Documents on anti-Hindi agitation wiped out on order by Tamil Nadu’s last Congress CM Bhaktavatsalam
The 1967 Assembly election catapulted the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to power and effectively banished the Congress from ever emerging as a ruling party in
The 1967 Assembly election catapulted the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to power and effectively banished the Congress from ever emerging as a ruling party in Tamil Nadu. The anti-Hindi imposition agitation of the mid-1960s, in which several protesting youth were felled by bullets, had contributed to the DMK’s victory. Curiously, on February 24, 1967, a day after the Assembly election results were declared, the outgoing Chief Minister M. Bhaktavatsalam wrote a note to the Public Department. It said, “Records connected with the anti-Hindi agitation need not be kept. This may also apply to records maintained by the police.” The order listed 25 records treated as “secret,” including those relating to the arrest and detention of DMK leader M. Karunanidhi at the Borstal School at Palayamkottai, along with reports on his health condition; the detention of Tamil scholar Ilakkuvanar, also known as Avadayappan, Head of the Tamil Department at Thiagarajar College, Madurai; the detention of S.B. Adityan (Si. Pa. Adithanar), founder of Daily Thanthi; and the detention of student leader R. Sethu of Madurai Medical College. The list also included records of detention in North Arcot, Chengalpattu, Coimbatore, Madurai, Kanniyakumari, The Nilgiris, Ramanathapuram, Salem, Thanjavur, Tiruchi, and Tirunelveli districts, as well as Madras city. The documents included writ petitions filed by A. Singaram of Riverbed Fort, Salem, and Joseph Pallipat of Madras city, challenging their detention. “In accordance with the Chief Minister’s orders, these records were then destroyed and we are not able to retrieve them in any manner,” said A. Vennila, Assistant Editor at the Tamil Nadu Archives and Historical Research, who spent nearly one-and-a-half years compiling and digitising documents related to the anti-Hindi agitation. This comprehensive inventory of documents tracing the course of the anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu — including government orders and debates in the Madras State (later Tamil Nadu) Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council between 1927 and 1969 — was released by Chief Minister M. K. Stalin on December 22, 2025. Along with a descriptive index, the records are available on the Tamil Nadu Archives website. Signed note Within days of Bhaktavatsalam’s order, events took a historic turn that reshaped the political landscape of Tamil Nadu. In the 1967 election, the DMK came to power for the first time, and C.N. Annadurai assumed office as the Chief Minister. After being informed that documents related to the anti-Hindi agitation had been destroyed, Annadurai, on March 31, 1967, sought an explanation from the Chief Secretary. “From the press statements, I find that the previous Chief Minister [M.
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