Muthuvel Karunanidhi (born June 3, 1924, Thirukkuvalai, near Thiruvarur, India—died August 7, 2018, Chennai) was an Indian politician and government official who was one of the founding members of the Dravidian Progressive Federation (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam; DMK) political party in 1949 and for decades was the party’s president. He also served several terms as the chief minister (head of the government) of Tamil Nadu state in southeastern India (1969–71; 1971–76; 1989–91; 1996–2001; and 2006–11).
Karunanidhi was born in the small village of Thirukkuvalai in what is now eastern Tamil Nadu and was a member of a caste of musicians. He left school early and began working as a playwright, an author, and, later, a screenwriter in the Tamil film industry. There he honed skills for promoting the Dravidian movement against Brahmins (the highest caste in the Hindu social order) that later contributed to his rise as a popular politician.
Karunanidhi also wrote plays, novels, and stories in Tamil. It was his play Thooku Medai (1946; “The Gallows Stage”) that earned him the moniker “Kalaignar” (“Artist”) from Tamil actor M.R. Radha For a time, the play was banned in India as subversive. Moving from stage to screen, Karunanidhi became a noted scriptwriter in the Tamil film industry. His script for Manthiri Kumari (1950; “The Minister’s Daughter”) helped make the actor M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) a star and a voice for the Dravidian movement. Rajakumari (1947; “The Princess”), Parasakthi (1952; “The Goddess”), Ponnar Shankar (2011; based on a folk story of two brothers, Ponnar and Shankar), and Ramanujar (2015–17; a serial based on the life of philosopher Ramanuja) were some of his many works as a writer or cowriter. As a writer, he was known for his wit and expert wordsmithing abilities, which led to his recognition as a master orator in the political realm.
Karunanidhi became involved in politics in his early teens while in school in Thiruvarur, beginning with public protests against the government’s imposition of the Hindi language on Tamil-speaking people. He formed organizations for the local youth and students and started a newspaper that eventually became Murasoli (“Drumbeat”), the DMK’s official newspaper. Karunanidhi became a close associate of DMK founder C.N. Annadurai and first received broader notice in Tamil politics when he led a 1953 protest in a town whose Tamil name had been replaced with one honoring an industrialist from northern India who had a Hindi name.
Running as an independent candidate, Karunanidhi was first elected to the legislative assembly of Madras state (the name for Tamil Nadu until 1968) in 1957. Beginning with the 1962 assembly polls (which included the DMK), he was continually reelected to that body. He became the party’s treasurer in 1961 and deputy leader of the opposition when the party entered the state assembly the following year. After the DMK won the 1967 assembly elections (with Karunanidhi soundly defeating his Indian National Congress [Congress Party] opponent), the party formed the government, and Annadurai became chief minister. Karunanidhi was named the minister for public works. Annadurai died in early 1969, and Karunanidhi succeeded him as the head of the DMK and as chief minister. His first tenure lasted only until January 1971, but a DMK victory in assembly elections later that year returned him to the chief minister’s office.
In 1972, however, a new party, the All India Dravidian Progressive Federation (All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, AIADMK), split from the DMK; it was led by the actor MGR, who had been Karunanidhi’s friend. Thereafter the two parties became bitter rivals and traded terms heading the state government. Both the DMK and the AIADMK used those tenures in power to settle scores with each other. In 1996 a Karunanidhi-led DMK government filed several charges of corruption against Jayalalitha Jayaram, the leader of the AIADMK, who then spent a short time in jail. In 2001, after the AIADMK returned to power following assembly elections that year, Karunanidhi was arrested and briefly detained on corruption charges related to highway construction projects. The case was later dismissed.
In 2006, at the age of 82, Karunanidhi became chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the fifth time, after a DMK-Congress alliance secured a majority of seats in assembly elections. The party had won on the promise that it would provide cheap rice to the citizenry and a free television for every household in the state. By 2011, however, such incentives had become inadequate to overcome allegations of corruption, and the party was thoroughly trounced by the AIADMK in assembly elections. Although Karunanidhi easily retained his seat, only 22 other DMK candidates won in the polling. He was by then in poor health, but he remained the DMK’s supreme leader and continued to command immense popularity in Tamil Nadu politics. After Karunanidhi’s death in 2018 of age-related illnesses, the DMK won the 2021 assembly elections, beating the AIADMK, and Karunanidhi’s son M.K. Stalin assumed office as chief minister of Tamil Nadu. His daughter, Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, has also been active in politics, serving as a member of India’s national parliament in the Rajya Sabha (2007–19) and in the Lok Sabha (2019– ), representing the Thoothukudi district.