the Congress when the party faced its biggest existential crisis in 1996 when GK Moopanar launched Tamil Maanila Congress.
Ananthan led the TNCC as its president in the 1996 assembly election, knowing the inevitable defeat.
In 2001, after Congress allied with the AIADMK, which included the TMC, he expressed disappointment with the national leadership and floated the short-lived Thondar Congress that he merged with the parent party soon after. He gradually moved away from active party politics later.
He served as Nagercoil MP in 1977 and was MLA four times. In recognition of his efforts in winning the rights to raise questions in Tamil in Parliament for the first time, late DMK chief M Karunanidhi said, “He redefined the adage that ‘A single tree does not make a grove’.”