How a city shaped the struggle for Linguistic choice in India
Alamu R.
Independent Researcher
In August 2020, a sitting member of Parliament, DMK MP Kanimozhi, who represents the Thoothukudi constituency, was asked by a security officer at the Chennai airport if she was “really Indian” for not speaking in Hindi (Kolappan 2020). A sitting MP from a party rooted in the ideals of self-respect and dignity faced this question in Madras, a city that has been the heart of struggles for linguistic equality and state rights is ironic. Or perhaps fitting.
Madras, now Chennai, has been the heart of major national conversations around power, identity, language and belonging. These questions have played out in everyday places, from politics to the streets, in cinemas, through music and classrooms. Much of the city's historical, cultural and social fabric reflects this resistance to any form of imposition. Madras was never ‘only Tamil’. Before linguistic reorganisation, Madras State had a significant Telugu presence in institutions, cinema and community life. A presence that continues even today. Yet over time, it came to symbolically represent Tamil and stand as the capital of resistance to language imposition. Its colleges, hostels, beaches and railway stations became stages of dissent, turning everyday urban spaces into sites where questions of language, belonging and equality were fought over.
Chennai and Tamil Nadu’s struggle to assert themselves against language imposition through language choice is neither new nor just a political phenomenon. This piece looks at how Madras became a key space of resistance against New Delhi’s language imposition policies. It focuses on the student protests of the 1960s, showing how those years laid the groundwork for a strong voice that still echoes from the city and the state. So, no surprise then that the Kanimozhi incident in August 2020 found echoes elsewhere.
The following month, in September 2020, a viral photo showed music director Yuvan Shankar Raja and actor Shirish in t-shirts shouting a message loud and clear. Yuvan's said “I am a Thamizh pesum Indian” (I am a Tamil-speaking Indian). Shirish’s? “Hindi theriyadhu poda”, a blunt declaration: “I don’t know Hindi, get lost” (TNM Staff 2020). The moment caught fire online and it became a phenomenon (Ramanujam 2020). Soon, stars like Shanthanu Bhagyaraj, Kiki Vijay, Aishwarya Rajesh and DMK Youth Wing leader Udhayanidhi Stalin were all wearing similar slogans. A political statement and a fashion statement.
For those familiar with Chennai’s history, this is no surprise. The city was deeply contested even in the 1950s during the demands for a separate Telugu state. “Madras manade” (Madras is ours) said Telugu activists. “Madras namade” (Madras is ours) responded Tamil activists. The city’s very identity was negotiated through these claims. With these contested roots, Madras would go on to become something else entirely. From the 1960s, as the capital of Tamil Nadu, it emerged as a city of dissent, a place that articulated the demand for linguistic freedom against New Delhi’s language majoritarianism. It wasn’t just a state capital anymore. Symbolically, it became the capital of resistance to language imposition.
Clearly, resistance to Hindi isn’t just political. It is also cultural.
Carnatic music and its practitioners have long been seen as a privileged elite. A majority of the songs are composed in either Telugu or Sanskrit. Its most celebrated artistes come from upper-class, upper-caste backgrounds. In Madras, even here, there was pushback. The Tamil Isai Sangam was formed in 1943 to promote Tamil songs and voices. This cultural claim-making continues till today-from Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s Carnatic Tamil playlist to festivals like Pa. Ranjith’s “Margazhiyil Makkal Isai.”
On a lighter note, whenever someone in Tamil Nadu is asked to speak Hindi, they often say, “All I know is ‘Ek gaon mein ek kisan Raghu thatha.’” This is a Tamil cinema dialogue from director K. Bhagyaraj’s 1981 film Indru Poi Naalai Vaa. In the film, a character trying to learn Hindi to impress a tutor’s daughter ends up mispronouncing “Rehata tha” (stayed there) as “Raghu thatha”. The latter, in Tamil, means Grandfather Raghu, which makes no sense in Hindi. This dialogue has become a running joke, pointing to the awkwardness of what happens when a language is imposed. Over the years, many Tamil films have echoed this sentiment, that there's either no desire or no need to learn Hindi forcefully (Rajendran 2019).
And it’s not just comedy. The 2021 film Jai Bhim, directed by T.J. Gnanavel and starring Suriya, Prakash Raj and others, is based on a true story. In one scene, Prakash Raj’s character, IG Perumalsamy, slaps a pawn-broker who speaks in Hindi when he’s asked a question in Tamil (HT Entertainment Desk 2021). The moment was criticised by some, celebrated by many more. The slap was partly for the broker’s attempt to hide the truth. But more importantly, it challenged the assumption that everyone in India must speak Hindi.
Cultural resistance is not recent. In August 1997, three days before the 50th year of Indian independence, music composer A.R. Rahman, along with his friends Bharath Bala and Kanika, released the patriotic album Vande Mataram (Rajendran 2018). It became a song of national pride that is still played every Independence Day. But what’s often overlooked is that along with the Hindi version, he also composed its Tamil version, Thaai Manne Vanakkam. This wasn’t a token gesture. It reflected a conscious choice. A clear statement that one does not need Hindi to be truly patriotic or that true patriotism does not require the erasure of regional identity.
Born and brought up in Chennai, Rahman saw Hindi as just another regional language. He wasn’t choosing between Hindi and Tamil. He was asserting a space for both, on his own terms. In many ways, it echoed Tamil Nadu's long-standing position that the resistance was never against Hindi but against its imposition. This act was not just about music. It echoed sentiments first articulated in the streets of Madras and Tamil Nadu, that the idea of India rests in the coexistence of multiple languages, multiple cultures and multiple identities.
This article traces the political and cultural roots of resistance in Madras city. It looks at the 1965 and 1967 agitations to show how students and universities made Madras a theatre of protest and ends with the 1969–71 debates over Tamil and English. The thread that runs through is simple: Madras was never just a backdrop. It was an actor that shaped, and was shaped by the demand for choice. Often through its very streets, colleges and public spaces.
As seen in the introduction, the opposition to language imposition is embedded in Tamil Nadu’s everyday political and socio-cultural fabric. To understand this resistance, we must begin earlier. Its foundations were laid over a century ago, rooted in the region’s political and cultural awakening.
