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Dear Mr. Udhayanidhi Stalin,
I was introduced to you at the Ambani wedding. You extended your hand. I declined to take it.
At the time, it was an instinct. After your latest utterances, I regard it as judgment well exercised.
There was a time when politicians competed to leave behind dams, universities, industries and contented citizens.
Today, some appear content to leave behind viral clips.
You have become an unfortunate symbol of that decline.
You, seem determined to convince India that vulgarity is the latest dialect of Dravidian politics.
What an astonishing decline.
Tamil Nadu is the land of Thiruvalluvar.
The land of Kamban.
The land of Bharati.
The land whose literary heritage is among the greatest in human civilization.
How tragic that one of its most visible political faces repeatedly makes headlines not for intellectual brilliance, administrative excellence or moral courage—but for saying something that requires an arrest the next morning.
History is unkind to leaders who mistake inherited power for earned stature.
Dynasties may hand over office.
They cannot hand over respect.
Respect has only one source.
Conduct.
Character.
Judgment.
The Indian epics and the „rakshashas“ mindset remind us of a timeless truth.
Adharma is not merely about great acts of injustice.
It begins when your arrogance convinces you that restraint is optional, that applause is the same as approval, and that authority places you beyond criticism.
Please remember, history has never been kind to that illusion.
Every age has produced men like you, intoxicated by power.
Every age has eventually sobered them.
The people of Tamil Nadu deserve leaders whose speeches inspire confidence rather than sexism and misogyny. .
They deserve leaders of opposition remembered for building institutions rather than breaking standards.
And they deserve a politics in which intelligence speaks louder than loose talk! .
You still have time to choose which legacy will bear your name.
Because history records many things.
But it has a particularly long memory for those who confused notoriety with greatness.
Unfortunately, the culture that has too often emerged from sections of the Dravidian movement has been one where provocation is mistaken for courage, personal insult for political debate, vulgarity for wit, and outrage for achievement.
This is not a new phenomenon.
It is a recurring pattern.
One recalls with sadness the infamous scenes in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly in 1991, when Jayalalithaa emerged alleging that she had been physically humiliated. Whatever one’s political loyalties, that episode remains one of the darkest moments in the history of India’s democratic institutions.
Civilised societies remember such moments not to perpetuate bitterness, but to ensure that standards never sink so low again.
Yet here we are.
Once again, headlines you created are dominated not by governance, education, healthcare, investment or jobs—but by language that diminishes the dignity of public office.
One cannot help asking:
Is this really the political legacy you wish to leave behind?The tragedy is not merely your words.
The tragedy is the audience.
Millions of young Tamils watch ministers more carefully than they read textbooks.
They learn what power sounds like.
They learn what leadership looks like.
If those in high office normalise crude language, personal ridicule and misogynistic undertones, society slowly begins to lower its own standards.
Cultures do not collapse overnight.
They decay by inches.
One vulgar speech.
One celebrated insult.
One defended indignity at a time.
History has never been kind to leaders who confuse notoriety with greatness.
Nor has Indian civilisation.
Our epics describe adharma not as a question of birth, caste or lineage, but as a pattern of conduct—arrogance replacing humility, derision replacing wisdom, power replacing principle, and ego drowning out self-restraint.
Ravana was learned.
Duryodhana was powerful.
Neither lacked intelligence.
Both lacked the wisdom to understand that power without restraint eventually consumes itself.
That is why the triumph of dharma is not merely a metaphor.
It is a civilisational principle.
Adharma may dominate the news cycle.
It may command microphones and applause.
But it never wins history’s final verdict.
Tamil Nadu deserves leaders whose speeches elevate public life instead of coarsening it.
It deserves ministers remembered for building institutions—not merely generating controversies.
It deserves a politics where ideas defeat ideas, not where decency is sacrificed at the altar of applause.
You are still young.
There is still time to decide whether you wish to be remembered as a statesman who rose above inherited political habits…
…or as the man who merely proved that dynasties can pass on power more easily than they pass on wisdom.
History is watching.
More importantly, the next generation is listening.
Yours sincerely,
Mohan Murti
Advocate • Industry Arbitrator • Author
Former Managing Director-Europe
Reliance Industries Ltd. Germany
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.