Chennai: DMK working president M.K. Stalin's answer to a reporter's question last week has resurrected talk of a separate homeland for Dravidians, an idea that had roused Tamilians in the 1940s before being buried 60 years ago.

Asked his opinion on a Dravida Nadu (Dravidian Nation), Stalin was quoted as saying he "welcomed" it and believed "it will happen", and that the BJP government's neglect of the southern states was giving ballast to the idea.

Actor Kamal Haasan, president of the new party Makkal Neethi Mayyam, had set the ball rolling in January, asking the southern states to embrace their Dravidian identity and unite to seek a better deal from the Centre.

This was apparently enough to fuel murmurs about a Dravida Nadu, prompting the reporter's question, which Stalin seized upon at a time he is hunting for an emotive issue to rejuvenate his party and salvage his own political career.

Stalin's problem is that most of the usual suspects have lost their purchase. For, the DMK and its rivals have the same position on issues such as the cauvery water dispute, demand for preservation of the bull-taming sport jallikattu, and the agitation against the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test.

Stalin knows that historically, it was the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s that had catapulted the DMK to power. So, he has picked up an issue he believes can stoke the anti-north feelings among Tamilians.

One problem with the Dravida Nadu idea is, however, that it evokes fears of Tamil hegemony among the other southern communities - one reason the demand could never spread outside Tamil Nadu.

Even now, Karnataka and Kerala have serious differences with Tamil Nadu on the sharing of the Cauvery's waters. Tamil Nadu's southern neighbours don't share its allergy to Hindi, either, and are only too glad to teach the language in their schools.

It was Dravidar Kazhagam leader E.V. Ramasamy (Periyar) who had proposed a Dravida Nadu, giving his movement for Dravidian self-respect and an end to Brahmin supremacy a separatist turn.

When the DMK broke away from the Dravidar Kazhagam, its founder C.N. Annadurai embraced the idea with the slogan: "The north is flourishing and south waning."

But the demand found little support outside Tamil Nadu, and the decision to create language-based states weakened the demand further. In 1960, the DMK dropped the idea and in 1963, the Centre declared secessionism was illegal.

The DMK is, however, in a jam now, having lost two consecutive elections to the AIADMK after decades of the two opponents alternating in power.

With his father and party patriarch M. Karunanidhi incapacitated, Stalin has to prove he is up to the task of leading the DMK at a time elder brother and rival M.K. Alagiri is waiting to pounce.

Jayalalithaa's death and the split in her party have not helped the DMK regain any ground. Complicating the challenge, film stars Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth have jumped into the political ring.

So, analysts say, Stalin sees as his best hope what to most people appears to be an act of flogging a dead horse.