Colonial Madras was a mix of communities and languages. The 1891 Census recorded the city as just under 60 percent Tamil-speaking. By 1901, over 30 percent of the population spoke Telugu or Dakhni Urdu, showing how multilingual the city was. From its early years, Telugu presence was embedded in the city.
In 1639, Damarla Venkatapathy Nayak, a Telugu Nayaka, granted land to the British to build Fort St. George. In George Town, Telugu merchants (Komati merchants) dominated trade and the Andhra Chamber of Commerce later took root there. Telugu words entered Tamil everyday speech and helped shape “Madras Bashai” the city’s slang. In cinema, Telugu producers controlled major studios in Vadapalani and Saligramam, a belt that functioned as Tollywood for decades. Institutions like the Andhra Mahila Sabha, founded in 1937 in Adyar by Durgabai Deshmukh21, left a lasting mark on women's education and healthcare. Even Nageswara Rao Park in Mylapore honours Kasinathuni Nageswara Rao, editor of Andhra Patrika. From language to trade to cinema and associations, the Telugu presence was central to the urban fabric of Madras.
The Tamil renaissance of the 18th and 19th centuries revived classical Tamil literature and significantly assisted in affirming the distinctiveness of Dravidian language, culture and religion from Aryan-Brahminical traditions (Arooran 1976). Missionary-scholars like Robert Caldwell and G.U. Pope's research highlighted the independent origins of the Dravidian language family (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam) and Saiva Siddhanta traditions. By the early 20th century, these ideas shaped a Dravidian consciousness. The Dravidian articulation became political through the Justice Party and the non-Brahmin movement. “Dravidian” came to signify a civilizational and ideological alternative to Aryan-Brahminism.
Alongside the Dravidian consciousness, the Pure Tamil Movement (Thanith Tamil Iyakkam) emerged. It aimed to purge Tamil of Sanskrit influences and return to its classical form. This was not just a linguistic call but it was a cultural assertion. The movement was tied to religious reform, anti-Brahmin sentiment and Dravidian identity (Ramaswamy 1997; Bate 2009). Madras Presidency became the centre of the movement. The city hosted early Pure Tamil conferences, journals and student-led Tamil sangams. Publishing houses thrived. Universities and presses became both battlegrounds and platforms.
Opposition to forceful learning of language existed in the Madras Presidency as early as the 1920s. In 1924, Hindi was introduced as an optional subject without protest. But in 1929, a proposal to make Hindi compulsory under the SSLC was rejected (Arooran 1976, 188–92). The message was clear: choice was acceptable, imposition was not.
That principle was tested again in 1938. The Congress, having won the 1937 provincial elections, announced Hindi would be made compulsory in 100 schools in the Madras Presidency. The reaction in Tamil regions was immediate. The Self-Respect Movement launched a protest. In May 1938, the Madras Provincial Anti-Hindi League was formed.
Protests soon followed. Organised, non-violent and sustained, they included requesting students and parents to shift to schools where Hindi wasn’t compulsory and picketing outside ministerial homes. Schools and ministerial residences became symbolic and strategic sites of dissent, where questions of dignity and choice were fought over. The agitation lasted from May 1938 to October 1939 (Arooran 1976, 206–7). In 1940, the compulsory Hindi policy was withdrawn.
For the Self-Respect Movement, this was about more than language. Brahmins had once gained early access to English and power. Now, there was fear that Hindi would create a new elite. Hindi was seen as representing one region, culture, and politics, an Aryan-Brahminical assertion. Tamil stood for the Dravidian, the non-Brahmin, the plural. The 1938 agitation set the precedent that opposition to Hindi could be organised, constitutional yet political. It would echo in the Constituent Assembly, grow sharper with the DMK’s formation in 1949 and re-emerge during debates over the Official Language Act and English’s status.
The anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 had its roots in decisions made in the Constituent Assembly. Members could not arrive at a single national language for India during the constituent assembly discussions. Hindi and English were kept as official languages for fifteen years, with a review of the English language status in 1965. In 1963, the Union government tabled the Official Language Bill. With 1965 just around the corner, the language question and the status of English became the foremost issue in Tamil Nadu.
Even before the bill was passed, on 29 April 1963, a mass public meeting was held at Marina Beach in Madras by the DMK (Aruna 2017, 286). Stretching alongside Fort St. George, the beach offered an open urban stage that made the scale of dissent visible. It was both a mass stage, where tens of thousands could gather, and a political theatre, set right beside the seat of power. Addressing the crowd, Annadurai warned that the act would tilt administration towards Hindi-speaking regions. He called for organised constitutional agitation to resist this imposition. By holding the meeting at Marina, right alongside Fort St. George, the DMK staged dissent directly beside the seat of power. The open beach allowed opposition to be seen at scale, turning it into a stage of protest visible to all.
The Official Language Act was passed by Parliament on 10 May 1963. This sparked strong opposition in Tamil Nadu, particularly from the DMK, which called the act an instrument of linguistic domination. From 8 to 10 June, the DMK’s Executive Committee met in Madras to deliberate next steps. The party’s position was Hindi should not replace English until all regional languages reached equal status. Mass meetings followed, including one that drew over one lakh people. Even as the Union government asked the DMK to withdraw protests and the state imposed prohibitory orders, the party began organising a more structured resistance. Madras was not only the administrative centre where imposition was enforced, but also the nerve centre where opposition was mobilised. The city itself became the meeting point of state power and popular dissent.
On 13 October, a march led by Annadurai was held in Madras. A prelude to the planned 13-month-long constitutional agitation starting from 17 October (Karunanidhi 2009). The first protest was to begin in Madras, followed by Madurai and other towns. In Kodambakkam, better known for its cinema studios and political networks, the DMK finalised its six-point programme. This included burning Section XVII of the Constitution (which deals with language policy) and civil disobedience acts like train stoppages, black flag demonstrations, tearing down Hindi signage and picketing central government offices. During this period, Marina Beach continued to function as the city’s mass stage and political theatre for large rallies.
The plan was ready. But on 16 October, Annadurai was arrested en route to Madras. Still, other DMK leaders carried out the protest as planned. Constitution burning and picketing continued in Madras and then in Madurai. Arrests were made. Bans imposed. But the message had gone out. The protest was not spontaneous; it was deliberate, layered and strategic. The 13-month-long agitation was not just planned. It was orchestrated by the DMK.
