Merger of Kanyakumari with Madras State

The present-day Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu state in India was originally a part of the Travancore-Cochin state. Between 1945 and 1956, especially after the Government of India announced plans to reorganize states along linguistic lines, the people of Tamil-majority Kanyakumari campaigned for its inclusion in the Madras State (later Tamil Nadu) instead of the Malayalam-majority Kerala state. In Tamil, the campaign is also known as Therkku Ellai Porattam ("South Frontier Struggle").

The campaign was successful: Agastheeswaram, Kalkulam, Thovalai, Vilavancode and Shenkottai taluks were merged with Madras as per the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. The first four were combined to form the present-day Kanyakumari district, while Shenkottai was merged with the Tirunelveli district.

Tamils lived in large numbers in the Thovalai, Agastheeswaram, Kalkulam, Vilavancode, Neyyatinkarai, sengottai, Devikulam and Peermedu taluks of erstwhile Tranvancore State. In the Tamil regions, Malayalam was the official language and there were only a few Tamil-medium schools. So the Tamils met many hardships. Travancore State Government continued rejecting the genuine requests of Tamils.

During that period 'Travancore State Congress' favoured the idea of uniting all the Malayalam speaking regions and the formation of an 'Unified Kerala'. In protest against this idea, many Tamil leaders vacated the party. They gathered together at Nagercoil on 16 December 1945 under the leadership of Sam Nathaniel and formed the new political party 'All Travancore Tamilian Congress'. That party was continuously compelling for the merger of Tamil regions in Travancore with Tamil Nadu.

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