She that plants seeds of shame, and danger for India

Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s on-going vengeful reactions in response to the two photographs produced by Callum Macrae are notable for their irrational and amateurish nature. It is hard to imagine that any leader at any level of political structure in any country in the world would descend to the Hitlerian levels Jayalalithaa has descended by banning visits of Sri Lankan sports people including a Tamil ‘Sri Lankan’ icon to her neck of the woods.

The most ridiculous feature of her shenanigans is that she does not seem to possess enough decency to distinguish between the Sri Lankan government and the ordinary people, as even the neocons do, albeit nominally, during their cunning attacks on developing countries.

Jayalalithaa’s uncivilised attack on the Sri Lankan people is underlined by the deep disingenuity that is characteristic of the leadership of the Dravidian ‘Kazhagams’ (Federations), based on a feudal, caste-based form of Tamil chauvinism.

The level-headed professional Indian political and bureaucratic hierarchy needs to concern themselves with the threat Jayalithaa wittingly or unwittingly poses to India’s national integrity and its broader interests. Signs are they do - The announcement of duty concessions for Sri Lankan garment exports to India on the very day Jayalalithaa passed a number of ‘resolutions’ against Sri Lanka in the Tamil Nadu state assembly shows the disdain with which the Central government seems to treat her mad rumblings.

The flurry of resolutions moved by Jayalalithaa, demanding that India move a UN resolution forcing an Eelam referendum in Sri Lanka, a probe into the allegations of “genocide”, and impose an economic “embargo” on Sri Lanka, shows her ignorance of the ‘degrees of freedom’ at India’s disposal on Sri Lanka and the significance and complexity of the broader India-Sri Lanka relations. The resolutions expose her delusional state of mind.

India is currently facing a peril so great in the historical context, that the threat posed by the Dravidar Kazhagam movement to the Indian body politic when it was founded in 1935, as the Self Respect Movement, is beginning to materialise under the corrupt leadership of Jayalalithaa and her ridiculous political one-upmanship with the geriatric rival, M. Karunanidhi.

The Dravidian movement was a creation of proselytisers

The origins of the Kazhagam movement, the predecessor to all variants of Kazhagam parties of South India today, go back to the ill-founded belief that Tamil is a language distinct from other Indo-European languages, spread by an early 20th century Scottish evangelist named Robert Caldwell of the ‘Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Mission’.

Caldwell learnt Tamil, being the essential tool for proselytising the ‘lower caste’ masses in South India, and like all British no-hopers who landed on the Jewel of the Crown, quickly claimed ‘expert’ knowledge on the origins of the Tamil language, and by extension, the history of South India.

Caldwell wrote a book titled The comparative grammar of the Dravidian languages that propounded the theory of a “Dravidian”family of languages, made up of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tulu, that is supposed to have prevailed in South India prior to its alleged destruction by the northern ‘Aryan’ invaders who spoke Sanskrit, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages.

Jawaharlal Nehru	Indira Gandhi	M. Karunanidhi	Callum Macrae

Caldwell’s theory of Tamil as a distinct and superior language of a ‘lost civilisation’ spawned a Tamil nationalist movement based on Tamil language as a symbol of pride and self-respect of Tamil speakers, incorporating strong anti-Sanskrit and anti-Brahmin rhetoric.

Many linguists, most notably Charles E. Glover, disagreed with Caldwell’s theory. Glover, in his book The Folk Songs of South India, written on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society, systematically demolished Caldwell’s Dravidian languages theory, asserting that “there is not one true Dravidian root common to the three great branches, Tamil, Telugu and Canarese(Kannada) that cannot be clearly shown to be Aryan.”

Notwithstanding its baseless nature, Caldwell’s theory was exploited by an extremist named E. V. Ramaswami, called Thanthai Periyar, or simply Periyar (the noble father) by his followers; In 1925, Periyar left the Indian National Congress to form “Self Respect”, an exclusively ‘Tamil’ movement based on the Dravidian language theory.

The Self Respect sloganeering of Periyar proposed the creation of an independent state called “Dravida Nadu”, comprising the states of South India. He excluded Tamil Brahmins from his subsequent political organisations on racial grounds, alleging that they spoke a dialect of Tamil mingled with Sanskrit, suggesting their ‘Aryan’ origins.

