By V. Jagannathan,IANS,
Idinthakari (Tamil Nadu) : Not many even in Tamil Nadu would have heard about this small fishing village in Tirunelveli district named Idinthakari, literally meaning damaged coast, till the villagers here started their protest against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP).
The protest not only shook the entire Indian nuclear establishment but also the relationship between the Tamil Nadu and central governments.
The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is building two 1,000 MW reactors with Russian technology and equipment in Kudankulam, around 650 km from state capital Chennai.
The first unit is expected to go on stream in December. The project is estimated to cost around Rs.13,000 crore.
But people in Idinthakari are up against it fearing a nuclear accident and its long term impact on the population.
When queried about the name, the people of this coastal village located near Kudankulam say the original name was Vidinthakarai, or dawning coastline.
“The name got corrupted not during the British rule but after (independence in) 1947,” M. Udayakumar, a fish trader in Kudankulam, told IANS.
No one was able to explain why and when the name got corrupted and why the corrupted name was not corrected.
Villagers to whom IANS spoke uniformly said the original name was Vidinthakarai.
Terming the village as Vidinthakarai, Udayakumar said its population of around 7,500 belong to the fishing community and do not know any other vocation. The majority of the population are Christians while there are around 70 Hindu families in Vidinthakarai.
“Many, including me, got converted to Hinduism in 1967,” he said.
Udayakumar said the Vidinthakarai people have been against the nuclear power project since 1988. “We took out a big procession in Kanyakumari on May 1, 1989. There was police firing in which one person was killed and my brother was one of the two who were injured,” Udayakumar said.
S. Sivasubramanian, coordinator of the People’s Rights Movement that is leading the protest against the Kudankulam plant, told IANS: “It was a procession by fishermen and scrapping of the nuclear power project was one of the demands.”
Citing the massive support the protest against the KNPP is getting, Sivasubramanian said people are now hoping for a new dawn on their coastline.