ABSTRACT
Recent political changes in Tamil Nadu (south India) are best understood with reference to the subcultures associated with the state’s major parties, the DMK and the AIADMK. These parties promoted political participation among the intermediate and the lower strata, enriched civic life, built cohesive subcultures which cut across ethnic boundaries, and limited collective violence in Tamil Nadu from the 1960s to the late 1980s. The partial erosion of these Dravidianist subcultures is a crucial reason for the weakening of political participation and civic life, and the modest growth of mobilisation and violence along caste and religious lines since then.
