MK Stalin: The Boy From Chennai’s Marina Beach

Stalin was born March 1, 1953. Stalin died March 5, 1953. He was 74 years old.

It sounds confusing. It isn’t. This is the story of the first Stalin.

The ‘man of steel’

A boy was born in Madras (now Chennai) 73 years ago. His father wanted to call him Ayyadurai, to honour two of Tamil Nadu’s most revered leaders – EV ‘Periyar’ Ramsamy and CN Annadurai. One was a fiery activist whose intellectual legacy still defines the Tamil social and cultural identity, and the other was his trusted lieutenant who created a political force built around that legacy – an anti-Brahmin social awareness campaign that birthed the Dravidian movement.

Instead, at a condolence meeting at Marina Beach, the father spontaneously named his son for Joseph Stalin, a ‘man of steel’, a dictator feared and revered who died just days before.

On the shores of the Bay of Bengal, Tamil Nadu welcomed Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin.

The father, M Karunanidhi (File).

Today, he is Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister and the leader of the Dravidian Munnetra Kazhagam, the party Annadurai founded, Periyar guided, and his father – MK Karunanidhi – led as a five-time Chief Minister until his death in 2018.

And he is set to steer the DMK another election win.

The ‘man of power’

“I say with firm confidence: we will win this election and form the government again. The people have already decided this,” Stalin told DMK workers in early April, a week before voting.

On May Day, three days before vote-counting, he said: “There is no doubt about victory. I am saying this not on the basis of exit polls but on the basis of feelings of party workers I see.”

Since taking charge of the DMK in 2018, Stalin has overseen thumping wins in back-to-back federal elections – the party-led alliance won 38 of 39 seats in 2019 and scored a clean sweep in 2024 – and demolished arch rivals AIADMK in the 2021 state poll, picking up 159 of 234 seats.

And it has transitioned from a state-level actor to a national player, with a leader who made himself heard in Delhi – the champion of federalism in a fierce suqabble with the ruling BJP over devolution of taxes, centre-state funding, and delimitation – and who wrote himself into history as the Tamil language’s torchbearer in the emotive ‘Hindi imposition’ wars.

But the challenge is different this time and it doesn’t come from the AIADMK, the DMK’s political counterweight, or even the BJP, which hasn’t yet cracked the Dravidian puzzle. It comes from the world of cinema, the other constant in the state.

The actor, Vijay (File).

Vijay and his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam have emerged as the new threat – a superstar actor who threatens to upset a 62-year-old applecart by giving voters something different. But then, the road here was never easy.

The family business

It began when he was 14.

As a young boy Stalin worked under his uncle, Murasoli Maran, and campaigned for the 1967 Madras State election. The party, then led by Annadurai, handed the incumbent Congress a drubbing, winning 179 seats. That was the last time a non-Dravidian party ruled Tamil Nadu.

Four years later, the boy became a man, and delivered a widely acclaimed speech at the 1971 Anti-Hindi Imposition Conference in Coimbatore. With his father and senior party leaders looking on approvingly, he declared himself ready to “make any sacrifice for Tamil”.

In January 1976, during the Emergency and after the DMK government of the time was dismissed, the police turned up at the family’s home in Chennai’s Gopalapuram.

Stalin spent months in jail; he later testified “I was beaten, slapped, and kicked”.

By the early 1980s, it was apparent Stalin was being groomed for bigger things.

A young MK Stalin leading a protest march. Photo: DMK

Karunanidhi had realised the need for fresh blood in the party. Periyar’s Dravidian ideology sustained the DMK for years, but it needed also to look ahead, create a future generation attuned to that philosophy.

And so, in July, the DMK youth wing was formally created with Stalin in charge. He held the post for over four decades before ceding it to his son, Udhayanidhi, a mirror of his rise.

His first test. He passed. The ranks swelled and the leadership persona emerged.

Then came a loss. He made his electoral debut in the 1984 Assembly election and was defeated from Chennai’s Thousand Lights. The early years were uncertain.

But in 1996 the Stalin chapter took firm root; he won the Thousand Lights seat by over 44,000 votes and held it for a decade before shifting seamlessly to the Kolathur seat.

And in 1996 he was elected Mayor on the back of his ‘singara (beautiful) Chennai’ vision.

That was his second test and he passed that too, credited with overhauling the city’s infrastructure and transport. The third was in 2009; he was appointed Deputy Chief Minister, directly under his father, and by then the heir to that Dravidian throne.

The brother, MK Alagiri (File).

Victory in a fraternal battle – the stand-off with elder brother Alagiri that could have torn the party in two had it not been for the first-born’s expulsion in 2014 – cemented that position. But it would take 12 years more for the deputy to become a chief.

The in-between years

From 2011 to 2021 J Jayalalithaa and the AIADMK reigned supreme.

The rival, J Jayalalithaa (File).

She won in 2011 and 2016. She was a riddle neither Stalin nor the DMK could solve. And so he waited. Not even the Leader of the Opposition. The DMK crumbled in 2011. It won only 23 seats. Stalin’s ambitions were thwarted. The work began.

In 2013 Stalin was named his father’s heir. It was not a surprise. Alagiri, the brother, was expelled. It was not a surprise. The DMK was routed in the 2014 election. It was not a surprise.

The rebuild was going on. In 2016 Stalin launched a statewide tour – to boost the party’s profile and his own. He still lost. But the gap narrowed: 172 seats behind in 2011, only 38 in 2016.

The rebuild was nearly over. A second state tour in 2017. Grassroots foundations laid and networks strengthened. Then Karunanidhi died. In 2018 Stalin took over the DMK.

Seven years in political wilderness. Stalin regrouped and charged again.

His first test came within months. The question was the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The answer was 31. The second came two years later, in 2021. The answer was 158. The third in 2024. The answer was 39. This was Stalin’s DMK. It won.

The boy named on Marina Beach had become the man who owns it.