ABSTRACT
The 2001 Tamil Nadu assembly elections were remarkable for the emergence of a number of new political parties and the combination of political parties constituting the two rival electoral alliances. This article analyses the social and political conditions that gave rise to these strange alliances. In doing so the article reflects on the fate of the earliest movement of regional cultural nationalism in India, articulated by the Dravidian Movement, and originally associated with social radicalism. The inability of Dravidian politics to address contemporary anxieties is reflected in the ways in which Tamil politics is now structured by Hindu nationalism, by caste-based politics and by struggles between numerically dominant lower castes and Dalits.
