DMK chief M. K. Stalin while addressing a gathering at a wedding reception on Sunday, decided to ask people to give their children Tamil names. He made this appeal while reading out the names of the couple, Aparajithan and Preethi.

This news as a result, caught the attention of various twitter users who reacted to this:



One journalist wasn’t amused at the prospect of influencing and possibly dictating people’s personal lives:



Clearly aware about the paradox of his appeal, Stalin acknowledged that he may be asked about his name. To defend against such questions, Stalin claimed that Karunanidhi actually wanted to name him Ayyadurai, after Periyar, who was called Ayya and Durai which was the birth name of DMK founder C N Annadurai.

But as per Stalin, on the day of his birth, Karunanidhi was incidentally attending a condolence ceremony over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s death when the news of his son’s birth reached him. At the condolence meet, Karunanidhi then proceeded to announce that he is naming his son after the Communist leader.

Such a choice to name one’s child Stalin, apart from upsetting the Tamil ethos, possibly highlights the sympathy of the DMK top brass with a Soviet leader infamous for his brutality. As per various Russian accounts, a whopping 20 million people are said to have perished under Joseph Stalin’s regime, after being at the receiving end of labour camps, forced collectivisation, famine and executions.

Besides these measures, Stalin had also initially colluded with the Nazis during the latter’s Polish invasion in 1939 and at the end of the war, the Communist soldiers under Stalin have been alleged to have raped at least 2 million German women.

This isn’t the only time DMK’s Stalin has made a name for himself on Social Media. We had reported how he had decided to block a BJP youth leader, whom he followed on twitter, as the latter decided to write and debunk certain allegations spread by Stalin, to create an anti-Hindi debate in the state.