Periyar also claimed to be an atheist, and went around breaking clay figurines of Hindu gods at public rallies. In 1935, he changed the name of the Self Respect Movement to “Dravidar Kazhagam”(Dravidian Organization) on an anti-Brahmin and anti-Hinduism platform, with a promise to secure ‘proportionate rights’ for Tamils according to population levels.

Periyar protested against the introduction of Hindi as the national language of India by the Congress government in 1949 as a symbol of North Indian “Brahminical dominance”. Jawaharlal Nehru placated him by granting an extension for the use of English for a further 15 years, untilthe Republic Day 1965.

Political one-upmanship has been the bane of Dravidian Kazhagams

A key feature of the Dravidian movement from its beginnings has been the penchant for breakaway group formation by ambitious upstarts within the movement, each promising a fiercer brand of Tamil chauvinism. The first such breakaway group was led by C.N. Annadurai in 1949, to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), “Dravidian Progress Movement”, currently led by Karunanidhi.

Political one-upmanship was in full swing when the DMK escalated anti-Hindi protests, declaring the Republic Day 1965, the date of introduction of Hindi as the national language a ‘day of mourning’. During the protests a 34-year old activist self-immolated, crying ‘long live Tamil’. In the aftermath, the Congress lost power in the 1967 state elections, for the first time in any state since independence. Annadurai made vitriolic speeches and produced stage plays aimed at crystallising a “distinct linguistic and cultural identity” based on a glorious vanished past of the Tamils, and the alleged ‘exploitation’ of the South by the North of India.

Annadurai’s ideas of Tamil identity, honour, and valour, linked to the ‘mission’ of protecting the Tamil language and culture is considered to have inspired the terrorist leader Prabhakaran greatly.

After a short two year stint in power, Annadurai died in 1969 of cancer. He abandoned the demand for an independent Dravida Nadu State, and renamed Madras State ‘Tamil Nadu’, a linguistically narrower version of the ‘Dravida Nadu’ of Periyar. Karunanidhi who had been Annadurai’ sprotégé became the next leader of DMK, with M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) the film actor becoming treasurer.

Power play within the DMK came to prominence again when Karunanidhi, frightened by MGR’s popularity among the masses, began to undermine him, finally expelling him from DMK in 1972. MGR formed a yet another version of Kazhagam named after his idol C.N. Annadurai, the All India ‘Anna’ Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(AIADMK).

MGR took revenge on Karunanidhi by successfully campaigning for the dismissal of his regime on the grounds of corruption, and Indira Gandhi complied, virtually guaranteeing MGR’s ascendancy to power at the 1977 state elections. Karunanidhi and his DMK failed to regain power until after MGR’s death in 1987.

Following the death of MGR in 1987 however, hunger for power plagued Kazhagam offshoot AIADMK also by way of a leadership stoush between MGR’s wedded wife Janaki and who his courtesan for decades, Jayalalithaa who claimed she was MGR’s ‘chosen’ successor. Jayalalithaa won after a brief struggle. Following several election wins and losses in the previous decade, Jayalalithaa won power again in 2011.

The splintering of Periyar’s original Kazhagam in to DMK and AIADMK was caused not by any significant ideological differences, but based exclusively on cynical personal moves by its leadership. Karunanidhi has been the common factor that laid behind Annadurai in his ‘putsch’ against Periyar, and the ousting of MGR.

At each step of the break up, the scheming cult of personality began to espouse increasing levels of Tamil militaristic rhetoric as their claim to legitimacy.

This trend continues today between Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa whose cynical attempts to exploit the Sri Lankan Tamil issue to score political points over each other rank beneath contempt.

Kazhagam has failed miserably to deliver expectations of ‘low caste’ Tamils

Tamil Nadu politics today is characterised by a shift from a fiery Dravidian ideology of self-respect and non-Brahmin caste equality to a mere cult of personality seeking to capitalise on emotive issues, rather than on the delivery of material benefits to the millions of under-classes in the state who live under conditions not far removed from Apartheid.

Dark glasses sporting Kazhagam leaders including the 88 year old Karunanidhi have become the symbol of Tamil Nadu politics, and the weird public manifestation of lack of gravitas among the leadership. MGR, with his trademark fur cap, dark glasses and gold watch, epitomised the disappearing difference between the big screen and the political sphere in Tamil Nadu.