Madras acted as the command centre of state-wide resistance. DMK leaders were often ceremonially sent off in a vazhiyanuppu vizha from Madras to district centres. For instance, Karunanidhi was sent to Madurai for the constitution burning agitation. In July 1964, Nedunchezhiyan was sent to Coimbatore for a protest at the Central Post Office. These ritual send-offs showed how Madras both responded to imposition at its centre and issued the calls that moved out to the districts. The city was the nerve centre.
In January 1964, the anti-Hindi movement crossed a line that could no longer be ignored. On 25 January, S. Chinnasamy self-immolated opposite Trichy railway station, shouting “Tamil vāzhga, Hindi ōḻiga” (“Long live Tamil, down with Hindi”). A staunch rationalist and DMK supporter, he had a self-respect marriage and named his daughter Dravidaselvi to reflect his beliefs (Karunanidhi 2009). Just days before his death, he confronted Chief Minister Bhaktavatsalam and questioned his silence on Hindi imposition. He was jailed and released five days later. In a letter, he said he would die so Tamil could live and urged his death should make people ask, “Why Hindi? For what Hindi?” (Karunanidhi 2009). His death drew national and international attention. What had been a political protest was now burning with emotional conviction.
The template set in 1963, a constitutional mode of protest and city spaces that amplified scale, was one that students would inherit in 1965, often using the same stages with greater spontaneity and force. The road to 1965 began here.
As discussed above, the groundwork for the 1965 language agitations against Hindi imposition had been building quietly but steadily since 1963. This section uses oral histories of Justice K. Chandru and Dr. K. Kantharaj (second-year student at Stanley Medical College) to trace how the agitations unfolded in Madras on the ground, in college campuses, marches, street protests and everyday conversations. Their accounts help piece together how college students mobilised, how the city responded and how leadership, coordination and emotion shaped the protest’s pulse across Madras to retain English as the official language.
Justice K. Chandru (written interview, March 2024), then a student, remembers how it began:
We are not aware of the terms of the Constitution. However, the DMK leaders went to the town to tell the public (including the students) that after 15 years from the Constitution, i.e. on 26.1.1965, Hindi would rule us and there would be no place for Tamil. Tamil people will become second-class citizens in India. Essentially, this piece of information, along with the emotional feelings, led us into the anti-Hindi imposition agitation in 1965, and it started on 25th January 1965.
By late 1964, a sense of urgency had taken hold. The Union government announced that from January 26, 1965, Hindi would replace English as the official language and would also become an alternative medium for the UPSC exams. For many in Tamil Nadu, this wasn’t just a bureaucratic shift. It was a withdrawal of choice, an erasure of linguistic dignity leading them to the status of second-class citizens.
As January 26 approached, the DMK announced it would observe Republic Day as Black Day, protesting the replacement of English with Hindi. The Congress branded the protest anti-national. The DMK countered that their fight was not against the day or the Constitution, but against the imposition of a language (Aruna 2017, 324). A confrontation was clearly brewing between Delhi and Madras.
On the night of January 22, the state government arrested all major DMK leaders, including Annadurai, in a move to prevent the protests from escalating (Aruna 2017, 335). But the anger was already out on the streets. Student protests spontaneously broke out across Tamil Nadu. With DMK leaders jailed, it was students from public education institutions who carried the protests forward. They showed this was not only a party’s programme, but students standing up for their right to dissent against authoritarian policies in a democracy. Being the capital city, Madras became the testing ground where state authority tried to contain opposition and where popular dissent pushed back in the name of constitutional rights.
On January 25, 1965, students across Tamil Nadu launched what began as a constitutional protest against Hindi imposition (Mohan 2014). Wanting to avoid any confrontation on Republic Day itself, they decided to act a day earlier. In Madras, the protests gained momentum on the first day itself. Around 50,000 students marched towards the Secretariat, towards the power centre, assembling near Napier Bridge, a stretch historically off-limits to protests. By looking at the routes, Napier Bridge, the Central railway station, the Secretariat, Mount Road, we see that students gravitated to places where disruption mattered most. These were not random paths but pressure points of the city, where their presence could not be ignored. The Chief Minister refused to meet the student delegation at Fort St. George. That evening, when students gathered on the Marina and burnt copies of the Constitution, they were not just protesting; but they were stepping onto the city’s main stage of dissent. By choosing the same space where the DMK had rallied in 1963, they claimed visibility and tied their movement to Madras’s most symbolic ground of protest. Expecting arrests, they were surprised when none came (K. Kantharaj, oral interview, January 2025).
The protests soon took a tragic turn with the first reported self-immolation of The. Mu. Sivalingam near Kodambakkam in the early hours of January 26. He was followed by another youth, Aranganathan, who immolated himself near Virugambakkam on January 27 (Karunanidhi 2009). These acts of sacrifice in the capital city became rallying points, drawing intense emotional responses across Tamil society and further galvanising public opinion against Hindi imposition.
The nature and intensity of protests escalated significantly after two key incidents in Madurai and Chidambaram (K. Kantharaj, oral interview, January 2025). On January 25, in Madurai, students marched through North Masi Street, planning to burn Part XVII of the Constitution at Thilagar Thidal. The route passed the local Congress office. Clashes broke out. Seven people were injured. Enraged students set fire to a jeep and a pandal erected for Republic Day. Riots spread across Madurai and then to other towns.
On January 27, in Chidambaram, Annamalai University students attempted a march despite prohibitory orders. Police opened fire, killing two students, Rajendran and Elangovan, and injuring several more. These events, coupled with the self-immolations on January 26 and 27, transformed the agitation. Sacrifice on such a scale stirred deep emotion, turning the protests from an organised agitation into a personal struggle.
The two incidents in Madurai and Chidambaram changed everything. What began as a planned protest quickly grew urgent and intense. Across Tamil Nadu, including in Madras, protests became more frequent, more spontaneous and far more emotionally charged. In Madras, marches converged at government offices, post offices, tarring Hindi signboards across the city, disrupting trains in railway stations and the marina beach-sites where disruption carried both practical weight and symbolic meaning.
