A Historical Ethnography of Public Political Lives in Tamilnadu (1950-1970)

TamilThanmai: A Historical Ethnography Of Public Political Lives in Tamilnadu (1950-1970)

Ponni Arasu

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto

TamilThanmai: A Historical Ethnography of Public Political lives in Tamilnadu (1950-1970)

Ponni Arasu

Doctorate of Philosophy

Department of History University of Toronto

2019

Abstract

This dissertation is a historical ethnography of Sulur, a town in Coimbatore district of

Tamilnadu, India. Through in-depth interviews and archives, both personal and public, of textual and visual sources, I have evolved an analytical framework from which to understand everyday public political lives. Using a spatial analysis, this dissertation has documented the lives of men in Sulur who were engaged in public politics. I have contextualized these life stories in a range of socio-economic and political histories of Tamilnadu during that time.

The period between the 1950-70 is when the political parties that were to influence the landscape of electoral power and political discourse in the second half of the 20th C were forming their base in Tamilnadu. This period, before the consolidation of state power and political discourses, is an ideal time from which to understand the history of such political formations from the perspective of the everyday lives of its ordinary members, all of whom are men.

Based on this narrative I have identified and explored elements of what I term TamilThanmai.

TamilThanmai, I propose is a historically grounded analytical framework which simultaneously

describes the essence of public political lives that provided a way of being and sense of self for all those who lived it. This dissertation is a history of and through TamilThanmai.

In the dissertation themes of public political life has been explored through three main chapters.

These include a focus on Dalit public political lives; the affective ties that hold together the non-

Brahmin, non-Dalit men engaged in such lives; and the embodiment of such a politics through physical training culture. This three-pronged exploration is grounded in a critical spatial framework.

Through this exploration of TamilThanmai I propose a theoretical framework from which to understand the persistence of caste-based thinking and masculinization of public political lives in

Tamilnadu.

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殿ன்னந்டப்பா뾿க்埁ம் தேힿக்埁ம்…

சிவபாக்கிய믍 அவர்க쿁க்埁믍…

For Sinnandappaayee and Devi…

For Sivapaakkiyam…

Acknowledgments

I have no words to thank all the “uncles” of Sulur who have brought life to this dissertation. Without their time, energy, excitement, trust and openness about such deeply personal renditions of their entire adult lives, I would not have been able to do any of this. To the town of Sulur for opening its doors to me. To Sulur for being the wonder that it continues to be that inspired me and allowed me to write a history of it. The uncles cannot read this dissertation. This work will not be complete till I write it in our language – Tamil.

All PhD processes have their own versions of drama. This one was no different. It truly takes a village! It is hard to imagine a Graduate student who may have received as much support as I did in this process. My committee has seen me through unimaginable turmoil in my life. They always heard me with regards how I can bring my focus back to the PhD and helped me in every way that they could. Jayeeta Sharma (Jo), Bhavani Raman (B), Francis Cody (Frank), Sean Mills, Srilata Raman have all served on my committee at various points. I must thank Bhavani, Srilata and Frank for giving me the support to think through the Tamil epistemological universe confidently. Their own work and their role as committee members enabled me to think freely and work through my thoughts rigorously. Sean, for opening up my world to theory emerging from various parts of the world that are grounded in the history of oppressed peoples and proposing theory that challenged the assumptions of Eurocentric linear theoretical and methodological approaches to history.

Anyone would be blessed to have Jo Sharma as their supervisor. She is the perfect combination of profound intellectual inspiration, deep grounded-ness in a politically sound approach to scholarship along with support with the everyday grind of completing a PhD. To get these kinds of support from a supervisor for seven years is not something to take lightly.

Bhavani called the PhD process a marathon even before I began. I must thank her for reading so many drafts of so many pieces of writing over the years with utmost care and pushing me gently toward rigour. She took glee in watching my thinking grow and helped shape the directions of my thought. Her sustained detailed reading and comments over the years has helped tease out the details and has shaped my writing.

Thank you to Frank for instilling confidence in my thoughts when the process was overwhelming.

Other professors at the Department of History and at the Department of Historical Studies, Scarborough (UTSC) have assisted me immensely. To Franca Iacovetta and Donna Gabaccia for being my feminist foremothers in a faraway land. To Jacqui Alexander aka Prof. A for opening up new universes to me. To Melanie Newton for inviting me into the world of Caribbean Studies. Ian Radforth, Daniel Bender and Pia for opening their homes to me. Thank you to all of them for making the University of Toronto a supportive academic home to me.

I would like to thank Vivian Hwang at the Department of History for her prompt support. To Urooj Khan, Monica Hretsina, Heather Seto, Minda Nessia, and Kamal Hassan at the University of Toronto Scarbourough for making my degree process, the PhD and teaching work as easy as possible.

Thank you to all my students at UTSC for keeping me grounded in my disciplinary and political basics so I could never lose sight of why I am doing this work. Thank you to their kind words and trust in me as a teacher over the years without which I would not have made it through a gruelling life as a Graduate student in the Academic industrial complex of North America.

To Sarah Hodges for being the first person to see potential in this project.

To my brother Kathir for supporting me in any way he can. To Kannadasan and Devendran for scanning hundreds of pages and for being contemporaries and colleagues in the world of researching about and in Tamil.

To my stellar copy editor Shreya Gopi.

To Revathi for her poetry and for being a feminist comrade in the Tamil world. To Kalpana for her warmth, love and for being a feminist comrade in the Tamil world.

To Koni Benson for never letting me feel alone as a ‘weird historian’.

To Lata Mani for being my friend, mentor and teacher.

To Geetha for doing the work on the history of Tamilnadu and for writing the two plays on the history of public politics in Tamilnadu from a feminist perspective. I could not have arrived at my research question if Geetha had not done all that she has done. Thank you to her for patiently talking me through this project and for unwavering trust as well as a firm voice of loving critique that urged me to do my work with depth and care. Thank you Geetha for your lifetime’s work and for trusting me with that legacy. I

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would not be who I am if you had not done what you have done before me.

To Amma (A. Mangai) and Appa (V. Arasu) for giving me Tamil. To Amma for making it crystal clear that I must live just as I am, freely and honestly. To Appa for supporting her in that endeavour. To Sibi for being my little brother I am always proud of and for being a proud and gentle Tamil male person. To Anita for being awesome.

To my people in Sri Lanka Harean, Melisha, Mirak, Zainab, Jay and Ananda for their homes, patience and love.

To my people at home in Batticaloa Sitra, Mounaguru mama, Vijaya Akka, Suriya Cultural Group girls, Ilanges, Anu, Amara, Eva, Sorna, Pirapanjan, Philomena, Darshan and the one and only Marilyn for opening up their world to me; for being the inspiration to do this work and making sure I had a home in the Tamil world. To my dog Malli for being the best companion there can be.

To the Toronto peeps for making our home – full of fun, joy and deep political rootedness and rigour without which this work would not have happened. Thank you Sharlene (Shar), Natalie (Nat), Salma, Coco and Athoo. To my little Tamil haven in cold Canada, Rathika and Preethy for the conversations on what it means to be who we are. To Meghana for her friendship and intellectual camaraderie. To Myrto and Kristina for their art and their friendship in Toronto. To the incredible artists and sound political thinkers of Toronto Nahed, Leila, Kole, Agata, Sajdeep, Amy, Leanne, Josh, Richard and Tim for being comrades in a foreign land.

