As the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam awaits its most crucial
election result, Bishwanath Ghosh tracks down the house where
the party was born 62 years ago  I have the address in my pocket
— the photocopy of a single-column report from the September 19,
1949 issue of The Hindu — and now I have to search for the
house. As the autorickshaw deposits me outside the Madras High
Court on NSC Bose Road, I pull out the piece of paper to confirm
the house number. The report begins:  MADRAS, Sept. 17: The
Working Committee of the Dravidian Federation met this morning
at No. 7, Coral Merchant Street, George Town and passed a no-
confidence resolution in their leader, Mr. E. V. Ramaswami
Naicker. The Committee further resolved to form a new party
called the Dravidian Progressive Federation with Mr. C. N.
Annadurai as General Secretary.  Thus the DMK was born, not at
Robinson Park in Royapuram, as widely believed, but in a house
in George Town, where a group of Dravida Kazhagam leaders met on
the morning of September 17, 1949 a