The Congress has called for a ban on the pro-DMK propaganda film Parasakthi for distorting history, defaming Indira Gandhi, and more importantly spotlighting DMK leader Karunanidhi as a hero. A few days ago, Congress leader Trichy Velusamy, in an interview with a YouTube channel, questioned why no one spoke about the farmers agitation that took place in a village near Tiruppur.
In the interview he said, “You are still thinking that they are protecting Tamils in that film. After he came to power, after Karunanidhi became Chief Minister, within just two or three years, do you know that there was a farmers’ agitation? All over Tamil Nadu there was a big agitation. In how many places did police firing take place? You may not know because of your age. On a single specific day, in only two villages there was police firing and 25 people died. Those two villages are Pethanayakkanpalayam and Perumalnallur. Perumalnallur is a small village near Tiruppur, which might have grown a bit now. The other village, Pethanayakkanpalayam, is a small village near Attur in Salem district. At that time in the Assembly, from Pethanayakkanpalayam 13 or 14 people had died. In the Assembly, a Congress MLA said that in that village, farmers who were protesting had been wrongly shot dead. What the Chief Minister replied is still there in the Assembly records. He said, “The Congress party member is giving wrong information. The dead are not farmers; they are anti‑social elements. They came to attack the police station. To protect the station and themselves, the police fired back, and they died in that firing.” The funny part is, until that very minute there was not even a police station in that village. People who indulge in such fraud and thuggery, what qualification do they have to make this kind of film? Reality is something else.”
பராசக்தி எடுத்தவனுக்கு ஒரு மிதி… கருணாநிதியின் வரலாறு என்ன இப்படி நாறுது.. எத்தனை அப்பாவி உயிர கொன்னுருக்கானுங்க😳 – @TrichyVelusamy உண்மையான காமராஜர் தொண்டன் 👌🏻 pic.twitter.com/IUzd7ZmO0p
— priya (@PriyankaSmile01) January 13, 2026
Now let us take a look at this piece of history from 1972 that Dravidianists do not want to talk about.
More than five decades later, residents of Pethanaickenpalayam continue to remember 5 July 1972, as the day the then DMK government under Chief Minister M Karunanidhi ordered police firing on protesting farmers, killing nine of them during an agitation against a marginal electricity tariff hike.
The incident occurred after the Karunanidhi-led government increased the power tariff by two paise per unit, raising it from nine paise to eleven paise per unit. Farmers across Tamil Nadu had launched protests demanding a rollback, citing severe financial distress and rising input costs.
What Happened
According to P Periyar Mannan, a history researcher and writer from Vazhapadi, hundreds of farmers assembled at the Pethanaickenpalayam union office on 5 July 1972, as part of the statewide agitation.
As the protest intensified, police initially resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd. Mannan stated that this was followed by police firing, resulting in the deaths of nine farmers on the spot.
The farmers killed in the firing were identified as Muttasu (40), N Vivekanandan (35), K Arumugam (26), Mani (24), S Pichamuthu (23), S Muthusamy (22), N Santhamurthy (21), R Govindarajan (15), and P Ramasamy (age not recorded).
‘Entire District Went Silent’
Pon Venkatesan, a history researcher from Aragalur, said he was eight years old when the incident took place. He recalled that news of the firing spread rapidly, plunging the entire Salem district into fear.
He stated that following the police action, dead silence prevailed across the district, with residents afraid to step out of their homes. Children were barred from going outside, and even elderly residents hesitated to leave for work, fearing further violence.
Families Left Destitute
K. Saranya, a family member of Vivekanandan, one of the farmers killed, said her grandfather was shot dead when her father was just five years old. She said the family struggled to survive after his death, with no meaningful state support forthcoming.
She also noted that while Ramasamy’s body was buried at Narasingapuram near Attur, the remaining eight farmers were buried together on the banks of the Vasista River at Pethanaickenpalayam.
Memorial and Annual Remembrance
Two years after the incident, villagers erected a memorial at the site where the farmers were shot dead. According to Salem-based history enthusiast Esan D Ezhil Vizhiyan, the people of Pethanaickenpalayam continue to revere the nine farmers as martyrs who died resisting an unjust tariff hike.
He stated that every year on July 5, villagers and family members gather at the memorial without fail to offer prayers and pay tribute to the farmers killed in the police firing.
More than fifty years on, the Pethanaickenpalayam firing remains one of the starkest reminders of state violence against farmers under the Karunanidhi government, triggered by a protest against a mere two-paisa electricity tariff hike – an episode that continues to live on in local memory, even as it remains largely absent from mainstream political narratives.
Source: Times of India
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