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To my queer pod Gautam, Deepti, Pavi, Mario, Kaushiki, Andrew, Yuri and Veto for being my home. To Anusha for being my Tamil queer sister in arms. To Tashi for being a friend who understands all parts of me.

To Laila and Lisa for raising incredible young women that inspire me to do this work.

To the children, Kuts, Jemmu, Tooli, Aaliyah, Dunya, Alya, Arundhathi, Manoush, Arjumand and Kavya for existing. If not for them, I would not wake up in the morning.

To Priya Thangarajah, for being my first Tamil love. For being my person in the world. I miss you.

To Indu Vashist aka Gabster Jaan Lovester for grounding me in all those times that I could not. For never letting me lose sight of the real world in that of the books. For making sure we never ever settle for standards of rigorous thought and work that are made by anyone else but ourselves. For holding me through the many moments of anger at my own people. For showing me that land, culture and love is that which is within us and is that which nourishes us from deep within – that it lays in that first bite of freshly made makki di roti doused in butter with saag. For coffee walks and yoga. For her deep commitment to learning to be funny in Tamil. For being my roots as I grew. For being my love. (and for reading multiple drafts of many parts of this dissertation).

To Sarala Anne (with an E) Emmanuel for loving me. For filling every word of this dissertation with infinite and expansive love. For holding my love for my language, land and its people even when I was unable. For never letting me lose sight of the beauty

when faced with the brutalities of history. (And for being the person who knows this dissertation as well as I do).

In many ways my whole life has led up to doing this work and the work continues. The thank you(s) above are far from exhaustive.

All scholars proved or widely known to have engaged in sexual harassment/assault have been marked in this dissertation with a backward slash (/) before their names and a caret (^) after. I have made this decision to mark scholars who I have known to have engaged in harassment to the best of my knowledge. I acknowledge that there may be others on my list that perhaps also need to be marked. I choose not to do so due to lack of information.

The backward slash is to indicate that they have committed abuses of power pushing back the work of academic freedom and integrity for all. The caret is used as a mark made in written or printed matter to show the place where something is missing and yet to be included. This is to show that justice with regards to such abuse of power is yet pending. This decision is a creative endeavor to continue to use essential scholarly work while simultaneously countering the complicity of all of us in propagating such abuse of power by not naming those who engaged in it.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

Acknowledgments...... v

Table of Contents ...... xii

List of Figures ...... xiv

List of Interviewees...... xvi

List of Places ...... xix

Chapter 1 Introduction: DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai as perspective and Historical Method ...... 1

TamilThanmai as a historical construction: Antiquity, Purity and Unity ...... 13

Constructing Dravidian Society through Self-Affirmation ...... 32

Anti-Caste language and register as a prerequisite for Dravidian or Tamil identity ...... 41

TamilThanmai ...... 51

TamilThanmai: The Sulur story ...... 55

Chapter 2 Spatiality and Temporality of TamilThanmai in Sulur ...... 59

Mapping space, Mapping power ...... 60

6.1 Spatializing everyday public political lives ...... 67

6.2 Everyday spaces, its people and politics ...... 73

Mapping Time, Mapping lives and histories...... 95

7.1 Significant moments in the emergence of political parties and everyday public politics ..97

7.2 Socio-economic history and public political life ...... 105

Whither the Dalits? ...... 116

Chapter 3 Placing Sulur’s Dalit leader in the history of public politics: The life and times of K.M. Jeyaraj ...... 121

Nam Naattu Adimaigal: The Slaves of our Nation – A window into a Dalit leader’s mind ..131

Public political work in Sulur led by K.M. Jeyaraj ...... 144 xii

10.1 The Thakur Valibar Sangam (Tagore Youth Organization) ...... 148

10.2 Thazhththappattor League: The Depressed Classes League ...... 154

Jeyaraj’s public political work: Bringing together the different strands ...... 156

Dalits in public: A survey of language, tone, body language and silence ...... 159

Chapter 4 Com. Valluvarasan and Su.Ra. Subramaniam: Writing the history of public politics in and through friendship ...... 168

Com. Valluvarasan ...... 177

Su.Ra. Subramaniam ...... 194

The memorial ...... 204

Lives lived together: parallels and intersections ...... 208

Chapter 5 TamilThanmai of the Body: The story of the Anjaneya Gym ...... 214

The gym as a training ground for ‘Tamil Bulls’ ...... 221

17.1 Wrestling ...... 223

17.2 “Physical Culture” through Yoga and Bodybuilding...... 226

What did the gym mean to my interviewees? ...... 234

The big split ...... 242

The Jeyamaruthi Gym as the ongoing legacy of the Anjaneya Gym ...... 251

The gym as a space of embodiment of the self ...... 255

Chapter 6 Conclusion: TamilThanmai in Contemporary Sulur ...... 257

Bibliography ...... 267

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Google map image of Sulur ...... 60

Figure 2: This map is a representation of Sulur as it emerged through my field work ...... 60

Figure 3: Sulur official government map, 1980-1981 ...... 67

Figure 4: Pechchumuthu in his small room with a large picture of his wife Kaliammal ...... 81

Figure 5: The book of Dravidian values from 1944...... 84

Figure 6: Sinnaiyan garlanding a sweeper. Kittusamy in the center ...... 87

Figure 7: This roughly annotated family tree maps all legitimate members of the SVL family 108

Figure 8: Palanisamy showing me movements from Harichandran Kummi while singing ...... 112

Figure 9 Report from Thinamalar newspaper, Coimbatore edition, from May 19, 2011 ...... 138

Figure 10: Picture of Su.Ra. and Valluvarasan from 1968 ...... 195

Figure 11 Picture of Su. Ra. And others in 1956 ...... 196

Figure 12: Cover of Su.Ra.’s song book and autobiography ...... 197

Figure 13 Su. Ra. And others during a DMK campaign that used the Oyilattam……………...200

Figure 14 Su. Ra. with Kalaignar Karunanithi ...... 206

Figure 15: Advertisement with image of K.V. Iyer for his book. Yoga teacher Sundaram demonstrating a pose as part of K.V. Iyer demonstrations. Undated picture of Sundaram many decades later with Sulur yoga teacher Pechumuthu standing second from left...... 232

Figure 16 Mariappan and his wife in front of their house ...... 238

Figure 17: The letterhead of the Anjaneya Gym has the lord Hanuman ...... 247 xiv

Figure 18: Jeyamaruthi Gym’s ‘worship room’...... 247

Figure 19 Anjaneya Gym members, 1972 ...... 249

Figure 20 pamphlet printed on the official letterhead of the Anjaneya Gym ...... 249

Figure 21 Members of the Jeyamaruthi Gym ...... 252

Figure 22 Sundaram’s yoga instruction chart to the right with picture of Hanuman ...... 253

List of Interviewees

Primary accounts

Note: Unless stated otherwise, all persons listed below are of the Kallar caste.

Appan Balasubramaniam, senior DMK member and only interviewee with a close connection to the Dravidianist public sphere of the period before the formation of the DMK in 1949.

