Caste, social mobility: How Karunanidhi shaped the Dravidian movement

Caste, social mobility- How Karunanidhi shaped the Dravidian movement The Dravidian movement is among Asia's most durable ethnic movements

Since his teens, the late “Kalaignar” Mu Karunanidhi was associated with the Dravidian movement, initially with the Self Respect Association, the Justice Party, the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and later with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which he led for five decades. His public career of eight decades was intimately connected with various trends in Tamil Nadu’s politics and society.

How might we regard the directions Kalaignar gave the DMK? How far might his passing change Tamil politics?

The Dravidian movement is among Asia’s most durable ethnic movements. It initially claimed to represent a Dravidian community consisting of South Indians, primarily Tamil-speakers, other than Brahmins.

While the Justice Party was led by elites from upper non-Brahmin castes and the DK’s founding leader, Periyar E V Ramasamy, was from a wealthy mercantile caste (Kavarai Naidu), the DMK’s leaders were born in underprivileged middleand lower-middle-caste families – C N Annadurai, a Kaikola Mudaliar (a weaver caste) and Kalaignar, an Isai Vellalar (a musician-dancer-temple servant caste) from a middling farmer family. (Karunanidhi’s family, however, acquired immense wealth over the course of his career and his son and political successor, Mu Ka Stalin, hardly had an underprivileged upbringing.) The AIADMK, like the early Congress Party, had upper caste leaders – M G Ramachandran, a Malayalam-speaking Nair and J Jayalalithaa, a Malliyam Iyengar, who nevertheless built close links with lower strata.The DK associated Dravidian identity mainly with middle castes and the DMK with those who primarily communicated in Tamil. Dravidianism upheld a popular community distinguished from elites based on caste, language use, dialect and occupation.

Such a populist discourse helped the Dravidian parties attract various plebeian groups, enabled the DMK to become the second ethnic party (after the National Conference) to win a post-colonial state election.

It also contributed to marginalising Indian nationalist parties far more than in other big states, although attachment to Indian nationalism remained strong in Tamil Nadu. Karunanidhi and other leaders built the DMK through close engagement with middling and lower status groups, such as small shopkeepers, smaller farmers, artisans and first-generation white-collar workers, drawn especially from the middle and lower-middle castes who were attracted to their promises to redistribute resources and challenge caste inequality. The DMK and the AIADMK changed status relations and public culture much more than property and income distribution. They increased voter participation, which has been higher in Tamil Nadu since the 1960s than in all but a few states and dominated Tamil Nadu politics from the 1970s.

The early Dravidian movement opposed certain ethnic groups, especially Brahmins and “north Indians”, which denoted speakers of the significantly Sanskrit-based languages of western, northern and parts of eastern India.

Annadurai built bridges with these groups and Indian nationalism, by upholding Gandhi, abandoning secession in the early 1960s and clarifying that he opposed the caste inequalities associated with Brahmanism rather than Brahmins. Thus, the DMK under his leadership, asserted Tamil and middle-caste pride without promoting much ethnic antagonism READ MORE