Travancore Tamil Nadu Congress

The Kingdom of Travancore was a princely state of India. Its population included an ethnic Malayali majority and a Tamil minority; the later suffered linguistic discrimination in education,[1] and leaders of Tamil organisations expressed concern about disadvantage from lack of economic development.[2][3] The Tamil minority formed several political parties, one of them being Travancore Tamil Nadu Congress.[4]

The party's original platform was the formation of a separate Tamil state within Travancore.[5] The party contested the first Travancore constituent assembly election in 1948 and won 14 seats in the 120-seat legislature.[6]

In 1949, as part of the integration of India, Kingdom of Travancore merged with Kingdom of Cochin, another princely state, to form Travancore-Cochin.[7] Rajpramukh became the Governor. The Travancore Tamil Nadu Congress party won 9[8] or 10[9] seats in the first Travancore-Cochin assembly election. In the assembly, it supported the Indian National Congress to form a ruling coalition. It withdrew this support after 19 months because of differences with Congress over policy regarding Tamil-speaking parts of the state.[8] In the second assembly election in 1954, TTNC won 12 seats.[6] In the same year, TTNC called for the merger of Tamil-dominated taluks such as Thovalai, Agasteeswaram, Kalkulam, Vilavancode, Neyyatinkara, Shenkottai, Devikulam and Peerumadu with Madras state.[10] In August 1954, a street protest organised by the TTNC in support of these mergers took a violent turn. Police attempting to maintain control opened fire on protesters. Four people were killed and about a dozen sustained injuries.[11]

Following the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission, the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 restructured Indian regional jurisdictions. In this process, some Tamil regions (present day Kanyakumari district[lower-alpha 1]) of Travancore-Cochin merged with Madras state (present day Tamil Nadu[lower-alpha 2]) on 1 November 1956.[12][14] Other Tamil-majority areas remained in Travancore–Cochin, including Neyyatinkkara South, Nedumangad East, Devikulam and Peerumedu. Following this reorganisation, the Travancore Tamil Nadu Congress successfully fielded a candidate in the Travancore–Cochin state election; once in the Assembly, he lobbied for amalgamation of further Tamil areas into the Tamil Nadu state.[15]

After the merger of the regions, the leaders dissolved the party in 1957 and joined the ruling Congress party.[16]