[8] By the middle of the 18th century, the French and the British were involved in a protracted struggle for military control over South India.

It was located on the south of the Indian peninsula, straddled by the Western Ghats in the west, separated from the Arabian Sea by Malabar coast, the Eastern Ghats in the north-east, the Eastern Coastal Plains lining the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait to the south-east, the Indian Ocean at the southern cape of the peninsula.

[22][23] It enclosed Puducherry and shares an international maritime border with the Northern Province of Sri Lanka at Pamban Island.

The Palk Strait and the chain of low sandbars and islands known as Rama's Bridge separate the region from Sri Lanka, which lies off the southeastern coast.

[24][25] The southernmost tip of mainland India is at Kanyakumari where the Indian Ocean meets the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

The southern part of Travancore-Cochin, Kanyakumari district, along with Taluk, was transferred to Madras State.

[22] After 1953, Tamil was the major language followed by Malayalam (spoken in Malabar district before re-organization in 1956) and Telugu.

[22] O. P. Ramaswamy Reddiyar was the Premier of Madras Presidency during the Independence and served till 6 April 1949.

[16] In 1952 elections, the Indian National Congress emerged as the single largest party in the assembly and formed the government with Chakravarti Rajagopalachari as the chief minister.

[18] Rajaji removed controls on food grains and introduced a new education policy based on family vocation in 1953.

[28] During his tenure, the state witnessed Anti-Hindi agitations in response to the Union Government's Official Languages Act passed in 1963 which planned to introduce Hindi as compulsory language and to rejected the demands to make Tamil the medium of instruction in colleges.

[40] On 7 March 1964, Bhaktavatsalam recommended the introduction of a three-language formula comprising English, Hindi and Tamil.