While the 1965 anti-Hindi protests appeared as a unified front, the reality on the ground, especially in Madras, was more complex. A student council was initially formed in the city to coordinate the movement, but tensions quickly surfaced (Chandru). Leaders from districts like Madurai refused to recognise the Madras-based leadership and operated independently. Despite these early attempts at structure, the protests soon took on a spontaneous life of their own (Chandru and K. Kantharaj).
In Madras, each college functioned with its own local leadership. Pachaiyappa’s College, for instance, had a particularly committed group whose actions influenced other institutions through hostel networks and word of mouth (Chandru). There was no formal coordination between colleges. Students set out from their campuses and as their marches converged at key sites like the secretariat, central post office, and Egmore station, they turned everyday spaces of the city into stages of dissent.
The protests were mostly unplanned. Students, once assembled, would declare on the spot that they were marching to the Secretariat “to seek justice.” Communication was oral, through hostel corridors, handbills, opposition newspapers, or even rumour (Chandru). Yet, not every student was deeply invested in the cause. Many were what Justice Chandru called “camp followers” joining rallies out of solidarity, momentum or curiosity. Some actions, like blacking out Hindi signage with tar or smashing glass panes, were more performative than political. But the emotional energy was unmistakable.
Students from public colleges, many of them migrants from districts who had come to Madras for education, felt the stakes most directly. Losing English threatened their future. This is why public college students drove the movement. Despite restrictions, meetings continued in hostels, mess halls and corridors, keeping the pulse of the movement alive. Spontaneity was both the movement’s strength and its weakness.
K. Kantharaj (oral interview, January 2025) recalls that among the city’s medical institutions, Stanley and Kilpauk Medical Colleges were at the forefront of the 1965 anti-Hindi protests. In contrast, Madras Medical College remained mostly uninvolved. This contrast showed how some campuses had more politically aware students ready to act, while others held back.
He recalls a particularly bold moment when a student march from Stanley was strategically led by Dr. Krishnakumari, daughter-in-law of Congress Home Minister P. Kakkan. The act carried heavy symbolism. A minister’s own relative was now in front of the march, placing the government in an awkward position. With only about 20 women (of 120-150) remaining in the college after the closure, the symbolic act of placing Dr. Krishnakumari at the front of the march towards the Secretariat put the police in a bind. The march, which passed through Royapuram and Wall Tax Road, grew as students from other colleges joined in; over 2,000 filled the streets. As they neared the Secretariat, police insisted that the women return to their hostel.
Student leader Ramachandra Rao from Stanley asked K. Kantharaj to accompany the women in a police-escorted bus to the campus. As the vehicle turned near the War Memorial, police began a lathi charge. Around 20 students jumped into the Cooum, others ran into Island Grounds and hundreds rushed into the nearby Gymkhana Club. The Cooum, usually treated as a dirty and neglected edge of the city, suddenly became part of the protest landscape when students jumped into its waters to escape. Resistance now reached the city’s very margins. Gymkhana club, an elite institution normally insulated from street politics, was momentarily part of the protest landscape, as its staff sheltered fleeing students.
Stanley’s activism was not isolated. Stanley’s hostel, kept open because its students had to serve patients, became a safe hub. It sheltered students from other institutions, turning medical space into a centre of protest organisation and enabling cross-college linkages. Students from the Law and Veterinary Colleges stayed there, including Virudhunagar Srinivasan of Law College, who would later defeat Kamaraj in elections (K. Kantharaj, oral interview, January 2025). These connections showed how students were not just reacting but building a shared political space across colleges, tying their education to questions of fairness and the future.
Support for the protests extended beyond campuses. Students from Stanley often halted city buses, not to damage, but halted them as part of the protests. Passengers willingly stepped down, offering to support the movement. Cloth spread outside hostels became makeshift collection spots, filling quickly with public contributions (K. Kantharaj, oral interview, January 2025). Such gestures showed how the protest spilled out of campuses into the city’s everyday life, turning ordinary spaces into protest grounds.
While the 1965 student protests appeared spontaneous on the surface, their momentum and reach were not without political backing. Justice K. Chandru (written interview, March 2024) notes that the DMK played a key role behind the scenes. Keen to avoid being accused of engineering the unrest, the party maintained a low profile, letting student leaders take the visible lead.
But if support was growing in the streets, it was not visible in the newspapers. K. Kantharaj (oral interview, January 2025) recalls how media coverage was tightly controlled by the Congress government. Incidents like the gunfire in Egmore railway station after Rajendran’s death went largely unreported. News of that particular firing reached Stanley Medical College only through word of mouth. N.R. Krishnan, who witnessed it at the station, ran to the hostel to alert fellow students. On hearing it, students from Stanley immediately marched to Egmore. This was not covered by any media or newspapers.
Rural areas saw intense agitation, but coverage was scarce. Most reports were police handouts. All India Radio, broadcasting from Delhi, carried little reflection of Tamil Nadu’s unrest. The narrative in the national media painted the protests as violent outbreaks led by anti-social elements. Films Division documentaries shown in theatres portrayed only the damage, broken glass, torched vehicles, casting the students as unruly mobs. By calling students mobs instead of citizens, the state narrowed the democratic debate, while on the ground the movement was about the right to dissent. Most real-time updates came not from newspapers, but from handbills circulated by the police or passed along by word of mouth (K. Chandru, written interview, March 2024).
Even basic statistics, like the number of arrests, were suppressed. Police chiefs were instructed not to reveal too much. In this media vacuum, students were cast not as protestors with a cause, but as troublemakers. A framing that the Union government was quick to exploit.
In early February, the student’s agitations took a violent turn, especially after deadly police firing in Kumarapalayam, Coimbatore, where ten protesters were killed. Between February 10 and 15, violence erupted across the state. Public buildings, railway stations, post offices and police stations were set ablaze (Mukul 2025). Passing trains were pelted with stones. Buses were burnt. For the first time after Independence, the army was sent into Tamil Nadu to restore order.
The congress state government, overwhelmed by the intensity, publicly called for the continuation of English as an official language. But the damage had already been done. In Delhi, the Union government continued to claim that Tamil Nadu had misunderstood its position. Forrester (1966) notes how the protests peaked when two congress Union Ministers from Tamil Nadu resigned from the Cabinet on February 11, an act that forced Delhi to reassess.
