My Letter to The Hindu dated 18-10-2013
The failure of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu is
perhaps best exemplified by the fact that political contestation is still
articulated and carried out on caste lines. The Dravidian parties are
controlled by dominant caste Hindus. The PMK, with its newly consolidated All
Community Federation, has been changing colour every now and then, unable to
come up with a coherent ideology and a firm organisation.
The Dravidian movement sought to establish a reverse
discrimination regime, not an anti-caste, liberal, rational social order. Many
OBC groups that constituted the movement were in the forefront of physical
intimidation and violence against Dalits and continue to be so. Social mobility
of Dalits has created a rift between them and caste Hindus. Status assertion of
Dalits vis-à-vis the dominant castes is another reason for the outbreak of
caste conflicts and in such conflicts, the local police and the Dravidian
parties side with the dominant groups.
The movement failed to develop into a pan non-Brahmin
movement and became fragmented because of the exclusion of the lower castes.
Since the 1990s, Tamil Nadu has witnessed a spurt of violence against Dalits
perpetrated largely by the ‘backward’ castes, which claim victimhood under
Brahmins but also turn oppressors of Dalits.
For your reading, The Hindu Report dated 17-10-2013
A new churning in the caste cauldron
Ahead of next year’s elections, Tamil Nadu is witnessing an
early mobilisation and an assertion of identity by intermediate groups such as
Vanniyars towards reviving their flagging political fortunes
The cyclical shake-up of Tamil politics that accompanies
each election seems to have begun early this time. Whilst we may still see
parties jumping ship and changing alliances in the immediate run-up to the
polls, there has been a lot of jostling for position already. Following a
recent meeting of the ‘All Community Federation,’ for example, The Hindu
reported one leader as saying that “constituents of the Federation would never
ever support the Dravidian parties as it was because of their rule that
casteism continued to survive in some form in Tamil Nadu.” The irony of a
collection of caste-based parties pointing the finger of blame at others was
clearly lost on P.T. Arasakumar, leader of the National Forward Bloc. Likewise,
the claim to represent “all communities” by a front that has been running a
campaign against inter-caste marriages and seeking amendments to the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, is laughable. At
least, it would be laughable if it did not have such deleterious consequences for
social and community relations in the State.
Politicisation of caste
Once hailed for its progressive anti-caste politics, Tamil
Nadu has more recently been associated with the politicisation of caste. In
2006, Vaasanthi— the former editor of India Today’s Tamil edition — observed
that “every section of society now clings to its caste label with pride. With a
caste-based political party being born every day, each group is in the need of
political protection and asserting its identity.”
Several new caste-based parties and fronts have emerged
since that statement was made. Were such organisations limited to the symbolic
realm and focused upon the rediscovery of caste histories and identities that
have been subsumed within the rhetoric of Dravidian politics, they might merit
little more than a footnote in discussions of Tamil politics. Unfortunately,
the assertion of caste pride is built on an exaggerated sense of superiority
and entitlement that views the upward mobility of lower caste groups with
alarm.
When 300 Dalit homes were torched in November 2012 following
a cross-caste marriage, many analysts were puzzled that such violence should
occur in the State that fostered Dravidianism and championed cross-caste and
secular weddings. The truth is that the radical edge of Dravidian ideology was
blunted even before the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam first took power. Dravidian
parties have used a rhetorical emphasis on Tamil nationalism and language to
avoid enacting politically sensitive election pledges on land reform, dowry and
caste. As Narendra Subramanian’s (1999) book Ethnicity and Populist
Mobilization makes clear, the Dravidian parties revolved around a cluster of
socially dominant castes. It has taken the emergence of caste based parties to
open up Tamil politics to new categories. Thevar and Vanniyar parties succeeded
in wresting concessions from the state. They have also ensured caste-based
representation regardless of which party wins an election because both the DMK
and the All-India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam are acutely sensitive to caste when
selecting candidates. Despite the rise of Dalit parties, however, the
continuing under-representation of Dalit politicians in Cabinets and ministry
portfolios questions the pluralism of the Dravidian parties.
Despite this, Dravidian parties still secure cross-caste
support and Tamil nationalism retains the capacity to unite competing caste
parties. Both the DMK and the AIADMK are adept at keeping different castes on
board through a variety of material and symbolic means. Whilst the perception
that the Dalit vote is split may mean less attention is focused on them, the
rise of autonomous Dalit parties has led others to pay lip service (at least)
to their concerns. Jayalalithaa, thus, recently, clamped down on the Pattali
Makkal Katchi following Dalit-Vanniyar clashes and also spoke up in favour of
Dalit Christians. Through judicious interventions of this nature and through
wider welfare programmes, the Dravidian parties have successfully managed to
act as catch-all parties. Caste concerns, thus, must be repeatedly politicised
by those wishing to make electoral capital out of them. We would argue that
this is what we are witnessing in the current mobilisation of intermediate
castes.
Escape from patronage
Several factors feed into the emergence of the All Community
Federation. The first issue is the long-running sore for intermediate castes
that is the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Whilst conviction rates remain
pitifully low, the existence of the Act and the provisions within it have
served to curb some of the worst excesses of the dominant castes. Worst still,
from their perspective, the Act has emboldened subordinate groups to fight back
and mobilise against forms of domination. In this process they have been aided by
a number of government initiatives that have reduced the dependency of lower
castes: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the public
distribution system. For all the flaws in the functioning of the MGNREGA — many
documented in this paper — Dalits have seized on the opportunity to work for
the government rather than relying upon the seasonal occupation provided by
landlords. When allied to the provision of free or cheap rice (albeit sometimes
of poor quality), Dalit households have been able to escape long-term patterns
of domination and patronage.
Operating in parallel to the above are patterns of migration
to cities, other States or other countries. All have dramatically undercut the
dominance of the intermediate castes and challenged their self-image as
benevolent overlords. Faced by a decline in their authority, intermediate
castes across the State have resorted to counter-mobilisation built on a
narrative of ‘reverse-casteism’. Such groups, in other words, rally members by
accusing Dalits of misusing the PoA Act, receiving preferential treatment, and
instigating cross-caste marriages. This last point in particular is important.
Numerous studies (see for example the May 4, 2013 issue of Economic and
Political Weekly) note how caste and patriarchy are intertwined through the
concept of ‘honour.’ Given the importance of chastity and endogamy to the
maintenance of caste boundaries, such ‘honour’ hinges on the behaviour of
women. Caste honour, here, depends on the ability of caste men to protect and
control caste women.
Honour, we should note, is also a relational concept that
requires ‘others’ against whom a group may be compared. The ‘others’ for
intermediate castes are not Brahmins whose dominance inspired the non-Brahmin
movement in the early part of the 20th Century, but the Dalit castes who have hitherto
propped up the caste hierarchy. What has happened in the past few years, we
would argue, is that the combination of factors serving to reduce the
dependency of Dalits has engendered a crisis of masculinity amongst
intermediate caste men that finds its expression in the campaigns against (the
very small number of) cross-caste marriages. In other words, the mobilisation
by intermediate castes led by Dr. Ramadoss is geared towards the consolidation
of caste interests rather than their dissolution. Whilst they are right to
emphasise that Dravidianism has failed to tackle casteism, we should not be
fooled by the name they have adopted. The ‘All Community Federation’ is not an
attempt to revive the radical anti-caste ideology of Periyar so much as an attempt
to revive the flagging fortunes of once-dominant castes.