Comrade Valluvarasan, currently a member of a smaller Marxist Leninist Party but erstwhile member of the DMK till the late 1960s. He owns and runs the shoe shop in the Thangam Shopping Complex on the Trichy Highway.

Iyyasamy, member of the Unified Communist Party and later of the Communist Party of India after the split in 1964. Significant to the history of performance forms, particularly that of theatre in Sulur. He now runs a small corner shop near Mathiazhagan Nagar.

K.M. Jeyaraj, Dalit leader of Sulur, retired school headmaster, head of the Sulur Milk Cooperative for many years and district and state level leader of the Depressed Classes league. He, with others, began and ran the Tagore Youth Organisation amongst his own Paraiyar Dalit community of Sulur.

Kamakshi, Member of the Congress party from the 1940s onwards and a key member of the Anjaneya Gym.

Mariappan, Member of the Congress Party and later of the Kamaraj Congress after the split in 1964. A key member of the Anjaneya Gym.

Mr. Dhanraj, important member of the CSI Church and was integral to the rebuilding of the Church from the 1960s onwards. He is of the Paraiyar Dalit caste. He introduced me to K.M. Jeyaraj.

Mr. Kittusamy, employed by the Sulur Panchayath as a sweeper in the position that passes down from one generation to another. He lives in Sweeper Colony in one of the homes built for

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the families of those employed by the Panchayath in the 1960s. He is of the Arundhathiyar Dalit caste.

Mr. Maakali, elder from the Arundhathiyar Caste who worked as agricultural labourer and briefly as a mill worker. He was not part of any political parties or groups as such but was astutely aware of the public political sphere and kept abreast of it in Sulur and beyond. He lives in Mathiazhagan Nagar.

Naatrayan, served as the last president of the Anjaneya Gym. He was a member of the Congress Party and is the father of Varadaraasu who was integral to my field work.

Palanisamy, is presently a member of the ADMK. He was a member of the DMK and of the Oyil Kummi group that performed the Oyilattam dance form as part of political campaigns. He is from a poor Kallar family who migrated for labour after the eradication of the betel leaf crop due to disease in the 1950s.

Pattakkarar Sankaran, elder of the Arundhathiyar caste who also served as a member of the Sulur Panchayath many times. He lives in a hut with his wife in Mathiazhagan Nagar.

Pavunammal, is a retired school teacher. She is of the Paraiyar Dalit caste and was integral to the rebuilding of the CSI Church in the 1960s.

Pechchumuthu (Late), was one of the earliest members of the Communist Party in Sulur. He defied his in-laws by having his wife contest elections against the rich landlords who were also local political party leaders of the Congress and the DMK in the 1950s.

Barber Ramu, is of the barber caste and was one among the Nine Gems of the Navamani Cycle Stand which was one among the many spaces that were important in everyday public political life, in the cluster around the Sooraththamman Temple where the Anjaneya Gym was located.

Sinnaiyan, DMK member and many time member of the Sulur Panchayath Board. He is seen as the ‘grand old man’ of the DMK in Sulur although he seemed disinterested in that role.

Thalaivar Su.Ra. Thangavelu (Late), one of the earliest members of the Communist Party from Sulur. He was from a landowning family in Sulur and left the Communist Party in the late

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1970s after the demise of his elder brother and his son. After this he contested elections independently and served as the president of the Panchayath for multiple terms. He was known for his commitment to the well-being of Sulur and was involved in many civic struggles such as the one to save the Noyyal River from pollution and founded and organised the Pongal Vizha in Sulur. He also started the Ariviyal Poonga library and wrote the book on Sulur’s history of local governance – Sulur Ullatchi Varalaaru.

‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, member and teacher of weightlifting at the present day Jeyamaruthi Gym. Active member of the erstwhile Anjaneya Gym and among the few who moved from the Congress to the DMK in the 1960s coinciding with the time of the split in the Gym.

Secondary Accounts

Paulraj, Pastor at the CSI Church during the time of my fieldwork. He was not a native of Sulur.

‘Police’ Kandasamy, member of the Jeyamaruthi Gym, current member of the Panchayath board and member of the ADMK. He was witness, as a much younger member to the events at the Anjaneya Gym in the 1960s.

Radhakrishnan, is the son of Kuzhandhaiammal who participated in and was imprisoned during the first anti-Hindi agitations of 1937.

Raghunathan, son of SVL, important leader of the Congress Party in Sulur.

Senthalai Gauthaman, member of the Paavendar Peravai, key author of Sulur Varalaaru.

Sivasamy, son of MP Arumugam.

Thamizhnenjan, member of the Paavendar Peravai. He was also a member of the Nakkeerar Mandram of the 1970s that sought to bring together Dravidian and Communist ideals as a response to the splits in both political formations in Tamilnadu at that time.

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List of Places

Note: Refer to Figure 2 for a map of the places listed below.

Anjaneya Gym was the gym located in the Sooraththamman Temple Complex from the early 1940s to 2008.

Anna Kalai Arangam is located next to the Panchayath Office, off on Trichy Highway and was a significant location for the public political lives of my interviewees. All major political events were held there and many important leaders, local and state level made speeches there.

Ariviyal Poonga was started and run by Thalaivar Thangavelu is located on Kalangal Road in a shopping complex and was an important archive for this dissertation.

Big Pond was one of the main sources of water for Sulur till the 1970s.

Collectorate Office is the office of local governance for the larger collectorate of which Sulur town is a part.

Communist Party Office is the building that was the home to the Unified Communist Party before 1964. Iyyasamy takes care of this space now.

Com.Valluvarasan’s Shoe Shop was a significant space during my fieldwork as a meeting place to talk about politics. Many dropped in there to chat about current affairs and have larger political and philosophical debates.

Jeyamaruthi Gym is the currently existing gym in Sulur that has emerged from the lineage of the Anjaneya Gym.

Market Grounds is the land where the hundred-year-old market for agricultural goods from many villages surrounding Sulur continues to be held even today.

Mathiazhagan Nagar is the area where small pieces of land and homes were granted to those who did not own land in Sulur. Located in the traditional Arundhathiyar enclave in Sulur, many who were granted homes were also of the Arundhathiyar caste.

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Sulur Mosque is the only one of its kind in Sulur and serves as a place of worship and community organising amongst the Muslim community in Sulur.

Navamani Cycle Stand was a cycle repair shop that was one among the many spaces in the cluster in and around the Sooraththamman Temple. It was started by nine young men in the 1950s who were DMK loyalists. It was a space where young men gathered to read newspapers and discuss politics. It was also closed when many such establishments were displaced after the case for reclaiming the land by its alleged owners that they successfully did in the 2000s after a legal battle of many decades.

Noyyal River borders Sulur on the north and was a major source of water.

Paavendar Peravai is a library and an institution that is a meeting place of the current generation of Dravidianist thinkers in Sulur. This organisation researched and wrote the book Sulur Varalaaru.

Pallar area is the enclave where Dalits of the Pallar caste lived in Sulur.

Panchayath Office is a hundred years old and has been home to the Sulur Panchayath from its inception almost a century ago.

Paraiyar area is the enclave where Dalits of the Paraiyar caste live in Sulur. It was home to the Tagore Youth Organisation began by K.M. Jeyaraj and his colleagues. It now borders the CSI Church which is primarily patronized by this community.