That same evening, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri addressed the nation on All India Radio. Breaking with earlier statements, he assured the public that English would continue as an official language for as long as non-Hindi-speaking states wanted it. The announcement slowly restored peace in the state. Schools and colleges across Tamil Nadu, shut since January 26, were not reopened until March 8, 1965, despite the announcement made on February 11 (The Times of India News Service 1965).
Even without central coordination, the 1965 protests showed their strength. Students from different colleges converged in everyday spaces of the city, arterial roads, railway stations, war memorial near the secretariat, post offices and the Marina. These were places the public and the state could not ignore. Their spontaneous action turned Madras into a ground of democracy, challenging the authoritarian policies of the Union government.
To formalise the continuation of English as the official language post 1965, an amendment to the 1963 Official Languages Act was drafted and tabled on June 15. It proposed that English would continue until every non-Hindi-speaking state agreed otherwise. But before it could pass, the Indo-Pak war broke out. On August 2, 1965, the amendment was withdrawn. The language crisis had been paused, not solved.
By late 1967, unresolved language tensions from 1965 reached Parliament. On 22nd November, Home Minister Y.B. Chavan introduced key amendments to the Official Language Act. The proposal promised that English would continue as an official language unless every non-Hindi-speaking state voted otherwise, a shift from the earlier requirement of just three-fourths. The UPSC would now conduct exams in all Scheduled Languages, and the Centre pushed for a national Three Language Formula (3LF) resolution (“Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 179–80).
The move was pitched by the union government as a compromise. But it pleased no one, neither the South nor the North. By December 1, Hindi-speaking states erupted in anti-English protests, with students demanding English be scrapped entirely. In places like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, English signboards were blackened and marches called for a Hindi-first India. Retaining English was seen as a betrayal of nationalist identity. By 7th December, the protests turned violent in these states (“Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 184–87). For the North, English had become a symbol of betrayal. For Madras, scarred by 1965, English was not a threat but a shield.
The Parliament debate over language amendments reached its climax on December 16, 1967. After eight days of heated discussion and mounting anti-English protests in North India, the Union government passed the amended Official Language Act. In a clear nod to the agitations, the final resolution removed the requirement for mandatory English proficiency in UPSC exams; now, either English or Hindi would suffice.
But far to the south, in Madras, an entirely different sentiment was gathering force. The 3LF resolution felt like another attempt to push Hindi, just more quietly. The memory of 1965 meant that students here did not see themselves as defending English for its own sake, but as defending self-respect, federal rights and against centralisation. The DMK, now in power, had promised to uphold language dignity.
While the North demanded Hindi as a national unifier, the South, especially Madras, rose to defend diversity—linguistic federalism, regional autonomy and the right to choose. It wasn’t just about which language prevailed. It was about resisting centralisation. On December 18, as protests raged in the Hindi-speaking states for the seventh day, students in Madras had already begun mobilising, driven by a very different call (The Times of India News Service 1967f).
Surprisingly, K. Kantharaj (oral interview, January 2025) and Chandru (written interview, March 2024) and much of the existing literature recall little about the 1967–68 protests. Kantharaj noted that once the DMK came to power, the Congress tried to lead the anti-Hindi agitation but failed to draw student support. Yet newspaper reports tell a different story. Student protests continued, fuelled by fears that Hindi might be imposed again through the 3LF. At the same time, the DMK feared that sustained student agitation could prompt the Union government to dismiss its regime and impose President’s Rule. The pressure was such that Chief Minister Annadurai had to meet student leaders more than once. Though overlooked in oral histories, these protests steadily mounted and ultimately pushed the DMK to formalise its stance, resulting in the passage of the two-language policy (2LP) in the Assembly.
On December 18, students from Law College and the Veterinary College boycotted classes and launched protest marches, setting the tone for upcoming agitations in Madras and across the state (The Times of India News Service 1967g).
By the next day, 19 December, Coimbatore, Karaikudi, Madurai and Ramanathapuram were on the streets. But the most striking scenes were still unfolding in Madras. Around 2,000 students from Pachayappa’s College skipped their exams and marched with a 12-foot effigy of a ‘Hindi demon,’ Araki, a theatrical symbol aimed at the Union government. Protestors smeared tar on Hindi signboards, stormed into Egmore Railway Station and marched through Mount Road, blackening nameplates at the LIC building, the Postmaster General’s office and the Mount Road Post Office.
Evenings in Madras saw students pulling down Hindi film posters, stopping screenings and chanting slogans on the streets (The Times of India News Service 1967c). These acts, both dramatic and defiant, deliberately targeted Union-linked sites. Egmore and Central Railway Stations were controlled by Indian Railways, LIC and the Postmaster General’s office on Mount Road were central government institutions, blackened Hindi signboards were visible markers of Union policy and Hindi film posters symbolised a cultural push from Delhi towards homogenisation. By choosing these targets, students turned the city’s most visible markers of central authority into stages of dissent.
By 20 December, Madras was no longer just reacting; it was leading. Presidency College, Government Arts College and the Engineering College in Guindy joined the movement, with students walking out of classes and exams. But this was no longer only about opposing Hindi. Students from Presidency College demanded a formal amendment to the Official Language Act, a legal guarantee and not just promises (The Times of India News Service 1967a). Here, the student agitation tone shifted, from reassurance that English would remain to a demand for a concrete policy.
That day, 500 students from the Arts College moved toward the Central railway station to deface Hindi signage. Later, another 400 from Presidency College stormed into Central Station and pulled down Hindi nameboards. These weren’t random outbursts. They were staged performances of dissent, asserting that Madras would not comply quietly. The DMK government watched with caution. Public Works Minister M. Karunanidhi and Education Minister V.R. Nedunchezhian appealed for calm, reminding students that the state’s position was clear: Tamil would remain the official language and English would continue as the link language with the Union (“Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 196). But on the streets, reassurances were no longer enough. Students wanted policy in writing, not promises in speeches.
The city did not slow down; it remained in protest mode. On 21 December, Madras and other towns saw a new wave of demonstrations, more coordinated and more widespread. It was no longer just the major colleges. Students from Kandaswamy College (Chetpet) and CNT Institute (Vepery) marched to the Secretariat demanding English be retained. In Washermenpet, Theagaraya College students held their own rally and submitted a memorandum to the education minister (The Times of India News Service 1967d).
