ABSTRACT
In a volume largely dedicated to the study of the caste profile of MLAs in India, a chapter on Tamil Nadu can only start with a reminder of the specificity of the state. Tamil Nadu is known for being the stronghold of the Dravidian movement which has developed a specific ideology and is not simply based upon linguistic and cultural regional identity. 1 The ideologues of the Dravidian movement have theorised the concept of ‘Tamilness’ in contrast to the Brahmin legacy which was supposed to have been imported in the south and imposed by aliens from the north upon the more egalitarian and secular Dravidian tradition. The purpose of this chapter is neither to reopen the debate on the origins of the Dravidian movement, nor to reassess the merits and the excesses of rewriting Tamil history in the light of such theory. It is, however, necessary to revert to this background for understanding Tamil politics in independent India for the following reasons. First, since the arrival of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK, literally, the ‘Association for the Emancipation of Dravidians’) to power in 1967, the Dravidian movement, undivided or divided, has constantly been re-elected to power. Second, the policy of emancipation has relied upon a tool used more in Tamil Nadu that in the rest of India, namely, the reservation of seats in public education and public services, not just for Dalits and Tribes, but also for the largest conglomerate of castes defined in Tamil Nadu as elsewhere in India, the ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBC). Most of the MLAs in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly come from these classes not, however, because of reservations, for electoral constituencies are set apart only for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates (SC and ST). To suggest that the social background of the lawmakers explains why they have tried to favour their communities would not however tell the whole story. The historical legacy left by the non-Brahmin movement and by its successors, the Self Respect movement and the Dravidian movement, has also contributed in defining a specific political climate in a state where, before and after 1947, the issue of reservations has for long been on the agenda of caste organisations, and on the table of policy-makers. The tactics and the strategies of the DMK and of its antithetic clone, the Anna DMK, did the rest.
