K. Kamaraj

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K. Kamaraj ( Kumaraswami Kamaraj ; Tamil : காமராஜ் ; born July 15, 1903 in Virudhunagar , Tamil Nadu ; † October 2, 1975 in Madras ) was an Indian politician .

biography

Kamaraj, who came from the Tamil ethnic group , began his political career in 1918 when he was 15 years old when he organized fundraising for the Congress Party in his home district of Virudhunagar . Because of his political activities and participation in the salt march organized by Mohandas Gandhi in March 1930, he was imprisoned in prisons of the British colonial administration for more than seven years . After his release, he was elected Member of the Parliament (Legislative Assembly) of Madras in 1937 .

After India's independence in 1947, he was elected a member of the Lower House ( Lok Sabha ) in the general parliamentary elections in 1952 . On April 13, 1954, he was elected Chief Minister of Madras , now Tamil Nadu , to succeed C. Rajagopalachari , a nationally respected leader of the Congress Party. Unlike his predecessor, Kamaraj came from a lower caste , so his election as chairman of the state's Congress Party meant the descent of the Brahmins, who had previously dominated the politics of Madras. As Chief Minister, he sought personal contact with the population and visited almost all the villages in the state at least once. He also made a special contribution to improving the education system and combating illiteracy . On October 1, 1963, he resigned as Chief Minister after nine and a half years in office.

Statue of Kamaraj on Marina Beach in Chennai, showing his relation to youth and their education

A few months later he was elected President of the Indian National Congress for the first time at the Congress Party's congress in Bhubaneswar in 1964 and was re-elected at the following annual congresses in Durgapur in 1965 and in Jaipur in 1966 and 1967 . During this time, his name was associated with a revitalization of the party in the form that several party functionaries took over functions within the party leadership instead of offices in the legislative branch, although this so-called "Kamaraj plan" did not actually come from him. However, in the election of two prime ministers - Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 and Indira Gandhi in 1966 - he exercised considerable influence to the detriment of the opposing candidate Morarji Desai and is therefore considered a "kingmaker" in Indian politics. After he was defeated in his hometown Virudhunagar in his candidacy as a member of the parliament of Tamil Nadu in 1967, he also lost his office as President of the National Congress to S. Nijalingappa through the influence of Prime Minister Gandhi . In 1969 he tried together with a few other older party functions to disempower the prime minister. After this attempt failed, the Congress party split a little later into a Congress (R) led by Indira Gandhi and a smaller Congress (O) . Kamaraj joined the last.

In 1971, however, he was re-elected as a member of the Lok Sabha in a by-election and in 1975, a few months before his death, he was re-elected again in the Nagercoil constituency .

In 1976 he was posthumously lost to the Bharat Ratna , the highest civil order in India. The terminal for domestic flights at Chennai Airport was also named "Kamaraj Terminal" in honor. There is a statue of Kamaraj on Chennai's city beach, Marina Beach .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Economic Expert  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.economicexpert.com