But not all protests remained symbolic. At the Government Arts College and New College, students burnt books and furniture, broke into the post office at Chintadripet, and disrupted an express train by writing anti-Hindi slogans on its carriages. Traffic in parts of the city was brought to a halt as buses were stopped in protest. Students forced their way into Vivekananda College mid-exam, where they were joined by students from the Teachers’ College, turning the examination centre itself into a site of demonstration. Outside Madras, the agitation spread with force. At Annamalai University in Chidambaram, more than 3,000 students boycotted exams and marched through town (“Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 197).
On 22 December, protests returned to the heart of the city. Students marched again to Central Station and this time blocked a train bound for Delhi, a direct challenge to the Union government. The choice of target carried weight. Railways were not just transport, they were one of the most visible arms of the Union in everyday life, binding Madras into the national system. By obstructing a Delhi-bound train, students sent a pointed message: the Centre could not move freely while ignoring their voice. Alarmed by the escalation, Karunanidhi personally intervened, warning that continued confrontation could invite President’s Rule and bring in a pro-Hindi government in the state. His warning, however, did little to slow the momentum (The Times of India News Service 1967h).
On 23 December, the confrontation reached its sharpest edge. At Thalangai, just five kilometres outside Madras, 500 students halted the Kerala Express and then set the railway station on fire (The Times of India News Service 1967e). If the Delhi-bound train blockade had been symbolic, the burning of a railway station made the symbolism stark. The very infrastructure associated with central control and national integration was now literally under attack. Madras was not just participating in dissent. It was at the epicentre of a confrontation that challenged the authority of the Union itself.
By 24th December, after weeks of marches and disruptions, the Madras College Students' Council took a decisive step. They announced that the Hindi agitation would be suspended, bringing a tense calm back to the city (The Times of India News Service 1967b). The streets that had echoed with slogans, the railway stations tarred and torn, and the roads lined with colleges that had turned into protest sites, now stood quiet. It was a strategic pause.
As Tamil Nadu went quiet, the reverberations travelled north. On 25th December, in Nagpur, 300 students marched against the anti-Hindi protests in Madras (“Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 199). It was a reminder that the language question had become national. The suspension of agitations in Madras did not end the debate; rather, it sharpened it. In the North, protests framed English as betrayal; in the South, it was defended as protection.
The calm was temporary. As the new year approached, the agitation stirred again, tied to the reopening of colleges. On 1st January 1968, the Madurai City Students’ Anti-Hindi Agitation Council announced that protests would resume with sit-ins inside campuses after the reopening of the colleges on January 8. In response, the government postponed the reopening of colleges to January 11 to prevent a repeat of events (“Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 201).
On 6th January, in a move to prevent further escalation, student representatives from across the state convened for three hours at Madras Arts College, drafting a list of proposals. This was followed by a four-hour meeting with Chief Minister C. N. Annadurai and senior ministers (The Times of India News Service 1968b). It was a tense negotiation. Annadurai warned that renewed unrest could invite President’s Rule, while students pressed that their demands be written into record. For the first time, the protest shifted from the streets to the negotiating table.
Yet, unity amongst students did not hold for long. Four days later, on 10th January, 40 student representatives from Coimbatore broke ranks, calling for continued protests as they could not leave the issue to political parties (Further Steps Towards the Displacement of English” 1968, 203). This fracture revealed two strands in the movement: one prepared to trust the DMK to deliver, the other determined to assert a student voice independent of party lines.
On 12th January, the DMK government announced once again the indefinite closure of all educational institutions in Madurai, Coimbatore and Madras. But the Madras city didn’t stop. On 13th January, students from New College marched peacefully to the government buildings. Madras Christian College followed with its own procession. Even secondary school students joined in. In Madurai, protests escalated again, triggering further shutdowns. That evening, Annadurai resumed talks and promised to meet students across the state (The Times of India News Service 1968c; 1968d).
On 14th January, a delegation of 25 students from various colleges met the Chief Minister at his residence in Madras. The students came with clarity for negotiation with political leaders. Their demand was no longer vague; they wanted a formal, policy-level commitment from the state (The Times of India News Service 1968a). The students had learned the language of power. And Madras had taught them how to speak it.
What unfolded in December and January was not confined to speeches or rallies. Madras itself became a map of dissent. Colleges, railway stations, government offices, even exam halls, spaces of study, transit and administration, were remade as political arenas. Opposition to Hindi was not abstract; it was lived daily and made visible in the city’s very infrastructure. The protests of 1967–68 remind us that it was students who kept the choice alive. It is to their defiance that we owe the fact that Hindi was not imposed via 3LP.
By 1968, the language issue in Tamil Nadu saw a shift from street protests towards a policy resolution on the Assembly floor. Intense student protests forced the DMK to convene an urgent session of the Assembly on January 23 to articulate its position on language clearly. Madras passed a landmark resolution rejecting New Delhi’s Three Language Formula (3LF) and called for amending the Constitution to grant equal status to all Indian languages and to continue using English as an official language until such parity was achieved (Alamu R 2023). Tamil Nadu officially withdrew from the 3LF, choosing instead to adopt a two-language policy, Tamil and English, in all schools.
Education Minister V.R. Nedunchezhiyan said the Union’s language policies had created confusion and fear amongst students and the public. Given that the DMK had no real numerical strength in Parliament nor constitutional power to influence national decisions, the resolution in the Assembly was the only available democratic way to express the opinion of the state. It was Tamil Nadu’s only way to assert its position and to make the voices of non-Hindi-speaking people heard. What had begun on the streets of Madras was now channelled into the Assembly: the state’s legislature in Chennai became the counter to Parliament in Delhi, the Centre’s bid for homogenisation met by the state’s statutory assertion of plurality.
Inside the Assembly, the conversation was deep, more layered and brought forth the theoretical underpinnings of each political party’s position (Alamu R 2023). Except Congress, all other parties including the Tamil Arasu Kazhagam, the CPM, the SSP and even the Swatantra Party, echoed similar concerns. Whether from the Left or the Right, they agreed on one thing: that true unity in a diverse country cannot come from one language dominating all others.
This wasn’t just a policy debate. It touched something deeper. And any decision around language could not be made through statistics or administrative logic alone. It needed to account for emotion. Across the country, languages carried histories and cultures, and to ignore that would be to flatten the very idea of India.
