The angry political reactions triggered by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader Udayanidhi Stalin’s trenchant comments on Sanatana Dharma at a conference organised by the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists Association, a cultural body affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is fast developing into a full-blown political-ideological war at the national level in this election year.
To those familiar with the Dravidian movement, which is over a century old and a few years older than the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
The angry political reactions triggered by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader Udayanidhi Stalin’s trenchant comments on Sanatana Dharma at a conference organised by the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists Association, a cultural body affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is fast developing into a full-blown political-ideological war at the national level in this election year.
To those familiar with the Dravidian movement, which is over a century old and a few years older than the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Udyanidhi’s attack on Sanatana Dharma was not a surprise. What he spoke at the Chennai event was only the latest expression in a line of Dravidian leaders from E.V.R. Periyar to C.N. Annadurai to M. Karunanidhi (Udayanidhi’s grandfather and former chief minister of Tamil Nadu) and their consistent opposition to Varnashrama Dharma, and, by extension, Sanatana Dharma. Further, it has to be read in the context of post-2014 India. A bit of history will help non-Tamils understand Dravidian politics, which originated as a non-Brahmin movement in the early 20th century.
Pre-Independence
The movement had a clearly defined political goal of ending Brahmin domination in the colonial bureaucracy. A manifesto released in 1916 by the South Indian Liberal Federation, an association formed by a group of non-Brahmin leaders from elite social backgrounds, stated: “Not less than 40 million out of 41 and a half millions, who form the population of this [Madras] Presidency are non-Brahmins and the bulk of the taxpayers, including a large majority of the zamindars, landholders and agriculturalists, also belong to the same class. But in what passes for politics in Madras, they have not taken the part to which they are entitled. They make little or no use of their influence among the masses for the general political advancement of the country. In these days of organised effort, they maintain no proper organisations for protecting and promoting their common interests and for preventing other professionals and other politicians, with hardly any corresponding stake in the country from posing as their accredited spokesmen. Nor have they a press of their own to speak the truth on their behalf. Their political interests, therefore, (as compared with those of the Brahmins who number only about a million and a half), have materially suffered.”
A year after the British introduced a diarchic form of rule under the Government of India Act in 1919, the Justice Party came to power in the Madras Presidency. Named after Justice, a journal brought out by the party, and in keeping with its goal of ending Brahimin dominance in the bureaucracy and winning representation for the non-Brahmin castes, it passed what came to be known as Communal GO (government order) in 1922, which was a precursor to the policy of reservation in independent India.
Around the same time, another movement called Thani Thamizh Iyakkam (Pure Tamil Movement) was born and it sought to end the dominance of Sanskrit and promote Tamil in its ‘purest’ form.
Enter Periyar
At the time, E.V.R. Periyar was not only a Congressman but an ardent supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, to the extent of carrying khadi cloth bundles on his shoulder across towns and villages to sell. He quit the Congress in 1927 after his many attempts to convince the leadership of the need to include social justice in its political programme of liberating India from alien rule, failed. According to Periyar, political liberation without the social emancipation of backward classes from the clutches of caste discrimination and untouchability had no meaning.
A conversation with Gandhi, in which the latter defended Varnasharama Dharma was the last straw for Periyar and he turned him into a staunch critic. Periyar traced the evils of caste oppression and its extreme manifestation — untouchability — to the theories of Sanatana Dharma and Varnashrama Dharma and he was convinced that the country could progress only if ideological justifications for a stratified society were rooted out. In this mission, he found that the Self-Respect Movement founded by M. Ramanathan, was an ideal vehicle.
In his book The Political Career of E.V.R. Periyar, E Sa Viswanathan writes: “The caste system, ideologically supported and sustained by Brahiminism with the help of myths, puranas, Vedas and scriptures, was the stumbling block to the non-Brahmin’s progress. Self-respecters broke the elitist boundaries of the non-Brahmin Movement and reached out to the Scheduled Castes and other backward castes such as Nadars, Agamudayars, Isai Velalars, Sengunthars, Vanniyakula Kshatriyas. These castes, a majority of them agricultural labourers and unskilled workers, were equally spread over all the districts of the Tamil region.”
A non-Brahmin, according to Periyar, was one who had been culturally enslaved by Brahmins and thus denied access to material and intellectual resources that would help him emerge as a human being with self-respect and dignity.
“Decide for yourselves as to what you should think of those who say there is God, that He is the preserver of Justice and that He is the Protector of All, even after seeing that the practice of Unsociability, in the form of man being banned from human sight and contact, from walking in the street, from entering the temples and from drawing water from a tank, is rampant in a land and yet that land is spared from being razed by an earthquake, burnt by the fiery lava of a volcano, engulfed in a deluge from the ocean, submerged in the chasm of the earth, or fragmented by a thunder-storm,” Periyar once said.
Even as the Justice Party was losing its sheen because of internal contradictions and its elitist orientation, the Self-Respect Movement, with its emphasis on atheism, led by Periyar was gaining ground among Tamils.
It was again the Congress that inadvertently gave a fillip to the movement in 1937 when its government led by C. Rajagoplachari made the learning of Hindi compulsory in schools. A Brahmin nationalist in power imposing a language born out of Sanskrit on the Tamil masses provided the ideal setting for uniting the non-Brahmin movement and the Pure Tamil Movement to pave the way for an aggressive anti-Hindi movement. The agitation led by Periyar culminated in a rally that gave a call for a separate Dravida Nadu. Rajaji had to backtrack on his decision to impose Hindi.
