1937 Provincial Election
Ahead of the 1937 elections to the assembly of the Madras Presidency, Thevar enlisted youths from the Mukkulathor communities to work for the Congress. His activities created worries for the Justice Party government, which forbade him to travel outside of the Ramnad district and to make speeches in public.
In February 1937 Thevar contested the assembly election himself, as a candidate in the Ramanathapuram constituency. He had a powerful opponent, the Raja of Ramnad. However, Thevar won a landslide victory with 11 942 votes against 6 057 for the Raja.
Following the election the Congress formed a government in the Presidency. Thevar had high hopes that the new Congress ministry would revoke the Criminal Tribes Act. But the new Chief minister, C. Rajagopalachari, did not fulfil those hopes.
Read more about this topic: U. Muthuramalingam Thevar
Famous quotes containing the words provincial and/or election:
“In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn’t developed space travel were mere prehistory—horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene—and something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)