Back during the Emergency days, when the relationship between the Congress government at the Centre and the DMK government in Tamil Nadu were sour, K. Rajaram of the DMK who was the then Labour and Housing Minister of Tamil Nadu had asked a U.S. diplomat in Chennai if the U.S. would offer assistance in case the State decided to secede from India.
The U.S. representative had said that “this was an internal affair of India” and that the US would not support such a move.
The Wikileaks document quotes the representative saying “This was an internal affair of India and we supported the territorial integrity of India and other countries”.
The diplomat, who had met Rajaram at his residence in 1976, further asked if the DMK regime was seriously considering seceding from India to which Rajaram is reported to have said “No, not at the highest levels”. He said that no such move was in the offing but young people within the party were talking about secession.
Mr. Rajaram is reported to have said “these younger people are saying that the USSR and other communist countries are backing Mrs. Gandhi in her efforts to kill democracy here; if this succeeds, communist influence will grow, and Tamil Nadu should secede”.
The US diplomat notes in the cable that he is inclined to take what Rajaram said at face value which is that, though the younger members of the party talk of possible independence if the situation in India were to deteriorate, the higher echelons were not seriously considering it.
The cable also gives details about a meeting between the diplomat and a “local educator” who is said to have told the then Chief Minister (Karunanidhi) that if the rest of India were to come under Communist-influenced dictatorship, the US might help, to which Mr. Karunanidhi had replied that US would not take on anything in Asia after Vietnam.
A separate Tamil Nadu was a key demand of the Dravida Kazhagam (DK) under E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker also known as Periyar. DK is the parent organization of DMK. It is to be noted that the DMK under C.N. Annadurai had given up demands of secession in the wake of the Indo-China war when the Government of India passed a strong anti-sedition law in 1963. That this conversation was happening 13 years later, is also something to be noted.