The final speech, in which he discussed the Dravidian self-respect philosophy upon which the party was founded, took him one and a half hours to deliver.

According to books on the DMK's birth and evolution, 75 years ago, the young leaders who convened the meeting in Chennai that led to the formation of the present ruling party in Tamil Nadu experienced a rollercoaster of emotions.

The leaders were filled with sadness, bitterness, euphoria, and hopefulness as they embarked on this political journey.

They had just parted company with the Dravidian icon and their father figure, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, who was adamantly opposed to their idea of becoming part of electoral politics and usurping power on behalf of the socially and culturally marginalised segments of Tamil society.

They had just walked out of the five-year-old Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), which was moulded in 1944 as a reform movement from the remnants of the Justice Party, or South Indian Liberal Federation, founded in 1917, and the Self-Respect Movement, a vibrant collective mentored by Periyar since 1925.

For the inheritors of the Dravidian ideology that evolved from the Justice Party, Ramasamy was Thanthai, or father, who never believed in electoral politics or the benefits of being in power.

On the other hand, Anna termed himself the foster son of Periyar, who initiated major social transformations in the south, first as a Congress leader and then as a Davidian icon, who uplifted the morale of those being pushed to the margins by the caste hierarchy. However, they had many differences, and the major one was related to power politics.

According to `Rule of the Commoner,' DMK's political history between 1949 and 1967, authored jointly by Rajan Kurai Krishnan, Ravindran Sriramachandran, and V M S Subagunarajan, the remarriage of 70-year-old Ramasamy with 30-year-old Maniammai also contributed to the followers' parting of ways, to which the father figure responded with extreme sarcasm.

Ramasamy claimed he sought a reliable successor to manage the organisation and the movement through his marriage to Maniammai, who was active with him in all the uprisings. On the other hand, Anna found it to be a lack of trust in him.

When Ramasamy termed India's independence as an affirmation of North Indian suzerainty over South India, Anna disagreed, saying it was the end of colonial rule and an occasion to celebrate.

"Despite all these differences, Ramasamy and Anna found common ground in fighting casteist hegemony. Though DMK made occasional compromises on its secular ideology and social justice-based visions in all these years of experimenting with power politics, the party deserves credit for transforming the living standards of the people as well as ending social discrimination significantly. Even Ramaswamy had to correct his perception of the party after it attained power," said C. Lakshmanan, a political observer and a former faculty member of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). Ramasamy used his final five years to praise DMK for carrying forward the social justice legacy.

The party will mark its 75th anniversary on September 18, a history of seven decades marked by mass mobilisation, loss of public confidence, recurring splits, and political survival.

On many occasions, fellow travellers accused it of watering down the core ideologies, especially when striking an alliance with the BJP at the national level to make A B Vajpayee prime minister.

It also faced national-level isolation, with a commission that investigated Rajiv Gandhi's assassination blaming its leaders for providing fertile land to the LTTE in the state.

A similar kind of isolation emerged during the period of the second UPA government when DMK ministers in the union cabinet faced serious corruption charges related mainly to awarding the 2G spectrum. Now, the party is attempting heavily to shrug off those dubious legacies. At the national level, the party has become a trusted alliance partner of the Congress-led opposition India alliance. Through its able administration and steadfast commitment to secular and inclusive ideals, the M.K. Stalin-led Tamil Nadu government is also helping the DMK recover from the past credibility crisis.

The party, which faced major splits orchestrated by late leader M.G. Ramachandran and present MDMK leader Vaiko during the days when Stalin's father M. Karunanidhi led from the front, is now emerging as a force to be reckoned with by uniting all the major secular, minority, and Dalit formations in the state.

According to Chennai-based political observer Arul Ezhilan, Tamil Nadu continues to be ranked among the best states in the country in terms of human development indicators, and the credit goes to the DMK governments led by Anna, Karunanidhi, and Stalin.

"It aggressively pushed the social justice concept and valiantly fought upper caste dominance. The movement also alleviated poverty through food subsidies and women's empowerment by initiating gender-neutral workplaces. The party also plays a constructive role in maintaining communal harmony by fighting the agents of hate," he said.

It took eight years for the DMK to plunge into electoral politics. In 1957, when Congress was ruling in the then-Madras state, it won 15 of the 112 assembly seats it contested. At that time, it also won two parliamentary seats.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) did not officially recognise the Dravidian party during the 1957 election. The party's candidates had to run as independents and were not united under the rising sun symbol now associated with it. Many candidates had to contest the election using the rooster symbol.

In 1962, the ECI officially recognised the DMK as a political party and assigned it the rising sun symbol. The inspiration for the party symbol came from the leader and scriptwriter M. Karunanidhi's 1950s play 'Udaya Surya' (Rising Sun in Tamil), which had been banned. The DMK's symbol symbolises the 'rising' spirit of the Dravidian people.

"Since 1967, when Anna formed the first DMK government in Tamil Nadu, the social reform agenda has been at the heart of the state's governance. The DMK legalised self-respecting marriages in 1967 that disregarded caste and religious traditions. Madras became Tamil Nadu in 1969. Women were given equal succession rights in 1989. The state created inter-caste housing communities, or samathuvapurams in 1998. Legislation to tear down caste barriers within the priesthood was passed in 2006. Mid-day meals, maternity benefits, and women's self-help groups can all be traced back to the policy platforms of the DMK," said S Vijayalakshmi, a Chennai-based poet and activist.

But critics point to the recent surge in caste and "honour"-based crimes, religious bigotry and social disparities in Tamil Nadu and term them as a great challenge to the DMK and its radical politics to face within the coming days.

"The future of the Dravidian Movement lies in how its successors find a common cause in a society where identities have begun to trump ideologies. The party won influence in Tamil Nadu by fighting the imposition of Hindi and Hindutva. Now there are renewed challenges in the form of the same old symbols of hegemony," said Lakshmanan.

Still, he said the Dravidian movement must be celebrated for being the first backward-class mobilisation in the country, which has created historic social change and political empowerment.

Since parting ways in 1972, then party treasurer M G Ramachandran and his close aid J Jayalalithaa posed a severe challenge to DMK by floating AIADMK.

In 1977, MGR came to power and remained undefeated until he died in 1987. He somewhat diluted the rationalist and anti-Brahmin agenda at DMK’s core, opting for welfarism as party ideology.

Later, Jayalalithaa became his successor and kept DMK and Karunanidhi out of power for a long.

Now, the AIADMK is on a steady decline without a charismatic leader, and Vaiko and his splinter group have become part of the DMK alliance. The BJP is making rapid strides in the state, and its vote percentage turned double digits in the last parliament election.

"Stalin is taking many measures to reinvent the core of Dravidian ideology to keep the citadel intact. But the party is now almost a family affair that overrides the ideological and political concerns. Stalin, who inherited the party from his father, is now grooming his son Udayanidhi as a successor. Seventy-five years ago, the founders had not thought that the party would one day turn into a family affair," said M Thiruvengadam from the Chennai Social Scientists Collective.