Ramu Barber Shop was also located in the cluster of buildings near the Sooraththamman Temple and was also lost in the same legal battle. Ramu was one of the Nine Gems of the Navamani Cycle Stand.

Robertson Memorial Church and school is the CSI Church bordering the Paraiyar area of Sulur.

RVS Educational Institutions is located near Mathiazhagan Nagar. This group of institutions is a newer formation in Sulur dating back to the 1970s and has provided an economy of rental

student accommodations that has enable upward economic mobility for those of the Arundhathiyar caste living in Mathiazhagan Nagar.

Small Pond was one of the main sources of water for Sulur and is located alongside the Big Pond.

SRS Puram is named after the DMK leader and Panchayath President SRS who was brother of Thalaivar Su.Ra. Thangavelu and is credited with bringing running water from the Siruvani Dam to Sulur.

Sulur Bus Stop is a key place in this dissertation as it was where many congregated for multiple purposes that were part of their public political lives. They congregated for activities in and around the Anna Kalai Arangam and the Panchayath

Sweeper Colony is the set of homes where the families of those employed as sweepers from one generation to another in the Sulur Panchayath. These homes were built in the 1920s and have passed down since. All the sweepers are members of the Arundhathiyar Dalit caste but prefer to identify as sweepers.

Tagore Youth Organisation was started by K.M. Jeyaraj and his colleagues and was in the Paraiyar area of Sulur. They engaged in a range of public political activities from the 1950s- 1970.

Thangam Shopping Complex is owned by a rich Kallar family and is located on the Trichy Highway. Com. Valluvarasan’s Shoe Shop is in this complex.

Trichy highway is the main road that cuts through Sulur with many clusters of spaces that are important for the history of public political lives located alongside it.

Udayasuriyan Reading Room was part of the cluster of buildings near the Sooraththamman Temple. It was the reading room of the DMK.

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Chapter 1 Introduction: DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai as perspective and Historical Method

In 2012, the feminist theatre collective Marapachchi Theatre presented Aanmaiyo Aanmai1 (Macho oh Macho), a comedic play written by V. Geetha, a historian, and directed by A. Mangai, a prominent feminist director of Tamil theatre. The cast of this play included myself and other actors from a younger generation and from mixed socio-economic backgrounds, cultural and sexual identities, and across the spectrum of gender. The play was first performed to an intimate, small, invited audience of friends, comrades, professors, artists, politicians and activists – those who were well-versed in the progressive history and politics of Tamilnadu.

Employing techniques of Commedia dell’arte2, this play used comedy as methodology to revisit the public political sphere in Tamilnadu from the 1940s to the 1970s. The bulk of the script of the play used primary resources – from recorded speeches to newspaper and magazine spreads. The jokes, however, did not land, and laughter was absent, creating an ominous atmosphere of tension. The invited audience of mostly progressive scholars and public figures in contemporary Tamilnadu could not bear to see their beloved political figures being critiqued by feminists. They were uncomfortable with the ways that their history was being depicted, even though every single primary source was “footnoted” visually on stage. From the opening scene, the audience began shifting uneasily in their seats. By the final scene, the pressure had built up in the room, resulting in the post-play conversation becoming an all-out debate about history and politics in Tamilnadu. It was clear by the end of that evening that the contents of the play were not going to be welcomed with open arms even amongst the most progressive scholars in the state.

Aanmaiyo Aanmai was a sequel to V. Geetha’s first play on the history of women in the public sphere in Tamilnadu, which was constructed around archival material from the 1850s to the

1 V. Geetha. 2012. “Aanmaiyo Aanmai (Macho o Macho)” 2 Chaffee, Judith, and Olly Crick. 2017. The Routledge companion to Commedia dell ‘Arte.

1940s3. The first play, Kaala Kanavu4 (A Dream of a Time, 2007) by and large celebrates women and extant gendered perspectives of the Tamil political public sphere during that period. It traces women and gender perspectives in Tamilnadu’s public sphere. It begins with the women associated with progressive church-based movements in the late 19th Century onwards; to those who were involved in the Congress in the early 20th Century, with extensive information on the women in the Self Respect Movement from the 1920s onwards; and Communist women of the 1930s and 1940s. This period was marked by Indian Independence and within Tamilnadu, by the transmutation of the Dravidian movement from one of radical social critique to one focused on mass political support that was to eventually lead to electoral victories from 1967 onwards5.

The origins of the Dravidian Movement are often traced to the late 19th Century with the articulation of a linguistic identity and self-affirmation for those that spoke Dravidian languages6 and lived in the southern peninsula of the Indian subcontinent – the colonial Madras Presidency7. While those speaking other Dravidian languages were participants and leaders too, the different groups/leaders/campaigns/publications that made up this movement were predominantly connected to the Tamil language8. The movement and its broad political principles were consolidated from the 1920s onwards, in the work and personhood of E.V. Ramasamy Naicker who was given the title of Periyar, meaning Elder. But it always did and remains a spectrum of political organizations, perspectives and agendas. The term Dravidian Movement, represented by a few key leaders and their organizations/parties, is a useful way to describe the fundamental

3 This play started off and sustained a delightful sharing of journeys within public political lives between two significant feminist thinkers of the 1980s generation in Tamilnadu - V.Geetha and A.Mangai. Till this time they had been on largely different, even if not conflicting, political paths. 4 Geetha V வா 埀தா Kalak Kanavu: Penniya Varalaru காலக் கனퟁ: பெண்ணிய வரலா쟁 ஆவன நாட்கம் [A Dream of a Time: A Feminist History Documentary Play ] (Chennai: Adayalam, 2009) 5 Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 6 The Dravidian Language family encompasses many languages that are spoken in Southern India and Sri Lanka primarily, apart from a few others sprinkled across other parts of South Asia. Historical movement of those who spoke these languages has spread the language to South East Asia, the Caribbean, etc. The language family was identified and recognized in the early 19th Century by the Colonial linguist Robert Caldwell who wrote the Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages in 1856. 7 Geetha, V., and /Rajadurai.S.V^ 2011. Towards a non-brahmin millennium: from Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Kolkata: Samya. 8 Mitchell, Lisa. 2006. "Making the Local Foreign: Shared Language and History in Southern India". Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 16 (2): 229-248.

3 linguistic identity formation that has remained at the core of public politics in Tamilnadu since the late 19th Century9.

Earlier iterations of the Dravidian Movement, from the 1920s to the 1940s, were primarily represented by the South Indian Liberal Federation (commonly referred to as the Justice Party, after the party’s mouthpiece journal called Justice) and the Self-Respect Movement. Both had Periyar’s leadership along with a large group of vibrant thinkers, writers and orators – many of whom were women. These political groups soon became overshadowed by the growth of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam10 (Dravidian Progress Federation) or the DMK, from the 1940s onwards. The dawn of the DMK coincided with the dwindling participation of women in public politics. And thus V. Geetha’s first play Kala Kanavu, where the periodization ends with the 1940s, leaves us with the question: “where did all the women go?”

Aanmaiyo Aanmai opens with this same question, drawing a historical link from the way that women participated in public politics in the early 20th Century to their erasure by mid-century. The two plays had very different journeys in Tamilnadu. I performed in both Kala Kanavu and Aanmaiyo Aanmai and thus saw first-hand the disparities between the two.

