Prof. Dr. Vedagiri Shanmugasundaram
My journey with the Justice Party, Dravidar Kazhagam, and other ‘mutations’ of the DK joint family began 80 years ago in 1942, says Vedagiri Shanmugasundaram, who at 97 is the oldest member of the DK. “I only remember my age when someone asks me,” he says. Shanmugasundaram’s first meeting with E V R Periyar, founder of the DK, was in 1948, during the anti-Hindi agitation at the Memorial Hall, Park Town. “I was a student representative of the Madras Law College,” says Shanmugasundaram, whose grandfather Vedachala Mudaliar was a member of the Justice Party.
“The speeches of Periyar, C N Annadurai, and the Justice Party manifesto, which focused on the welfare of the neglected inspired me to join the DK. I remember that Periyar would stand when he met party workers, and would only sit after they did. Such humility is rare in politics,” he says. Shanmugasundaram discontinued law, graduated in economics from Pachaiyappa’s College, Chennai, and has guided about 80 PhD students. “I want to get to 100 students,” he says. “Research and teaching economics keep me active.” Late chief minister M Karunanidhi had chosen him as the founder member of the first state planning commission in 1972. Shanmugasundaram, who is the editor of the New Economist, a periodical of global economists, is also an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Madras and a senior visiting member of Linacre College, University of Oxford.
As an educationist, says Shanmugasundaram, he regrets shifting education from the state list to the concurrent list in 1976. “It was a Himalayan blunder. State autonomy should strive to restore this right. Education is not propaganda, it is light in the darkness.” Shanmugasundaram says K Veeramani, president of DK, is taking the ‘self-respect’ movement worldwide. “He believes in mind power rather than muscle power. When Annadurai died and Kalaignar took over the reins of Tamil Nadu, he followed the vision of Periyar and Anna. Now, chief minister M K Stalin has begun his successful innings groomed in the same vision.”
Courtesy: The Times of India
