Few social and political movements in the world were as vibrant as the Dravidian movement, and at one point, every prominent leader of the movement ran his own official journal or magazine but only Murasoli continues to be published to this day.
“There were more than 300 magazines espousing the cause of the Dravidian movement and only Murasoli outlived all of them,” said K. Thirunavukkarasu, historian of the Dravidian Movement, who has penned a book on journals of the movement.
DMK founder C.N. Annadurai published Dravida Naadu; V.R. Nedunchezhian and his brother R. Chezhian published Mandram ; Mathiazhagan, one of the five founding leaders of the DMK, edited Thennagam ; lyricist Kannadasan, who had a stint in the DMK, edited Thendral ; Nanjil Manoharan brought out Munnani ; N.V. Natarajan edited Dravidan; and late Sathiyavani Muthu published Por Vaal .
“Even though A.V.P. Asaithambi’s Thaniarasu was the first daily of the DMK, it failed to survive and Murasoli replaced it,” said Mr. Thirunavukkarasu.
While the emergence of M. Karunanidhi as the leader of the DMK, overshadowing veterans after the demise of Annadurai, could be attributed to the survival of Murasoli , Mr. Thirunavukkarasu pointed out that its success was sustained due to the personal care taken by the party patriarch. “He always thinks ahead of others and expect his colleagues to be up to date. Once, he asked me about an article published in Amrita Bazaar Patrika , which had a lot of relevance to Tamil Nadu,” said Mr. Thirunavukkarasu, who worked for the DMK mouthpiece for many years. The nonagenarian leader follows the to-be published contents in the mouthpiece and in the past had ensured that the best minds in the State contributed to his newspaper.
Sahitya Akademi winner A. Madhavan has written for the Pongal issue of the Murasoli and many of his celebrated short stories appeared in the paper.
“The role of a party organ is far more important now than it was before and in the whole noise of proliferation of media and satellite channels, there are some signals for the party mouthpieces,” said Sashi Kumar, chairman of the Media Development Foundation. “Whether it is CPI (M) or the RSS or the Shiv Sena, you tend to know their stand and political programme only through the official organ,” he pointed out underlying the significant of a party organ.