Despite the involvement of two well-known and much-celebrated public figures in Tamilnadu, Aanmaiyo Aanmai was not well received and thus had a brief run. During the few performances that did occur, the tension was palpable within the audience and the cast and crew grew fearful

9 For the most robust rendition of this history refer to Towards a non-brahmin millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar.(1998). Eugene Irschick’s Politics and social conflict in South India; the non-Brahman movement and Tamil separatism, 1916-1929. (1969) and Robert Hardgrave’s The Dravidian Movement. (1965) are the earliest texts on the subject and were written before the Dravidian Movement based organisations were established as those with political power in the state of Tamilnadu. Christopher Baker’s The politics of South India, 1920-1937 (1976), David Arnold’s The Congress in Tamilnad: nationalist politics in South India, 1919-1937 (1977), David Washbrook’s "Country politics: Madras 1880 to 1930". Modern Asian Studies. (1973), Marguerite Ross Barnett’s The politics of cultural nationalism in south India. (1976) and Nambi Arooran’s Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism (1980) all made for a rich decade of literature on Tamilnadu’s political history. In this line Pandian, /M. S. S. Pandian^’s Brahmin and non-Brahmin: genealogies of the Tamil political present. (2006) remains the last full- length work of this genre for Tamilnadu’s political history. Bernard Bate’s Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. (2011) is perhaps closest in this body of literature to this dissertation as it is concerned with the ‘practice’ of politics in the Dravidian Movement while all others before this were written based entirely on textual sources. An apt end to this list is Geetha.V and S.V. Rajadurai’s "End of Dravidian Era in Tamil Nadu". 1999 in the Economic and Political Weekly where they respond to all the myriad changes in the public sphere whose history they traced in the period that was beyond the scope of their book. 10 Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

4 that that tension may erupt into something other than words. The power of the critique articulated by Aanmaiyo Aanmai was palpable in the moment after the first performance for the invited audience. The play was structured as a parody and involved us, as actors, embodying the DMK leaders and speaking their words that made clear the limitations of their own political ideology. We delivered their own words that exposed the reality of unfulfilled promises within the litany of the alliterative, powerfully poetic language that they were known to have mastered11. Inspired by Commedia dell’arte, that has enabled political satire in Europe and elsewhere, the actors wore masks and delivered their dialogues12. After the show, a lawyer in the audience, one of the last remaining female public figures who grew up in and remained committed to the Dravidian politics of the pre-DMK generation, shook my hand firmly and would not let go. I was pleased for a moment, as she was, in all respects, a political foremother to a young, critical Tamil woman such as myself. The gesture was not in appreciation, though, but was a reprimand. She said: ‘It isn’t good to make this much fun of our leaders. Be careful.’ This moment has stayed with me since. To expose the limitations and regressive nature of this politics was a threat to someone like her. For all those who had constructed their lives around the idealistic vision these leaders had spoken of – for Tamil society, identity and for themselves individually – these ideas were up for critique but only to a certain degree. To expose the very roots of it as being contradictory and describe them as being an exercise of oppressive power and not just of resistance, was read as an erasure or insult of a legacy. I recognized that our critical voice, in spite of, or perhaps because of its rigor and complexity, became a threat to a way of being and a sense of self.

Kala Kanavu was invited all over Tamilnadu and performed to myriad audiences across the political spectrum. College girls, Communists and those committed to Dravidian politics of many kinds, loved this testament to Tamil women’s presence in the public political sphere in the period between the 1840s and 1940s. Aanmaiyo Aanmai, on the other hand, exposed the masculinization of the public sphere in Tamilnadu from the 1940s to the 1970s. Further, it portrayed the limitations of Dravidian promises for Tamil self-affirmation within the context of resisting a hegemonic Indian identity in the post-Independence context. It also made clear the limitations of the Dravidian movement’s critique of caste hegemony. Within all of this, it highlighted the

11 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 12 Chaffee, Judith, and Olly Crick. 2017. The Routledge companion to Commedia dell ‘Arte.

5 demise of a gender perspective and the absence of women (beyond the tokenistic) within the public political sphere. All this was done through archival records of words said or written by DMK leaders during these decades. This play, unlike Kala Kanavu, ended with a dream for a different ‘Tamil’ language, a way of being, a different Tamil society and sense of self, in which ‘my body and my being aren’t a curse word13’. This line was part of a soulful slow song, sung collectively by the actors, evoking a feminist sisterhood/camaraderie. The chorus of the song asked the question: ‘Will it become lighter, my body, my self, will it become lighter?14’ The song was written by a fellow cast member, Prema Revathi, a Tamil feminist poet15. What is this way of being and sense of self? Tamil people living in Tamilnadu and elsewhere maintain a narrative of the Dravidian movement’s ‘progressive history’16. This history is constructed as a combination of two things: First is the way the Dravidian movement drew on the radical potential that emerged and still existed within the epistemological and affective universe that was rooted in the Tamil language. This radical potential proposed a united identity based on and through the language – its uniqueness and antiquity – from which a social egalitarianism was to emerge, flow and remain17. Second, the radical potential, its visions and

th promises, were described in the Tamil public sphere in the 20 Century as akin to or synonymous with the realities of everyday life. This radical potential and the emphasis on the synonymity of it with lived experience constructed a Tamil-ness18. This synonymity and the resulting Tamil-ness

13 V. Geetha. வ.埀தா, Aanmaiyo Aanmai ஆண்மமயயா ஆண்மம [Macho o Macho] (Chennai: Unpublished 2012) 14 ibid 15 https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/prema-revathi. Accessed February 28th, 2019 16 There is a narrative of Tamilnadu’s anti-caste history within and beyond scholarship that is placed in the fore when speaking of Tamilnadu’s public political history. This is recognized as Tamilnadu’s progressive history vis-à- vis caste. 17 Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University. 18 A quick survey of many of the texts referenced here from within the historiography of Tamil public spheres begins with an acknowledgement of the antiquity of Tamil and the resultant egalitarianism. Even contemporary texts even if concerned with everyday realities of contemporary Tamil regions don’t ask or answer the question of which ‘Tamils’ they are writing of, even if it is methodologically possible to do so. When the analyses are based on textual evidence and their reception, which they often are in the Tamil context, it is harder to ascertain defining markers of which Tamils are being spoken of. But even in that case it is possible to make informed suggestions of the caste, gender, class, regional and various other identifications of ‘Tamils’, but this is often not a priority. I argue here that the idea of the possibility and assumed existence of a ‘Tamil’ is deeply ingrained in all those thinking through histories and ethnographies connected to those who are related to the Tamil language.

6 did not make space for a difference between how we live and who we are. In short, it is assumed to be a way of being as well as a sense of self in the 20th Century.

