Naam Tamilar Katchi (India) (original) (raw)

Naam Tamilar Katchi ("We Are Tamils Party") is a Tamil nationalist party which was originally founded in 1958 by the lawyer S. P. Adithan Nadar (also known as Adithanar), with the goal of creating an independent Tamil state, which would comprise Tamil-speaking areas of India and Sri Lanka. Following poor election results, the party allied itself with the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and eventually merged into it in 1967. In 2009, it was refounded by former movie director and actor Senthamizhan Seeman under the name Naam Tamilar Iyakkam ("We Are Tamils Organization") and readopted the original name in 2010. The refounded party and its leader have been known for strong support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Party flag is red, charged with the tiger head in proper colors surrounded with golden rays [1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. It is clearly derived from the flag of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam but omits the rifles and tiger's paws and replaces the circle of bullets with simple rays. There is also a vertical variant of the flag, which seems to be rarely used [9]. The size of emblem may vary somewhat; it is usually smaller when the words *NAAM TAMILAR* are inscribed in Tamil in the bottom, usually in white [5, 11, 12], but also in gold [14].