Can Vijay usher in a new dawn for social justice in TN or will it be more of the same?

Tamil Nadu’s cinema superstar Joseph Vijay has scripted history by bringing an end to the Dravidian duopoly that had been ruling the southern state since 1967 when the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) first came to power. The long instituted Dravidian ideology of more than half-a-century, ways of life, and life worlds that had percolated to every nook and corner of the state – cemented through the film-politics nexus and Tamil nationalism – has been breached by the political rookie’s two-year-old Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK).

This victory is a phenomenon given the fact that the DMK dominated the public sphere with its complete dominance of media, intellectual sphere, and public opinion. The DMK’s IT wing was a force to reckon with, muzzling any opposition and spewing venomous charges against any opposition to the party’s ideology and its politics.

Dalit intellectuals have often been the victims in these engagements, but the TVK has been in their sights of late. Vijay’s followers and supporters were dubbed tharkuris (uncouth or crude), people who cannot think on their own but are immersed or caught in an image trap. Despite all of this, the electoral arithmetic moved beyond tactical alliances, money, and caste to deliver a significant break from the past.

Vijay’s spectacular victory was possible for two main reasons: first, it was his stardom and charisma that has captivated the state’s youth and women. But second, and most importantly, it was the failure of the DMK to deliver. The people’s angst was stoked by the ruling government’s dismissive attitude towards the poor. This verdict shows that they cannot be patronised by attractive schemes that do nothing to change structural inequities.

While the economy was doing well under the DMK, Tamil Nadu voters were unhappy with deteriorating law and order, concerns about women and children’s safety, increase in drunkenness and drug abuse among youth, caste violence and killings, custodial deaths, and many such developments.

There was a sense of a ruling party that was increasingly detached from the grassroots. DMK’s dynastic politics was to the fore. Party president Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi was anointed the Deputy CM when there were so many seniors within the party. The sons and daughters of senior DMK politicians were given preference over other party workers and were made MLAs and Ministers and they functioned more or less like feudal lords.

DMK’s many firsts

The DMK under Karunanidhi pioneered a political practice of caste majoritarianist politics leading towards the concentration of power among particular dominant intermediate castes who are perceived to be better placed to swing elections. The party followed, and later institutionalised, a caste arithmetic in politics by fielding largely members of dominant castes in each constituency; the candidate was chosen primarily if they belonged to the right caste as against their personal capacity and qualities. So the DMK set a template that others have followed.

DMK also pioneered another political practice and institutionalised it, which was the cash-for-vote principle, famously dubbed as the ‘Tirumangalam Formula’. It has become almost inevitable that without large financial resources and spending, political parties cannot win elections. This tilted the balance against smaller parties as they were not able to contest independently. Instead, they had to be part of a larger alliance for financial resources and spending rather than relying on their performance and popular support. Such calculations also informed seat-sharing deals, where parties with resources – such as the Congress – were allocated seats in numbers significantly out of alignment with their local standing.

Flawed Dravidian Model of social justice

The Dravidian Model rhetoric has been in full flow during the last five years. Debates on television, articles in newspapers, academic work, and even high-profile conferences in prominent higher educational institutions abroad – all celebrated the achievements of the model. 

While all this was happening, the state witnessed increased incidences of anti-Dalit violence, including a techie being murdered for inter-caste love, killings of assertive Dalits in the southern districts, protests by conservancy workers violently manhandled by the police, and workers’ rights stifled in the Samsung factory unit.

Though the Dravidian Model has indeed done well in terms of growth and economic development compared to many states, what we have been pointing out for some time is its failure on the social justice front. For all the rhetoric hailing Tamil Nadu as a land of social justice, the reality is that there is a continued neglect of Dalit and workers’ interests in the state.

The Dravidian way of doing politics rests on connections and brokerage. Political scientist Andrew Wyatt notes how the DMK’s structure devolved autonomy to local level leaders, meaning that patronage tended to flow through dense networks. “Those closest to the party,” he concludes, “were most likely to benefit and this gave the very many who were excluded a reason to distrust the DMK.”

What we have seen in this election is the emergence of a new party that is not (yet) institutionalised into these ways of doing Tamil politics and consequently holds out the hope of things being done differently.

A new dawn or a new face in Dravidian politics?

Prior to the election, the DMK and its allies criticised Vijay as being operated by the BJP’s sangh and by leaders like Union Home Minister Amit Shah and RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy. The projection was of a party that was being imposed upon the south. However, Vijay’s party has been modelled on the Dravidian giants and draws on the iconography of Tamil politics. In this sense, his victory may not be a complete rejection of the Dravidian Model.

The TVK has yet to hold any office or have any representatives, so only time will tell how different its politics is. The need to reach out to other parties to build a majority gives the first indications of how Vijay intends to govern – as he has reached out to the Congress and Left parties, there may be scope to take Tamil politics in a slightly different direction. 

Many of the key players in the TVK, however, cut their political teeth in one or other of the Dravidian parties and retain connections to politicians in other camps. It remains to be seen how successfully the TVK can avoid being institutionalised into the ‘normal ways of doing politics’.

Poll data shows that the TVK has performed extremely well in the northern districts and in districts where Dalits form a major concentration. This reinforces the point that voters were looking for something different rather than more of the same.

The charisma attached to Vijay’s film superstar status will start to fade once the messy business of day-to-day politics begins. He does have experience working at the grassroots level as he had formed a network by turning his fan clubs into welfare associations. It will be fascinating to see the extent to which Vijay can transform politics in Tamil Nadu.

Karthikeyan Damodaran is an Assistant Professor in Social Sciences at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

Hugo Gorringe is Head, Department of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and author of Panthers in Parliament: Dalits, Caste and Political Power in South India.

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