M.K. Stalin

M.K. Stalin (born March 1, 1953, Chennai, Tamil Nadu state, India) is an Indian politician and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Dravidian Progressive Federation; DMK) party in the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He has served as a member of the Tamil Nadu legislature (1989–91, 1996– ), mayor of Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai (1996–2002), and chief minister of Tamil Nadu (2021– ). His father, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, was a founding member of the DMK who served five nonconsecutive terms as Tamil Nadu’s chief minister between 1969 and 2011.

Early life and political involvement

M.K. Stalin is the second son of Karunanidhi’s second wife, Dayalu Ammal. He was initially to be named Ayyadurai, but when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died several days after his birth, his father changed his son’s given name to “Stalin” as a tribute. (According to a south Indian style of patronymics, the initials M.K. refer to his grandfather and father, respectively, while “Stalin,” appearing last, is his given name.) This appellation was somewhat unusual in light of Karunanidhi’s emphasis on using native Tamil names. Karunanidhi was a prolific dramatist, writer, and social activist who worked in the Tamil-language cinema and in politics in the DMK party. He was also noted for his expert oratory in Tamil. Ideologically, the DMK advocates for the support and prominence of the Dravidian languages (a language family that includes Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and others) and aims to prevent social domination by upholding values of equality, democracy, and secularism. Stalin was thus raised in a family that was closely connected to the arts, government, and a left-wing strand of politics in Tamil Nadu.

Stalin’s earliest political engagement came in 1966, when he organized the Gopalapuram Youth Wing of the DMK in the Gopalapuram neighborhood of Chennai. In 1967 he campaigned for the DMK in assembly elections. His father was elected DMK president two years later after the death of the party’s leading founder, C.N. Annadurai. Stalin attended Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School and then completed a degree at Presidency College. Stalin married Durgavathi (also called Durga or Shantha) in 1975. In February 1976 he was imprisoned with many other political dissidents during the state of emergency that was overseen by Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977, an incident known as the Emergency. He completed his university studies while imprisoned.

In 1980 Stalin established a youth wing for the wider DMK organization, and he soon became its secretary—a post he maintained until 2017. During the 1980s and ’90s he ran several times for a position as a member of the legislative assembly in Tamil Nadu in the constituency of Thousand Lights, a district within the city of Chennai. He was finally elected to the post in 1989, but his term was cut short in 1991, when the DMK government was dismissed in part based on accusations that the state was supporting Sri Lankan Tamil separatists.

Mayor of Chennai and continued DMK work

Stalin was again elected to the legislative assembly in 1996 and was simultaneously elected mayor of Chennai, a post he won again in 2001. As mayor, he launched a project called Singara Chennai (“Beautiful Chennai”), an effort to clean up and beautify the city and improve its infrastructure. The project set out to renovate parks and beaches, alleviate traffic congestion, and privatize garbage collection.

In 2001 Stalin and other members of the DMK, including Karunanidhi, were arrested on charges of corruption related to construction projects of flyovers (overpasses) in Chennai. The arrests were widely seen as a targeted move by the DMK-rival party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (All India Anna Dravidian Progressive Federation; AIADMK), led by then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha Jayaram. Stalin was released a week later and charges, filed years later in 2005, were withdrawn in 2006 by the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly.

Stalin was forced to resign as mayor in 2002 after Jayalalitha passed legislation that prohibited politicians from serving in two posts simultaneously. The law, which many viewed as targeting Stalin, was later declared unconstitutional, but his resignation was enforced on account of a court decision that he was ineligible to run for the position. He continued to serve in the legislature. Stalin was arrested again in 2003 on a charge of trespassing when he visited a local women’s college to protest Jayalalitha’s plan to demolish it for a new government building.

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He was reelected to the state legislative assembly in 2006 in an election that saw the DMK return to power in Tamil Nadu, and his father, who became chief minister, appointed him as a minister for municipal administration and rural development. He also became the DMK’s treasurer in 2008.

Chief minister of Tamil Nadu

As his father’s health faltered, Stalin took on increasing responsibility within the DMK organization, and he became the party president when his father died in 2018. The following year he formed the Secular Progressive Alliance, which paired the DMK with other left-leaning secular political parties in Tamil Nadu against the AIADMK and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing pro-Hindu party headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that had been ruling the union government since 2014. In the 2021 Tamil Nadu legislative election, the DMK won 133 of 234 open seats, with its allies winning dozens more; with that majority Stalin was sworn in as chief minister of Tamil Nadu in May.

As chief minister, Stalin has prioritized welfare measures, such as a free breakfast program for students, tuition assistance for students pursuing higher education, and free bus passes for women, among various other initiatives. Despite his opposition to the BJP, Stalin has endeavored to work with Modi’s central government and to advocate for Tamil Nadu’s needs, such as money for Chennai’s Metro railway public transportation system and avoiding the imposition of Hindi in schools in Tamil Nadu, where Tamil is the primary language—a longstanding prerogative of the DMK.

In 2022 Stalin published the first volume of his autobiography, Ungalil Oruvan (Tamil: “One Among You”). The book, which covers the first 23 years of his life, was translated into English by journalist A.S. Panneerselvan.