This may be best illustrated through an example that recurs in this dissertation at many moments. My interviewees – members of the public sphere who were moulded by the Dravidian movement as well as by other political parties, had a way of being that was bound by caste practices. All of them were non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men. In their manner of speech, practices of everyday life, major life decisions and in their embodied selves in the public and private realm, they reflected traditional caste-based ways of being. I noticed this in how they spoke disrespectfully of or ignored Dalit communities/individuals – their histories and their lives. It also emerged starkly in their silences during speech with regards to acknowledging the existing of caste-based thinking and practices, as they spoke of their own life stories. When analyzed based on the context of their narrative and my own background in caste-based society, these silences held an assumption of Dalits being inferior to them. These ways of being could be reduced simply to ‘caste-practices’ or isolated ‘caste-based’ actions. Scholarship has effectively shown that living within a society constructed upon the logic of caste means that caste was all-pervasive - it was in our bodies, hearts, minds and influenced every aspect of our internal and external lives19. This made it imperative that these actions, inactions and choices were seen as a way of being that persisted as the default. Its normativity is highlighted most effectively by the complete lack of observation or

19 There is a vast array of scholarship on Caste in South Asia and more specifically in Tamilnadu. There are scholars who have dedicated their entire lives to documenting the history and practice of caste. There are even more scholars/social activists who document and intervene in caste-based violence every day. Here to highlight the point being made here, that Caste is not merely a distant structure, but the very logic by which anyone who is part of caste society, including myself, may see themselves, others, live and be. Here Joel Lee, in his recent article called ‘Odor and Order’ says this of his proposition in this piece: that to understand the tenacious persistence of caste and untouchability in the present we would do well to take a phenomenological turn and inhale deeply. Heeding our senses and our embodied relationship to place, we may exhume meaningfully patterned relations between caste ideology, the organization of space, and the marking of bodies and sensoria by the sensuous content of the environment. Caste functions, among other things, as a spatial-sensory order. It is experienced as an inscription into the environment — indeed, into the chemical and olfactory content of the air we breathe — of the Brahmanical ideological premise that every caste has its own distinctive, hierarchically ranked “place” in the world, and that the places inhabited by subordinate castes should not only be set apart but should look, smell, and feel differently from those of the rest of society.’ This captures as closely as possible the place of caste in society that is being identified here. For the historical persistence of such ways of caste’s construction of society, we have to look to those writing about South Asians and/or Tamils in other contexts where in spite of mammoth disruptions caste based everyday practices have survived albeit with some crucial changes. For this look at Aisha Khan’s Juthaa" in Trinidad: Food, Pollution, and Hierarchy in a Caribbean Diaspora Community and Sharika Thiranagama’s The Civility of Strangers? Caste, Ethnicity, and Living Together in Postwar Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Both these scholars have traced the ongoing life of caste practices in spite of profound disruptions because of labour migration and war respectively. They are testament to the persistence of this system as a way of being.

7 acknowledgement of this way of being. Caste-ist speech, for instance, is default speech, as caste is the air we breathe20.

Simultaneously these very men were rooted within a sense of self that was deeply anti-caste. The Dravidian Movement’s language and discourse enabled this anti-caste self through access to a language and a way of thinking that made them – non-Brahmin men – equal to Brahmins21. This provided a potent counter to the traditionally oppressive paradigm of Brahmin supremacy. This Brahmanical paradigm and its structural oppression was not to be underestimated in the least. The Dravidian Movement’s challenge to this was also not to be underestimated – as will be expanded upon shortly. However, it was significant to notice that the Dravidian Movement’s anti-caste discourse, that included not just the potential for one’s own self-affirmation for non- Brahmin, non-Dalit men, but also a grounding for such a self-affirmation in a broader anti-caste language, made for a sense of self that was resolutely anti-caste.

This was only one example to illustrate the contradictions being identified here. Similar illustrations can be seen vis-à-vis the participation of my interviewees in religious practices and the simultaneous investment in atheist discourses, among many others.

It is tempting to dismiss these contradictions, as precisely that, contradictions. This temptation can also then extend to characterizing my interviewees as hypocritical. But this dissertation will show that these coexisting realities are not noticed or acknowledged as contradictions by my interviewees. Further, their faith in their anti-caste self is far from being an illusion that is based on everyday hypocrisy. Their rooting in this sense of self provided by Dravidian politics does, indeed, present the potential for a radical anti-caste way of being, even though the breadth and depth of this potential differed across different iterations of the Dravidian movement. However, the collapsing of this radical potential when seen against lived realities creates a much more complicated relationship between the sense of self and way of being. It at once breeds a deep faith in anti-caste politics while simultaneously not requiring everyday practices to reflect that faith. This complex relationship, I would like to call DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai.

20 Ibid 21 All the literature outlined in Footnote 8 documents and analyses this feature of Self-Affirmation of non-Brahmin men within the Dravidian Movement, which was based on an anti-Brahmin political stand and language.

In A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, the Tamil word Thanmai is defined as follows: taṉmai - nature, essence, property, inherent or abstract quality, character, temper, disposition, state, condition, position, circumstances22 This multipronged meaning of Thanmai makes it ideal for how it is used here. ‘Dravida’ here is in reference primarily to the Dravidian Movement-based discourses. Similarly, the term ‘Tamil’ here is used in reference to all those who are part of or influenced by the public sphere in the Tamil speaking areas that came to be called Tamilnadu from 1956 onwards. We will return shortly to the nuances of the usage of these two terms separately or together shortly. Before that, a broad-based description of DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai is important.

The construction of DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai is far from finite. It has always been derived from and exists within the context of constant debate. In that sense DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai can be seen as a discourse23 that emerges from a ‘state, condition, position or circumstances.’ However, as the example above, about the complex relationship to anti caste politics illustrates, it is also an abstract, ephemeral aura24 that envelops the Dravidian public sphere. In that sense it is ‘nature, essence, property, inherent or abstract quality, character, temper, disposition.’

An excellent essay by Hansen that considers the many meanings of ‘aura’, as they emerge in Benjamin’s (the scholar who has theorized aura) entire body of work, points to many renditions of the term that are useful for how it is being used here. For instance, she says:

“True to the etymological connotation of the word aura (Greek and Latin for “breath,” “breeze,” a subtle, fleeting waft of air, an atmospheric substance), the gazing subject is breathing, not just seeing, “the aura of those mountains, that branch.” The aura is a medium that envelops and physically connects – thus blurs the boundaries between – subject and object, suggesting a sensory, embodied mode of perception25” At another point she identifies Benjamin’s aura as:

22 A Dravidian etymological dictionary. 2006. Chicago, US: Digital South Asia Library. Pg. 278. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/burrow/. 23 Taylor, Stephanie. "Introduction." In What is Discourse Analysis?, 1–6. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Accessed February 20, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472545213.ch-001. 24 Hansen, Miriam Bratu. "Benjamin’s Aura." Critical Inquiry 34, no. 2 (2008): 336-75. doi:10.1086/529060. 25 Ibid. Pg. 351

“aura of the habitual” or the “experience that inscribes itself as long [repetitive] practice26”

In effect she constructs a more accurate picture of his engagement with aura as being more complex. She shows that aura as an idea that does not construct ‘polarity27’ but ‘anti-nomic opposition’.

On the whole she successfully achieves her purpose of showing that:

“…it is precisely the broader anthropological, perceptual-mnemonic, and visionary dimensions of aura that he wrests from that field which I take to be of interest for more current concerns.28”

DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai emerges precisely from these ‘current concerns’ and thus brings together the elements of aura and discourse into its fold, not as polarities but as co-existing entities.

