Servility and sycophancy was on display from the DMK on the occasion of Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s 47^th birthday on Wednesday, with party leaders holding events across the state besides carrying out advertisements in the party organ, Murasoli, and other dailies as well as some weeklies.

This is his first birthday after assuming office as Dy CM and he is also the ruling DMK’s Youth Wing Secretary. Many party district units have publicised month-long events to mark the occasion since it has become an important day in the DMK’s annual calendar.

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Early in the morning, he visited his parents – Chief Minister MK Stalin and Durga Stalin – at their residence and received their blessings. Then he followed the ritual of paying floral tributes to DMK icons, CN Annadurai and his grandfather, M Karunanidhi, at their memorials on the Marina seafront. He also paid floral tributes to the iconoclast social reformer Periyar EV Ramasamy at the headquarters of the Dravidar Kazhagam, the rationalist non-Brahmin party and ideological mentor of the DMK.

Besides visiting the late Karunanidhi’s Gopalapuram residence, he also sought the blessings of Rajathi Ammal, second wife of Karunanidhi and mother of his aunt Kanimozhi MP, at her CIT colony house. However, Kanimozhi, who is in Delhi for the winter session of parliament took to her ‘X’ handle to express her wishes.

The advertisements in Murasoli and other publications eulogised him as the future of the Dravidian movement and some have christened his birthday as a day of the poor’s empowerment.

Borrowing the famed sentence of Annadurai, national award winning lyricist and poet, Vairamuthu, effusive in his praise said, “Brother, come and hold the reins of leadership”. And, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) president Thol Thirumavalavan MP, a key ally of the DMK, in an ‘X’ post said “Your contribution for Dravidam is very much necessary. To the ideological grandson of Kalaignar (Karunanidhi), wishing success to defeat the creeping sanatan enemy.”