Added to such levity is the fundamental anomaly between the exclusive ‘Tamil’ ideology preached by those seeking or occupying Kazhagam leadership, and their own personal backgrounds - the founder of the ‘Dravidian’ movement Periyar was in fact a Kannada speaker who had once described Tamil as ‘a barbaric language’. MGR was a Malayalee born in a tea estate at Nawalapitiya, Sri Lanka. The current leader of the AIIDMK, Jayalalithaa is in fact an Iyengar brahmin from Karnataka who speaks Kannada and Telugu as first and second languages.

The illiteracy of the majority of the masses and the general backward nature of the social system they reign on allows such fraudulent behaviour by those who aspire to be leaders of Tamil Nadu.

Despite promises of a casteless society, the virulent caste-based discrimination within the non-Brahminic Tamil movement institutionalises communal and caste based politics that remains central to Tamil Nadu politics - there are 76 ‘scheduled’ castes and 36 ‘scheduled tribes in Tamil Nadu’

There is a pot pourri of ‘castes’ known as the Vellalars, Thevars, Nadars, Vanniyars, Chettiars, Naickers, Konars, Goundars, Mudaliars Yadavs and many more, founded on nothing more than historical occupation and geographic groupings, but rationalised by theories different from the Hindu four “varnas” principle. Each community also seems to lay claim to the building of the Chozha Empire.

Unbelievably, there are caste-based political parties, like Paatali MakkalKatchi (The Toiler’s Party) founded by S Ramadoss, whose party slogan is “Let Vanniars rule and let other castes live”. Ramadoss who also champions the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils, has been one of the chief instigators of the anti-Dalit pogroms of 2012 - Interestingly, the PMK also claims to be Marxist.

Such an unenlightened, hierarchical social structure has prevented progress even by Indian standards - the state of Uttar Pradesh, for example, has a Dalit woman as Chief Minister.

In Tamil Nadu, the feudal social structure often has devastating effects on the groups at the bottom of the pile - most roadside restaurants in many South Indian towns use separate crockery for Dalits, the ‘untouchables’. However, the Kazhagamstarget restaurants that serve without discrimination merely due to the word ‘Brahmin’ on sign age.

A few years ago in Salem, an eight-year-old school girl lost her vision due to beating by a teacher for using a tumbler meant for ‘upper’ caste students. In November 2012, nearly 300 Dalit homes were burned down by Vanniyars following the marriage of a Dalit boy and a girl coming from the Vanniyar group, a ‘higher’ low caste. The father of the girl committed suicide.

Despite such overt caste discrimination, both DMK and AIIDMK form ‘coalitions’ with ‘lower’ caste groups to secure and to stay in power.

Corruption is deeply entrenched in Tamil Nadu

During the years out of power, Jayalalithaa has had to face a number of criminal lawsuits dealing with embezzlement and monetary fraud during her first term rule. In 2001, a specially designated court convicted her of criminal breach of trust and of illegally acquiring governmental property, and sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment.

The conviction disqualified her from contesting elections while her appeal was under judicial consideration. However, she controversially became the Chief Minister as a non-elected member of the assembly following the 2001 election.

Just last month, Jayalalithaa and her acolyte, Sasikala Natarajan, faced the Supreme Court over criminal proceedings for alleged corruption at said today. She also had to appear in a Bangalore court twice last year with Ms Sasikala. Jayalalithaa and Sasikala are fighting to suspend the trial on technicalities by appealing to the Supreme Court but have been unsuccessful so far.

In another attempt to distance herself from Sasikala, Jayalalithaa expelled her from the AIADMK, and asked her to move out of government provided accommodation, for allegedly interfering with postings of bureaucrats.

Neocons are salivating

The Tamil Nadu political scene, charged with primal emotions of racial and language allegiances and irrational caste divisions, rather than by the class structure that keep them enslaved, is the sort of developing country situation the neocon dreams are made of. This is the reason why Hillary Clinton started to ‘drop-by’ in Chennai to have a ‘cuppa’ with Jayalalithaa, as frequently as she drops by at the womens’ section of her local synagogue in New York.

The future potential of Tamil Nadu as a tool for curbing India emerge as a future ‘super power’, something they have been unable to find even in Hong Kong against China, is also the reason why an expert on Tamil Nadu extremism, Prof. Robert Hardgrave of the University of Texas, Austin has been hired as a consultant by the US Department of State.

Jayalalithaa’s shenanigans pose a higher level threat to India than to Sri Lanka.