When analysed from the perspective of everyday lives, as is done in this dissertation, DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai manifests as a thing best described as ‘embodied practice29’. This term has been widely used by many scholars. It can be simply defined as the practice that emerges from the understanding of:

“a holistic idea of the embodied person as a unity of organism, consciousness, emotions and actions. This unity of consciousness, body and practice is referred to simply as ‘embodiment’30” It is useful here, however, to revisit in detail Saba Mahmood’s summary of Foucault’s idea of ethics which manifests as embodied practice and is closest to the sense in which it is used in this dissertation. She summarizes Foucault’s contribution to the idea of ethics through the four elements that are central to his analysis. These include the ‘substance of ethics, modes of subjectivation, techniques of the self, and telos’. The substance of ethics refers to the domain of ethical judgment and practice. Modes of subjectivation refers to the models available for

26 Ibid. Pg. 370 27 Ibid, Pg. 354 28 Ibid, Pg. 338 29 Turner, Bryan S. 2017. Routledge handbook of body studies. 30 Ibid Pg. 62

10 developing relationships with the self in the process of the transformations that are sought to be achieved. The operations performed on oneself in the quest for evolving an ethical self is referred to as the techniques of the self and the modes of viewing such processes within a historically specific context is referred to as telos. Embodiment is a key element in this process for Foucault. Thus the relationship of a self to moral codes in the process of evolving an ethical subject involves all of these elements. Further this process is ‘manifest, and immanent, in everyday life’.31

This manifestation of the embodied practice, for the purposes of DravidaThanmai/ TamilThanmai, must be read along with Veena Das’s employment of the ‘everyday’. In that context her description of her own work is relevant to this dissertation. She says:

“it narrates the lives of particular persons and communities who were deeply embedded in these events, and it describes the way that the event attaches itself with its tentacles into everyday life and folds itself into the recesses of the ordinary. My attention is captures in this book by both the larger possibilities of phenomena and the singularity of lives32” Thus, the usage of ‘Thanmai’ allows for bringing together within one theoretical formulation, a methodology that is a ‘discourse’, an ‘aura’ that manifests as an ‘embodied practice’ in the ‘everyday’. DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai then is simultaneously, a way of being and a sense of self which may often seem to indicate elements that are contradictory to one another, but in fact exist as non-polarised, co-existent entities. Keeping in mind this theorization, we can now delve further into the specific details of DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai.

DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai, this dissertation will show, is a description of a range of historical processes that constructed Tamil society in the 20th Century. While these processes are primarily based in Southern India, their influences can be seen in many places where Tamils live, close to but outside the nation-state of India, such as Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, etc33.

31 Mahmud, Saba Fassin, Didier. 2015. A companion to moral anthropology. Malden, Mass. [etc.]: Wiley Blackwell. 32 Das, Veena. 2008. Life and words: violence and the descent into the ordinary. Berkeley, Calif: Univ. of California Press. 1 33 While in each place the histories of respective regions and nation states have created corresponding differences in the histories of Tamil societies, the marking of the language as being ancient and the possibility of identifying landscapes where the language lived has come to mean that certain elements are recognized as shared. These elements are connected primarily to language and literature. These histories are also shared across all those connected to the Tamil language as the Tamil language was a unit of analysis for Colonial rule. In that sense these

Simultaneously, DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai is a perspective and a methodology through which these historical processes can be mapped. As a description, it provides space to hold the numerous contradictions and trace the relationship between them to evolve a non-dichotomous layered history. As a methodology, it helps us move beyond assumptions about the fundamentals of Tamil people, society and history, but instead urges us to ask how those assumptions came to be. This will be further clarified later in this introduction through the outlining of different strands of DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai.

Before unpacking the concept of DravidaThanmai, it is important to note the relationship between DravidaThanmai and TamilThanmai. Till 1970, even though the influence of the Tamil language and its people were dominant, the term ‘Dravida’ is imperative to present as an accurate representation of public political language. During the early part of this period, it wasn’t just concerned with the Tamil language and its people but invoked all those who were in the geographical area of the Dravidian peninsula and the family of Dravidian languages of that region. However, in the course of the 20th century, it is possible to historicize the collapsing of the term ‘Dravida’ with ‘Tamil’ through processes of elimination of influences from other languages, the exiting of other linguistic groups (from spaces of political mobilization, separation of the geographical area into separate linguistic units of governance34), as well as the thawing of elements from earlier Dravidian politics that did not persist into successive decades35. The period of study for this dissertation, 1950s-1970, is a period when this transmutation from ‘Dravida’ being an accurate description, to ‘Tamil’ being more relevant terminology, began to occur. In that sense the term TamilThanmai will be used in this dissertation with the awareness that it includes within it the evocation of the Dravidian as important during the period of study even while the emergence of the category of Tamil as a more accurate description is also relevant.

shared elements are solidified both through older histories of language literature and the codification of the same during colonial rule. 34 For participation of Telugu speaking people in the Dravidian movement see: Mitchell, Lisa. 2009. Language, emotion, and politics in South India: the making of a mother tongue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 35 The history of the term Dravida as part of the public political sphere is traced back to its use within the articulation of Adi Dravida identity and politics in the late 19th C. Adi Dravida, the Original Dravida was used by the Dalit leader Iyothee Thasar as an identity marker. This continued through organizations such as the Adi Dravidar Maha Sabha of the early 20th C. As the usage is also connected to the identification of Tamil as being part of the Dravidian language family in the 19th C, the term came to be used by all those in the public political sphere in the Tamil context. The Dravidar Kazhagam started by Periyar then used the term without the term Adi as by then it was no longer associated simply with Dalit Adi Dravida identity.

I will clarify the usage of the terms ‘Dravidian Movement’ and ‘Dravidianist’. I use the term Dravidian Movement as an umbrella term to refer to all relevant political parties that declared their affiliation to Dravidian politics. This includes the Depressed Classes Federation of the early 20th Century to the Self Respect Movement, Dravida Kazhagam (DK) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the period between the 1920s to 197036. The influence of the ideas that emerged from these political spaces, however, is not restricted to the spaces and members of these political parties alone. They were all-pervasive among all those involved in public politics, irrespective of political parties, by the 1950s. This all-pervasiveness is one important element of TamilThanmai. In this dissertation, when it is required to refer to the broader public political sphere that is influenced by but is beyond the scope of the ‘Dravidian Movement’, the term ‘Dravidianist’ will be used.

With regards to periodization, the hope is that TamilThanmai as a theoretical formulation and methodology can be useful for many different periods within Tamil history (and perhaps ‘Thanmai’ can even be useful for histories of other peoples). This dissertation will focus on the period between the 1950s to 1970 in order to historically situate TamilThanmai rigorously. TamilThanmai will be described as a theory and will be used as a methodology for this specific period.

To arrive at a more detailed description of TamilThanmai, I would like to outline a few of its key elements. These elements will enable a mapping of the contours of the debates that are a significant prerequisite for outlining an analytical description of TamilThanmai as an aura. These elements will also unravel different strands of TamilThanmai, which in turn were constructed by a range of historical discourses within the Dravidianist public sphere. This outlining of strands in turn will clarify the ways in which TamilThanmai emerges as a description, perspective and methodology. This dissertation is a study of and through TamilThanmai.