Periyar and Annadurai built on this success, got rid of the elitist elements from the non-Brahmin platform and re-christened it the Dravidar Kazhagam.
Post-Independence
India’s independence created an ideological conflict in the movement. Periyar feared that a free India would be helmed by Brahmins and said it would be a transition “from British Raj to Brahmin Raj”. He wanted August 15 to be observed as a Black Day. Annadurai, who saw a new political possibility in free India of realising the Dravidian movement’s ideals by entering electoral politics and capturing power, gave a call to celebrate Independence. They parted ways.
Annadurai and his colleagues launched the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam — or DMK — in 1949.
Anna realised that capturing political power in a country steeped in religious beliefs and superstitions was not going to be easy for a party that was rooted in Periyar’s rationalism and atheism. He declared that the DMK would follow the principle of Ondre Kulam, Oruvane Devan (one community, one God). An oft-quoted piece of dialogue spoken by the protagonist in the iconic film Parasakthi [1952], penned by Karunanidhi, reflects this tactical shift: ‘I am not saying there should be no temples. I am only saying that temples should not become dens of criminals.”
Another tactical move Annadurai made was to give up the demand for a separate Dravida Nadu when India was under China’s attack in 1962. In the context of the war, he reasoned, national unity was the need of the hour. “Only if you have a home could you change the roof tiles. We can run a party only if the nation is safe. If we speak of separatism when the nation is in danger, it would give space to foreigners. If we behave like that, future generations will curse us,” Anna said. Some political commentators saw this as a move to save the party from an impending law to ban secessionism. Another stream of opinion was that Anna had by then realised the advantages of being part of a country with a huge market potential and abundant natural resources.
Imposition' of Hindi: Round 2
With its tactical shifts and articulation of Tamil’s political and economic grievances through evocative prose, poetry and film scripts, the DMK stormed into power in 1967 at the height of another virulent struggle against the ‘imposition’ of Hindi. The fourth phase of the anti-Hindi struggle erupted in 1965, when Hindi was to become the official language. The DMK swung into action demanding the continuation of English also as the official language as promised by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the floor of Parliament.
Interestingly, Tamil Nadu was not alone in this struggle. Bengal also plunged into an agitation. The violent agitation forced the Union government to enact the Official Languages Amendment Act ensuring that English also would continue to be an official language. (When the Constitution came into force in 1950, the understanding was that English would continue to have that status until 1965.)
What is often missed, deliberately or otherwise, in the political slugfest, is that the DMK, unlike Periyar, never attacked Hinduism (except for some occasional barbs) or its followers. Interpreting Udhayanidhi’s comment as a call for the “genocide” of Hindus — as some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have done — is a travesty of truth. For the last 56 years, Tamil Nadu has been ruled either by the DMK or its offshoot, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). The state has achieved significant progress as is evident from various social indicators.
More relevant to the present conflict are these facts that are obvious to any Tamil Nadu watcher.
Debunking some current myths
A myth doing the rounds is that Hindus (particularly Brahmins) are persecuted by the DMK and its government. In the last five and a half decades, there have been no reports of such violence against Hindus (or Brahmins) except very few stray incidents of cutting off of the sacred thread. In fact, chief minister Karunanidhi ensured inclusive governance by tapping the administrative acumen of many bureaucrats from the Brahmin community. The unique public distribution system is not exclusive and religion-specific. Similar is the case of Tamil Nadu’s excellent public health system and public education system based on a two-language formula.
The reservation policy, the most significant achievement of the Dravidian movement that explains its longevity in the political space, provides 69 per cent reservation — except Muslims who get 3.5 per cent reservation, all the other beneficiaries are from the Hindu community (Backward Classes – 26.5%; Most Backward Communities – 13%; Denotified Communities – 7%; Scheduled Castes which includes the Arundhatiyars, who are on the lowest rung of the SC community – 18%; and Scheduled Tribes 1%.
Nor has there been any destruction of Hindu temples in the state, as some Whatsapp forwards suggest. In fact, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) set up by the Justice Party as far back as 1925 took over the administration of temples following complaints of irregularities and corruption in handling thousands of acres of land and other properties attached to the temples. The department takes care of about 45,000 temples. Since the present DMK government led by M.K. Stalin assumed office on May 7, 2021, the HR&CE has retrieved temple properties worth ₹5,132.82 crore from encroachers.
The question is: why is there a deliberate attempt to distort Udayanidhi’s comment on the traditionally much-criticised Sanatana Dharma and project it as a provocation for the ‘genocide of Hindus’? The reason is political. Since the 1967 victory of the DMK, no national party has been able to gain a foothold in Tamil Nadu. With the demise of Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa, the Modi-Shah-led BJP saw an opportunity to make inroads in the state. While the ideologically emasculated and organisationally divided AIADMK has proved to be a pliable ally of the BJP in this game, the DMK plays a significant role in the united front of the opposition known by its acronym INDIA.
The Sangh Parivar’s Hindutva project based on cultural homogenisation and political centralisation finds its strongest resistance from a state that has been nurtured for about a century by the principles of social justice, linguistic nationalism, rationalism and state autonomy. The ideological war that has remained dormant since the political success of the DMK about half a century ago is now out in the open.
R. Vijaya Sankar is former Editor of Frontline.
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