The VCK flag is no stranger to Pudu Viraalippatti. Back in the late 1990s, when VCK was known as DPI—when it was a people’s movement, not an electoral party—a flag had been hoisted on a bamboo pole. Details of how it eventually disappeared are hazy, lost from public memory in a tangle of competing narratives. This year, when local VCK functionaries Kannadasan and Nithyavalavan (names changed to protect identities) wanted to organise a tree-planting, sweet distribution and flag-hoisting ceremony to celebrate the birthday of the party’s founder-president Thirumavalavan on August 17, police refused them permission, reportedly saying that the VCK flag could cause communal tension.