‘Tamil first. Our emotion, our identity’: Vijay amid Vande Mataram row

Under the resolution, Tamil Thaai Vazhthu is to come first at programmes conducted by government offices, educational institutions, universities, public-sector undertakings and other public institutions.

The dispute

The immediate dispute arose after the Union Home Ministry asked states and union territories to strictly comply with a January directive requiring Vande Mataram, the national song, to be played before the national anthem at formal official events.

The tension became visible at a recent convocation at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University – an institution named, with some historical irony, after the very scholar who wrote ‘Tamil Thaai Vazhthu’. At the ceremony, the Tamil invocation was placed third, after Vande Mataram and the National Anthem, drawing criticism across Tamil Nadu’s political spectrum. The state government subsequently said the episode would not be repeated.

Yet, Vijay is defending an arrangement considerably older than his government.

The song comes from the prologue to Manonmaniam, written by Manonmaniam Sundaranar in 1891. On November 23, 1970, the DMK government issued an order requiring the invocation to be sung at the beginning of government and other specified public functions. Over generations, its roughly 55 seconds became so embedded in Tamil Nadu’s institutional life that generations of schoolchildren, civil servants and university students learned almost instinctively when to rise.

But custom and law were not always identical. That distinction produced an unusual controversy in 2018 when Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam pontiff Vijayendra Saraswathi remained seated during the song at an event in Chennai. Naam Tamilar Katchi functionaries subsequently protested at a Kanchi Mutt institution in Rameswaram.

Three years later, while quashing the resulting criminal case after the parties reached a settlement, Justice G R Swaminathan of the Madras High Court’s Madurai Bench held that ‘Tamil Thaai Vazhthu’ was a prayer song rather than an anthem and that no statutory or executive requirement then compelled people to stand during its rendition. The judge nevertheless acknowledged the song’s claim to the “highest reverence and respect.”

The DMK government headed by M K Stalin responded days later. On December 12, 2021, it formally recognised ‘Tamil Thaai Vazhthu’ as Tamil Nadu’s state song and made standing during its rendition compulsory, with an exemption for differently abled persons. The order also required the song to be rendered at the beginning of official functions.

Vijay’s resolution, therefore, adds another political and legislative affirmation to a convention inherited across governments.

Tamil Nadu’s language tussle

The dispute is characteristically Tamil Nadu in one respect. Language here has rarely remained simply a means of communication. From the anti-Hindi agitations to recurring arguments over federalism and state autonomy, Tamil has functioned simultaneously as language, cultural memory and political claim.

That helps explain why something as seemingly procedural as whether one song comes first, second or third can acquire constitutional and emotional weight.

The resolution does not challenge the place of the National Anthem or erase the national song. Its political message instead lies in the sequence — when an official function begins inside Tamil Nadu, the state insists that its own invocation to Mother Tamil should be heard first.