Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi is at the receiving end following the omission of ‘Dravidam’ from the customary Tamil anthem, sung at the golden jubilee of DD Tamil clubbed with the Hindi month celebration on Friday.

Within hours of the event, presided by Ravi, was over, Chief Minister MK Stalin slammed the Governor questioning whether he is ‘Governor or Aryan’.

“It is a violation of the law of Tamil Nadu to sing the invocation in praise of mother Tamil by leaving out Dravidam,” a furious Stalin posted on ‘X’. Demanding the recall of Ravi for being unfit to hold the high office, Stalin charged him with acting according to his whims by throwing to the wind established law.

“Will the Governor, suffering from Dravidian allergy, dare to allow singing of the national anthem skipping the word Dravidam from it? In the guise of celebrating Hindi, he is denigrating the unity and integration of the country and its different ethnicities,” Stalin said adding that it has become habitual for Ravi to wantonly insult the sentiments of the Tamil people.

The Tamil Thai Vazthu is an invocation composed by Tamil scholar P Meenakshisundaram in 1891 and was made mandatory to be sung at the commencement of public functions and events – Government and educational institutions – the Karunanidhi government in 1970.

The present DMK government of Stalin, in December 2021 had declared it as the State Anthem’, making it mandatory for all to stand except the disabled while it is being sung. Also, playing audio record of the same has been barred and instead trained singers should sing it.

The decision to declare it as the state anthem was taken in the wake of it not sung at the convocation at IIT-Madras. And making everyone stand while it is sung followed a Madras High Court judgment which said there is no executive order or statutory rule to enforce it.

The judgement was in a case related to Kanchi Sankaracharya, Vijayendra Saraswati remaining seated while the song was sung in 2018.

At the DD event, those who were singing it skipped the entire line including the word Dravidam and were fumbling at that. The line omitted was: The ideal Dravidian land, the pride of Deccan’. The Governor too was seen singing it.

Later, addressing the audience, Ravi, known to debunk the Dravidian ideology as an expired one, said there have been secessionist attempts for the past 50 years in Tamil Nadu. No wonder, it had invited the wrath of the ruling DMK and the Congress as well as other parties and Tamil activists.