1967. The year was to prove seminal in the political history of Tamil Nadu that goes again to the polls on April 23, 2026.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which had risen to become the principal opposition in the 1962 assembly elections, swept to power for the first time in the state by winning 179 seats with their allies in the 234-member assembly.
M Bhaktavatsalam, the Congress Chief Minister, was forced to accept defeat after his party was consigned to 51 seats. He would go on to pen a reflection Why the Congress lost? shortly afterwards.
Importantly, Bhaktavatsalam's party never bounced back from the drubbing. Things, in fact, turned so sour for the Grand Old Party that they didn't win even a single seat just 29 years later in 1996 during an election where the Tamil Maanila Congress, the breakaway faction under GK Moopnar, clinched 39 seats. This was to be their nadir and while 18 seats in the 2021 elections read relatively better, the party's vote share in the state remains under 5%.
The heroes of the DMK's 1967 win that rewrote Tamil Nadu politics were three.
First, there was the party founder CN Annadurai, who would go on to be last Chief Minister of the Madras state (as it was then known) from March 6, 1967 to January 13, 1969. Anna was also the first Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu from January 14, 1969 to February 3, 1969.
After he died of cancer on February 4, 1969, a Guinness World Record-setting 15 million people queued up along the streets of Chennai for his funeral. And one man, Dr Nallathambi, who commentated on the funeral procession, went on to get a chance to head to the US and cover the first Apollo landing on the moon.
The second hero was M Karunanidhi, a man who would go on to succeed Anna as Chief Minister and serve for four more terms as the leader of Tamil Nadu. The 1967 elections notably saw Anna calling Karunanidhi Mr 11 lakh.
R Kannan, who penned a book on the DMK years, recounted the story of how this came about.
"The DMK had set a goal of collecting Rs 10 lakh to fund their election expenses. This was premeditated. Several years before, Kalaignar Karunanidhi, the party treasurer, had already thought about it. He had said that we would in the 1967 elections contest 200 seats (the DMK went on to field candidates from 174 seats). For each seat, we will need about Rs 5000 for election expenses," Kannan told The New Indian Express in an interview.
"Don't ask me if this (Rs 5000 for a seat) is real, it is real," he went on to add with a smile, continuing, "And I can tell you one more thing. It may be of interest to your readers. In 1967, the Vellore Institute of Technology's founder G Viswanathan was a Lok Sabha candidate. He was given a cheque from the DMK for Rs 4000 and that was the only money given for a parliamentary constituency (Vandavasi, from where Viswanathan won in 1967 and also in 1971). So, those were normal times."
After sharing these nuggets, Kannan returned to the 1967 state elections and spoke of how the money for the campaign was collected in advance and how Karunanidhi had exceeded expectations.
"In fact, Kalaignar had collected Rs 11 lakh as opposed to the Rs 10 lakhs planned. So, when Anna announced the DMK candidate for Saidapet, instead of calling him Karunanidhi, he called him Mr 11 lakh!"
The third hero of the DMK's epochal victory was another titan whom Tamil Nadu cannot forget easily—MGR.
Anna had wanted MGR to set aside 30 days for the campaigning, but that was not to be as the matinee idol was shot in the neck by his villain in many a movie, MR Radha, on January 12.
Photos of a bandaged MGR on a hospital bed that were printed and used as campaign posters thanks to a brainwave from his manager RM Veerapan went on to have a huge impact. In fact, many believe it was the biggest single factor behind the DMK's emphatic win in the February elections.
MGR ended up spending several weeks in bed.
"A mauled MGR, an injured MGR, a hurt MGR was more potent than the MGR who would have campaigned for a month as Anna wanted him to," Kannan, who is also a biographer of MGR, told The New Indian Express.
Even the New York Times' correspondent, Joseph Lelyveld, agreed that the shooting could prove decisive in his analysis ahead of the elections.
The headline of his February 10, 1967 Times article, his first on the election, summed up his findings: Movie Idols Star in Indian Election Campaign; Opposition Group Has Edge in Madras Because Actor Supporting It Was Shot, it said.
Interestingly, MGR was not allowed to cast his postal vote from the hospital in an election that saw him win his seat from St Thomas Mount comfortably.
A little over 10 years later, on June 30, 1977, he would script another famous win—sealing his rise as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu after the party he founded rode to power.
MGR would remain in that position till his death, capping a fairytale political and film career that continues to be recalled with fondness by his fans and supporters to this day. Not bad for a man who lost his father when he was barely two and a half years old, as Kannan reminded, and whose mother called him the god of death because his sister too passed away soon after.
