Content: E. V. Ramasamy, popularly addressed as Periyar or ‘The Great One’, laid the ideological foundations of modern Tamil politics and social life

Due to severe criticism from the press and the public, MGR dropped the bill.120 The DMK newspapers like ‘Dravida Nadu’ and ‘Murasoli’ and the magazines like ‘Mutharam’, once too often carried deliberately exaggerated reports and commentaries on MGR’s donations. The issue of Mutharam carried a photograph of MGR on its front cover with ‘Comrade of the Poor’. The story inside the magazine notified that MGR donated ten thousand rupees for the people who were affected by fire. It pleased the hearts of the poor as he promised to give rupees one lakh every year to construct permanent houses for the poor.121 When MGR was in hospital in 1984, the party newspapers from time to time put forward the argument that surely MGR would survive.