‘The old world of Dravidian politics is toe-to-toe in the ever-increasing competition to provide welfare goods to the state, fading into a haze of new India and its changed ground reality’ | Photo credit: The Hindu
The Madras High Court effectively quashed former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi’s it was seenThis week, an interim challenge to your control of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) Released by former Deputy Chief Minister and party coordinator O Panneerselvam. In February, the Supreme Court of India ruled Mr Palaniswami will continue as the chief of AIADMK and Mr. Panneerselvam will have to abide by the decisions taken during General Council meeting of the party on July 11, 2022, There is a great possibility that these decisions may prove to be far-reaching decisions affecting the long arc of the state’s politics.
Editorial | Time to move on: Next steps for AIADMK
The reason is clear: since Former AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa passed awayIn December 2016, the party has been plagued by factional infighting, a sure sign that his autocratic style of governance failed to nurture the green shoots of leadership to take over after his time. The impact of the court’s decision will be significant because after more than six years of wrangling to capture power from the AIADMK’s social base – which also included VK Sasikala and his nephew TTV Dhinakaran – the winner Mr Palaniswami now has a clear mandate for the party. The mandate to carry forward in the next election with a firm hold on its ‘two leaves’ symbol, the support of an overwhelming majority of General Council members, and the end of Mr. Panneerselvam’s challenge to control of the party following his expulsion from the AIADMK.
back to the future
Looking at the recent verdicts, is Tamil Nadu set to return to its old model of a two-party contest between the AIADMK and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)? The fact is that the almost half-century-old world of Jayalalithaa and former DMK chief the late M. Karunanidhi is going toe-to-toe in an escalating competition to provide welfare goods to the state’s population. About new India and its changed ground reality.
Many such facts are important in this context. Firstly, none of the polarities of the Dravidian movement has a leader who is immune to political challenge. Consider the ruling DMK led by Karunanidhi’s son MK Stalin. While it is true that he was elected president of his party unopposed, and any potential challenge from his brother MK Alagiri was swiftly watched by party workers who rallied behind their leader, the reference between Mr Stalin and Karunanidhi The difference matters a lot. As a five-time chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi is a towering figure within the pantheon of the Dravidian movement, having written not only the many film scripts and poems for which he was famous, but also the political path the DMK has chosen, whether in Tamil Nadu The opposition to the imposition of Hindi in the U.S. was intended to be a vector of mass mobilization, or to act on the imperative of necessity, and to form an alliance with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party at the Center during 1999–2004.
For Mr Stalin, there is an untold pressure that rests on his shoulders, and it stems from the fact that performance in office and delivering good governance through policies that affect the daily lives of citizens, matter more than ever. keeps. This may explain why his government, on a balance of policy priorities, has put in the foreground economic development, investor confidence, urban infrastructure, climate change, and other such areas of day-to-day life for the common Tamil man and woman. The DMK will stick to the values enunciated by its forefathers during the heyday of the Dravidian movement, while reminding voters from time to time about the state’s autonomy concerns, including the introduction of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and Hindi.
With regard to the AIADMK, Mr. Palaniswami is under no less pressure to redefine himself as an able administrator of his party after several years of infighting within the party. He certainly fulfilled the mandate to excel for the people of Tamil Nadu in the realm of public policy when he held the office of chief minister for more than four years – and that he could do so when he joined the party. Waiting for the resolution of the deadly feud within. Speaks for the clarity of his purpose and political vision, and perhaps also for the negotiating skills that he will surely need to broker a compromise between AIADMK bosses from different regions and representing a wide variety of social groups. Yet, even for Mr. Palaniswami, the same paradigm shift in voter demands and public discourse, which has led to the expectation that the Stalinist government will deliver economic prosperity and social justice, is what he can do as Leader of the Opposition and What should be done, will shape it. state, and then as a campaigner in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and 2026 state assembly elections.
Southern spread of saffron
Yet, the biggest challenge for both major parties has come in the form of the steady but rapid rise of Hindutva politics across the country beyond the safe fringes of the Dravidian movement. In this context it is important not to exaggerate the influence of the BJP in Tamil Nadu. Yes, having four seats in the state assembly is better than no seats at all, as was the case with the BJP till the 2021 elections, but more important than the number of seats is the attitude of voters towards the core values enshrined in the Hindutva ethos, and the history of their conflict with the Dravidian worldview.
On the essential question of religion in politics or religiosity as a way of life, few would deny the great distance between the BJP and the DMK. The same is true of the caste structure in a historical context – the BJP’s control of government at the center and in the states is essentially a perpetuation of upper caste power in many cases.
Culturally, the BJP’s policies point to an aggressive, pan-India, homogenous intent based on specific Hindutva idioms, and include the supremacy of Hindi over regional languages and English, the subordinated social status of women and certain minorities, and nationalist nationalism. Are. , in its ideal form, hostile to other cultures.
Nevertheless, the DMK and AIADMK were built on the notion of social justice since the early days of the Dravidian movement under Periyar EV Ramasamy and CN Annadurai, a concept that largely focused on improving the social status and rights of women. Dravidian political mobilization by its very definition sought to form social rainbow coalitions of a breathtakingly broad range of middle and lower castes, a strategy that has kept the DMK or AIADMK in power for the past 56 years.
Similarly, both Dravidian parties have historically excelled at harnessing the power of the Tamil language to mobilize voters and bring them into the fold – including not only during the anti-Brahminical radical phases of the DMK in the 1960s as a language campaign were involved, but also former AIADMK chief MG. Ramachandran’s ingenious use of Tamil cinema to promote an image of himself as a patriarchal hero-savior of ordinary Tamils.
In a sense, the lines between the Dravidian parties and the BJP are now more clearly drawn than in the past five years, especially as there appears to be friction between a unified AIADMK and the BJP. How the state’s politics turn in the coming decades has never been more dependent on the core beliefs of its voters.
Narayan@thehindu.co.in