Kamaraj was born on July 15, 1902, into a family that was trying to make ends meet, just as Shastri but unlike the Mahatma. Upon his mother's death at the age of six, he was forced to drop out of school because she was unable to pay for his education. Kamaraj began working as a salesman in his uncle's clothes store when he was twelve years old, but he soon became interested in the nascent Indian nationalist movement. The nation was rocked by the news of the April 13, 1919, slaughter in Jallianwala Bagh in Punjab. Kamaraj's birthplace of Virudhunagar was no exception. After joining the Party at the age of sixteen, the future president of the Indian National Congress set about planning Congress meetings in Virudhunagar and the surrounding districts.In 1921, Kamaraj took part in the Non-Cooperation Movement. However, his family disapproved of his political engagement and sent him to work in his uncle's lumber shop in Trivandrum, now known as Thiruvananthapuram. However, Kamaraj's passion for politics never faded, and he joined the Travancore State Vaikom Satyagraha to support the untouchables' right to walk in the streets close to temples. Following the Vaikom Satyagraha's triumph in 1925, Kamaraj went back to Virudhunagar and dedicated himself entirely to the liberation movement.
When Kamaraj first met Sathyamurthy in 1923, he was one of the tallest leaders of the Madras Presidency, along with C. Rajagopalachari. Kamaraj, just twenty years old, took Sathyamurthy as his political mentor.This was going to come back to haunt him in later disputes with Sathyamurthy's fiercest opponent, Rajaji. Due to his involvement in the Salt Satyagraha Movement in 1930, Kamaraj received a two-year prison sentence. Kamaraj had already served more than 3000 days in British jails and been incarcerated six times by the time the "Quit India Movement" came to a conclusion.
With Sathyamurthy's assistance, Kamaraj was victorious in the 1940 Tamil Nadu Congress Committee presidential election, defeating Rajaji's opponent by a slim margin of 103 to 100 votes. This position would be his until 1954. By this point, Rajaji—the second-term Chief Minister—was no longer well-liked, and Kamaraj cleverly forced C.R. to resign on health reasons. In the subsequent election, Kamaraj emerged victorious over Rajaji's nominee, C. Subramanian, with a vote count of 93 to 41.
On April 13, 1954, Kamaraj became the new Chief Minister of Madras. This marked the start of what is known as Madras State/TN's "golden age" in its post-independence history. His first significant reform was making primary education free and required for all children living in rural regions, as well as making sure that every hamlet in the state had a school and a teacher. In an effort to motivate parents to enrol their kids in school, he instituted the Free Midday Meal Programme for kids living in both rural and urban areas. This was a truly novel concept that was refined by the MGR administration before becoming a major initiative in 1980 upon Indira Gandhi's return to office.This policy was further developed by the UPA government, and it is now a widely supported initiative that no government can abandon. Kamaraj transformed a state with a food deficit into one with a surplus of food by utilising irrigation power. However, the best was still to come. A young MLA named R. Venkataraman (later the President of India) was recruited by Kamaraj as his Minister for Industries, and he was given carte blanche to carry out his ambition of transforming Madras into a leading industrial state. The development of the steel, power, cement, and chemical industries throughout the state was done with care to ensure that no area received preferential treatment and that all factories and businesses were dispersed equally throughout the state.By leading by example personally and expecting his subordinates to do the same, he managed a pure and honest government. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who by the end of the 1950s had become known around the world as the "Moral Leader of Mankind," served as an inspiration to him personally.
The Grand Old Party's popularity had declined by 1963, the ninth year of Kamaraj's tenure as Chief Minister, and the sixteenth year of Nehru's tenure as Prime Minister. The Party lost three by-elections to the Lok Sabha in May 1963. Acharya Kripalani, Ram Manohar Lohia, and Minoo Masani—three prominent members of the opposition—were elected to Parliament despite the Congress's best efforts to keep them out of office. At this juncture, Nehru summoned Kamaraj to Hyderabad and requested that he provide Kamaraj's explanation for a plan he had previously submitted to revive the Party.All that Kamaraj had in mind when he submitted his proposal was Madras State. In order to offset the DMK's increasing influence in the state, he decided to resign as chief minister and focus on fortifying the Party's organisation there. However, Nehru reminded him that it should apply to all of India and requested him to bring up the matter at the upcoming CWC meeting. As per the idea, the Prime Minister would select the Union Ministers and Chief Ministers for Party work after they submitted their resignations to him.Pt. Nehru accepted the resignations of six Union ministers and six Chief Ministers and dubbed the scheme the "Kamaraj Plan." CMs included CB Gupta (UP), Biju Patnaik (Orissa), and Kamaraj (Madras). Union ministers included Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Jagjivan Ram. Nehru submitted his resignation as well, but Kamaraj and the CWC rejected it.
The Indian National Congress unanimously elected Kamaraj as its president shortly after the "Kamaraj Plan" was implemented, despite the fact that Lal Bahadur Shastri, the home minister at the time, was also on the short list of candidates. On May 27, 1964, Nehru passed away. It made sense that the President of the Congress, who served as an incredibly effective Chief Minister for ten years, would be taken seriously as a contender.But in true Kamaraj fashion, he dispelled all rumours about him: no English. Not in Hindi. How? Even though there were other candidates, Morarji Desai was the eventual winner thanks to the backing of the right wing and influential figures like Orissa Chief Minister Biju Patnaik, former INC President D. Sanjeevaya, and Jagjivan Ram. However, Shastri had the backing of both Kamaraj and Indira Gandhi, who had rejected to compete because she was, in the words of the legend, "emotionally ill-prepared," having lost to her father only a few days earlier. This is similar to how the Pandavas of mythology had Krishna on their side. Kamaraj acted quickly, meeting with roughly 250 MPs one-on-one in only two days to persuade them to back Shastri.Despite being completely outplayed, Morarji Desai decided to stay out of his cabinet and retreated in favour of Shastri, who was appointed prime minister. In less than two years, Kamaraj was destined to assume the role of "King Maker." After negotiating a peace treaty with Pakistan in the wake of the India-Pakistan War in 1965, during which he led the country valiantly with his inspirational catchphrase, "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan," Shastri passed away in Tashkent on January 11, 1966. This time, Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai were competing. Many leaders, including Kamaraj, begged Desai to step down, but he insisted on holding a contest.With the support of Kamaraj and others like Jagjivan Ram and YB Chavan, the CPP leader who succeeded Indira Gandhi won by a margin of 355 to 169 votes. However, Kamaraj's tenure as the "King Maker" was far from ended. The Congress saw a significant decline in its number of Lok Sabha members in the 1967 elections, and it lost control of up to eight states, including Tamil Nadu, the state where Kamaraj was born. Given the Congress' slim majority, Kamaraj recommended that PM Indira Gandhi choose Morarji Desai as the deputy prime minister in order to stabilise the party. Mrs. Gandhi accepted the proposition without hesitation, but she and the Kamaraj-led Syndicate would soon come to diverge.Despite becoming disillusioned after the Congress split in 1969, Kamaraj managed to win his Lok Sabha seat from Nagercoil by forming an alliance with Rajaji, his former opponent. He quickly repaired his relationship with Mrs. Gandhi, but Kamaraj was unable to bring the Congress back to life in the state due to his failing health and the ascent of MGR following the DMK split. The Indira Gandhi government posthumously awarded him the Bharat Ratna in 1976 after he passed away on October 02, 1975. Then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi unveiled his statue on Krishna Menon Marg in 1985. (The ceremony was organised by this writer, and it was chaired by Vice President R. Venkataraman at the time).
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