The resolution also challenged the assumption that opposition to one language’s imposition was a refusal to compromise. Speaking in the Assembly on compromise, Annadurai said:
Congress people may say we have to accept Hindi, with a compromising attitude, for the sake of national integration. Right, we can compromise. What is that they would compromise on? For the sake of national integration, what is the sacrifice those people do, the difficulty they bear, the benefit they have lost? As we keep compromising patiently for the sake of national integration, what are the deeds they keep doing? (Government of Tamil Nadu 1968, 123)
The resolution wasn’t about rejecting unity, it was about reimagining it democratically. It questioned whether real unity could be built by forcing people to give up parts of themselves, or whether it should emerge from recognising every region’s right to be seen and heard on equal terms.
At its heart was a simple question: can one language serve as the national language for a country of many languages? In a multilingual federal setup like India, the resolution argued, promoting one regional language, Hindi, as the national language would only create imbalance. For those in the Hindi-speaking belt, Hindi came naturally. But for the rest of India, learning Hindi would be an added burden.
The 1968 resolution was Tamil Nadu’s way of saying that language equality is not a concession but a federal right. In Chennai, where protests had spilled into the streets, the same defiance was now written into law. Delhi’s homogenisation was met by Madras’s assertion of plurality, and it was this choice that ensured English remained, protecting India’s multilingual fabric.
In 1969, two years after the DMK came to power and just a year after the landmark two-language resolution, the government took what it saw as the logical next step. Under Karunanidhi’s leadership, it issued a G.O. mandating Tamil as the compulsory medium of instruction for Pre-University Courses and undergraduate humanities and science courses in government colleges (The Times of India News Service 1969). English medium sections were reserved only for non-Tamil students.
The DMK believed this aligned with its language vision, especially since students had protested alongside them during the 1965 and 1967 agitations. But that reading proved flawed. Student’s dislike for Hindi had been misread as a dislike for English and as approval for Tamil. The DMK misconstrued student support for language choice as a pro-Tamil stance (Alamu R 2023).
What the government saw as continuity, many students and parents saw as a denial of choice. The issue was not Tamil itself, but the loss of access to English, widely seen as a language of aspiration. Now, it seemed only those who could afford private colleges would retain that option.
Protests broke out across the state. The DMK attempted to soften the rule by allowing Tamil students who had studied in English to apply for English-medium sections. But the unrest continued. The debate had moved beyond eligibility; it was about autonomy. The very principle of being able to choose.
By November 1970, the protests intensified. In Madras, students from Vivekananda College abstained from classes and marched, demanding Tamil be given preference in government jobs but not imposed in education (Prasad Rao 1970). Guindy Engineering College and the Central Polytechnic also joined the strike (The Times of India News Service 1970a). Dr. A. Krishnaswamy, leading the Students and Parents Association of Tamil Nadu, launched a signature campaign, collecting 90,000 signatures, many from rural areas, challenging the government’s claim that Tamil medium was preferred by the rural poor. Even Periyar voiced support for English as an option.
When a student protest near the Secretariat was met with a police lathi charge, tensions spiked. The Tamil Nadu Youth Congress called for a hartal in the city (The Times of India News Service 1969). Students were no longer asking for Tamil over Hindi or English. They were asking for the right to choose. The government advanced Christmas vacation, hoping to contain the unrest.
Faced with mounting anger, the DMK set up a five-member committee led by Dr. A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, former Vice-Chancellor of Madras University. On January 14, 1971, the committee submitted its interim recommendation. The DMK accepted it. English medium sections were to be reopened across government colleges (The Times of India News Service 1970b). The students’ demand for choice had been acknowledged.
The 1971 protests left a lasting mark. In the years that followed, the DMK shifted from imposing Tamil to encouraging it by offering scholarships to students who voluntarily chose Tamil medium courses. The protests had made their point, which became impossible to ignore: language in Tamil Nadu was not about imposition, even when it was one’s own. It was about autonomy. The state’s resistance was not towards one language but to any forced choice.
In 1965 and 1967, the student protests targeted the Union government by halting trains, storming stations or defacing Hindi signboards in central government institutions. In contrast, in 1969–71, dissent turned inward. Students marched toward the Secretariat and confronted the DMK directly. Yet the pattern of closing colleges, of students remaking institutional spaces into political arenas, remained constant. The geography shifted, but the principle held steady: neither Delhi nor Madras could dictate language by force. Students defended choice as the core of linguistic democracy. In Chennai, it was once again the city’s colleges and streets around the Secretariat that carried this message.
From 1963 to 1971, Tamil Nadu’s language agitations passed through distinct yet connected phases, each shaped by a different political context, yet all grounded in the same idea: that language choice is inseparable from self-respect and autonomy.
Students in Madras carved out their own map of agitation. Mount Road was the artery they returned to again and again. It carried the Union’s presence: the LIC building, the Postmaster General’s office, theatres showing Hindi films and it all led into Central Railway Station. Processions from Pachaiyappa’s college on Poonamallee High Road, Veterinary College in Vepery or Egmore Medical College spilled naturally into this stretch culuminating at the Central Railway Station. Each march that halted traffic here struck at the commercial lifeline of the city and confronted Delhi’s symbols directly.
The Marina offered another stage of protest. Presidency, Government Arts and Law College stood along this stretch, joined later by Vivekananda College in Mylapore. From here, students moved across Napier Bridge toward the Secretariat. The road itself became an open theatre of dissent, bounded by institutions of learning on one side and the seat of state power on the other.
From the north, Stanley Medical College at Royapuram and Thyagaraya College in Washermanpet added their weight, their marches feeding into Central Station or cutting across to Mount Road. New College and the Teacher Training Institute near Royapettah and Mount Road joined in too, ensuring that every central artery carried student voices. Further out, Guindy Engineering College, the Polytechnic and Madras Christian College at Tambaram showed that the agitation extended beyond the old city, radiating into the suburbs before flowing back toward the core.
Together, they created a geography where dissent radiated outward from the Marina and Mount Road, yet was continually replenished by students from Royapuram, Kilpauk, Saidapet and Tambaram. This was not just a protest in the city, but a protest carried through the city, its arteries, its colleges, its public squares, together formed a living map of agitation.
These protests mattered because of who carried them and these acts were not random. Students from public colleges and universities claimed their right to organise, to dissent and to question the government in power. They closed their gates, walked out of exams and chose sites that spoke directly to authority, whether Delhi in 1965 and 1967 or the DMK government in 1969–71. While there were stirrings in rural Tamil Nadu too, it was the capital city that amplified the cry, making its streets and institutions an actor in their own right. As a society, we owe much to these college students. Their agitations secured the principle that no single language could be imposed and that choice had to be protected. In doing so, students in Tamil Nadu became one of the strongest democratic checks in Indian politics in retaining plurality.
The agitations of the 1960s did not just change policy. They shaped a generation. Many who once marched as students went on to shape Tamil Nadu’s public life. P. Seenivasan defeated K. Kamaraj in Virudhunagar in 1967. K. Kalimuthu and Tiruppur S. Duraisamy rose in the DMK and later AIADMK. Durai Murugan became a senior DMK leader, L. Ganesan moved from DMK to BJP, Sedapatti R. Muthiah became Speaker and later Union minister, while Vaiko (MDMK) and A. Rahman Khan (DMK) also trace their roots to those marches. Their careers show how the streets had been their first training ground.
But memory has not been equal. Memory, too, is political. Some names are remembered, others forgotten, just as 1965 is memorialised while 1967 fades. S. Chinnasamy, who self-immolated in 1964, received little recognition for decades. Only recently, in the backdrop of centre–state tussles, has the state begun building a memorial in Trichy. His daughter Dravidaselvi, in a recent interview, said that his act was not desperation but a deliberate stand (P.Krishnan 2025).
The cultural arena has also carried this contest. For decades, Carnatic music halls projected one version of Tamil, classical, brahminical, often Telugu-inflected and exclusive. Tamil was present, but only on the terms of that world. In recent years, counter-spaces began to push back. Pa. Ranjith’s Margazhiyil Makkal Isai claimed the December season for folk and Dalit voices, bringing their music into the city’s core. The state-supported Chennai Sangamam, later reborn as Namma Ooru Thiruvizha, spread performances of folk dance, street theatre and Tamil food stalls into parks, beaches, and temple grounds. Together, they challenged the idea that Tamil culture belonged only inside kutcheri halls. They carried the same message as the protests of the 1960s: Tamil had to be the language of inclusion, not exclusion.
Political battles between New Delhi and Madras continue today. The National Education Policy 2020 and its three-language formula revived old fears. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin rejected it, even at the cost of losing central funds. The Union has reportedly withheld allocations under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan. As a defiance, in 2025, the Tamil Nadu budget went further, replacing the ₹ symbol with the Tamil ரூ, a move that drew sharp criticism from the Centre for asserting state rights. Actor-turned-politician Vijay’s new party pledged loyalty to the two-language policy. Language choice is now political vocabulary that no party can ignore in Tamil Nadu.
Artists have also found their own ways to speak. In 2017, when his Tamil-heavy Wembley concert upset Hindi-speaking attendees, A.R. Rahman responded by announcing separate Hindi and Tamil concerts in Canada (TNM Staff 2017). In 2019, as debate raged over the National Education Policy, he tweeted the dictionary meaning of “autonomous” (Express News Service 2019). In 2021, at a film event, he walked off stage when an anchor asked him to speak in Hindi (TNM Staff 2021). Different gestures across different moments, but the message was the same: in a democracy, no single language can be allowed to push others aside.
Much of this story, however, remains only partly written. While this paper has traced how students helped shape democratic practice and how their protests reshaped the city, many questions remain. Why has 1965 been remembered so strongly, while 1967 has faded and no trace of 1969? Which colleges carried the heaviest weight and who were the student migrants that sustained these movements? How did caste, class or gender shape leadership? What role did working-class neighbourhoods play alongside the student marches? How did college administrations themselves negotiate between students, police, and governments during moments of violence?
There are also larger historical shifts. Until the late 1950s, Andhra was part of the old Madras State. Telugu was once the dominant language of the city, yet over time, Chennai came to stand for Tamil. How did this transition take place, and how do Tamil and Telugu identities continue to coexist in the city today? These questions cannot be fully answered here, but they point to the next steps. The politics of language in Tamil Nadu is not a closed chapter. It is a living field of research. A story still unfolding in the city’s streets, its colleges and its memories.
On February 19, 2025, residents of Ayapakkam in Chennai staged a quiet protest against Hindi imposition, drawing kolams outside their homes with messages such as “Welcome Tamil language” and “Stop Hindi imposition.” From burning trains in the 1960s to digital campaigns and street art today, Chennai has never been silent. Language here is not only a medium of communication but a way of defining identity, dignity, and autonomy.
The city’s spaces carry these echoes of student protest. The Marina, where young marchers once burned the Constitution, and the Secretariat, where processions stopped to voice demands, were not just backdrops but stages made political by student bodies. These memories survive in the built environment too. The Aranganathan subway, named after a young man who immolated himself for Tamil and the memorial near Basin Bridge for the anti-Hindi agitators, both ensure that defiance remains part of the city’s everyday landscape.
What Chennai shows us is that protests do not vanish; they sediment into memory, into place, into politics. Tamil Nadu and especially its capital has proven again and again that no top-down language policy can bulldoze its pluralism. This is not only Tamil versus Hindi. It is about the right of communities to choose, to coexist, and to speak in their own tongues.
I am deeply grateful to Justice K. Chandru and Dr. Kantharaj for sharing their memories and insights regarding 1960s language agitations. I owe a special debt to Jayanthi Kannappan, Shanthi Krishnan, and Sundararajan for connecting me with Dr. Kantharaj. I also thank V. Geetha and Professor Bhavani Raman for their generous feedback and comments on earlier drafts. I am grateful as well to Nadika for her discussions and reflections on this paper. I would especially like to acknowledge Vijay Gnanaprasad, who first conceived the idea for this project and encouraged the pursuit of research on Madras city, and Karthik (KREA University) for ensuring its execution. Despite all this support, any errors or shortcomings remain my own.
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© Alamu R., 2025. Published here with permission. All rights reserved.
This essay is part of the Chennai History Project - Iteration 1
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