Further, it is imperative to state here that the following analysis includes an autoethnographic lens. I am also constructed by this sense of self and way of being while I also attempt to push the boundaries of TamilThanmai. Without overly relying on such an autoethnography, while also not resisting it, I have carefully and critically employed this subjective knowledge and conditioning,

36 Geetha, V and /S.V. Rajadurai^. 1998. Towards a non-Brahmin millennium: from Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Calcutta: Samya.

13 within historical analysis. This has been done in order to propose an unearthing of elements that can be thought of as the unseen but ever-present dirt in the crevices of our history upon which we may stand, lean, lay; and below which we may be buried.

TamilThanmai as a historical construction: Antiquity, Purity and Unity

In different eras within the late 19th and 20th Century to the present day, TamilThanmai has been historically constructed through an evocation of antiquity. This evocation oscillates between mythology and history37. ‘Kal thondri man thondra kalaththilirundhu’ (since before there was sand and stone) is a commonly used description for the time when ‘Tamils’ began walking the earth. This evocation has its roots in Colonial scholarship that ‘recovered’ Tamil literary sources and placed them along with and as a challenge to Sanskrit being celebrated as the ONLY ancient tongue in South Asia38. Colonial scholarship emerging from missionaries and other British governmental quarters in the 19th Century, on the origins and history of the Tamil language, along with other languages of the ‘Dravidian language family’ by men such as F.W.Ellis39 and

Robert Caldwell40, as well as the translation of important ancient Tamil texts by men such as G.

37 In South Asia the mobilization of mythology for establishing linguistic heritage has been observed and analyses for many different communities. This has been an important part of establishing continuity in ethnic identity as part of being legible in the project of assuring rights during colonial rule and in the independent nation-states. The Nagas as an identity are one example of this. Wickremasinghe has mapped a similar employment of mythology by Sinhalese speaking populations. Often these narratives oscillate between being declared, read and heard as being between mythology and history. For a robust theoretical analysis of this practice that is focused on northern India see: Thapar, Romila. 2013. The past before us: historical traditions of early North India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. 38 Thani Nayagam, Xavier S. 1999. Tan̲ ināyakam Aṭikaḷārin̲ cor̲ pol̲ ivukaḷ. Chennai. International Institute of Tamil Studies; Trautmann, Thomas R. 2006. Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Berkeley: University of California Press; Trautmann, Thomas R. 2009. The Madras school of orientalism: producing knowledge in colonial South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ebeling, Sascha. 2013. Colonizing the realm of words the transformation of Tamil literature in nineteenth-century South India. New Delhi: Dev Publ. & Distributors. Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur, India: Tamil University. Arasu,V. ퟀ. அர毁, Thamizhiyal Aaraychchi Oru Karuththiyal Thedal த뮿펿யல் ஆராய்ச்殿 ஒ쏁 க쏁த்鎿யல் யதடல் [Research in Tamil Studies: A Search For a Conceptual Framework] (Ilavazhagan Pathippagam, 2001) Sumathi Ramaswamy. 1997. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. University of California Press. Irschick, Eugene F. 1986. Tamil revivalism in the 1930s. Madras: Cre-A; Blackburn, Stuart H. 2006. Print, folklore, and nationalism in colonial South India. Delhi: Permanent black. 39 F.W.Ellis’s ‘Dravidian Proof’ as discussed in Trautmann, Thomas R. 2006. Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Berkeley: University of California Press. 40 Caldwell, Robert. 2012. A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages. Muenchen: LINCOM Europa.

U. Pope41, are identified as important contributions in the Tamil context. This recognition is all- pervasive – in the state of Tamilnadu, in public discourse within Tamil societies everywhere and in scholarship about Tamil language and its peoples. This recognition and celebration also entail placing front and center the significance of ‘literary history’ in understanding the history of the Tamil language, its lands and its peoples. This has been the subject of an extensive body of literature within different disciplines, including but not limited to history, literary studies, anthropology, etc42. This significance of antiquity within Tamil histories is not just a scholarly preoccupation but also an affective ‘origin story’ for most Tamils43. As a mirror image of this affective pull, this antiquity is a default point of departure, context and framework for most scholarship, across disciplines and subjects of focus, that concerns itself with the Tamil language, its lands and its people44. For the purposes of understanding TamilThanmai, this evocation of antiquity can be further broken down into four related elements.

First, this evocation of antiquity lays at the core of placing Dravidian language, its lands and its people, as a space of resistance against the hegemonic Sanskrit renditions of antiquity that framed ‘Indian-ness’, Brahmanism and dominant Hinduism. The Tamil antiquity has been proved to be contemporaneous to Sanskritic linguistic evidence and as having a different view on all aspects of the human condition45. This differing antiquity is held dear with much pride and this pride was later institutionalized. V.Geetha, in her comprehensive and analytical eulogy to Karunanidhi (one of many that she herself and others penned, upon his death in August 2018), in the piece called Karunanidhi and 'Tamilness': Kalaignar’s literary, cultural legacy cannot be separated from his politics, summarizes his ‘literary legacy’. This is a relevant rendition to this dissertation as it falls within the chosen periodization and is about one of the most significant voices during this period. Further, it emphasizes the many elements that are important for unpacking TamilThanmai. It goes as follows:

41 Pope, G. U. 1883. A Tamil hand-book: or, full introduction to the common dialect of that language on the plan of Ollendorf and Arnold. London: W.H. Allen. 42 Refer 38 43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaqFXk8hqME 44Ref:18 45 Ref: 18

“Karunanidhi’s writing was not incidental to his politics. His writerly personality defined his political selfhood in important ways: for one, his literary and cultural texts, which were chiefly on the Sangam corpus of poems, were celebrations of Tamil civilisational worth. His ability to draw on these poems, and to quote verbatim from them in the middle of a political or social speech, established him as a worthy inheritor of a past that was not sullied by caste and Brahminical Hinduism. His obvious relish in reading both ancient and contemporary Tamil texts, and the alacrity with which he expressed this relish, marked him out as a mentor, an inspiring example for fellow Tamils. And he took his role as mentor seriously: consider for instance the very useable cultural template that he put in place to enable Tamils to recognise and recall their past. The template included the second century ethical Jaina text, the Thirukural; poems of love and valour from the Sangam corpus, which had no place for 'varna' and 'jati' divisions; and the Jain epic, Silappadikaram (The Story of an Anklet) which valourised the chaste wife and the gifted courtesan in equal measure. Karunanidhi not only quoted from these texts time and again, but during his first term as Chief Minister, ensured that they lived on in the present in a visceral sense. Thiruvalluvar, author of the Thirukural was iconised, in stone and print. He has been memorialised in Kanyakumari, at land’s end. His purported likeness appears on all Tamil textbooks… Quotations from the Kural were – and are – featured in all buses run by the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation...46” (Emphasis my own)

This description of Karunanidhi’s relationship to Tamil literary heritage and his mobilization of the same within political discourse, the translation of it to a ‘useable cultural template’ and the later institutionalizing of it through state power, are all important markers of the history of the Tamil public sphere and the influence of the evocation of antiquity within it, in the 20th Century.

This antiquity, as V. Geetha states above, was the basis for the Tamil ‘civilisational worth’. This evocation of antiquity as a source of pride and civilizational worth is constitutive of TamilThanmai.

This ‘civilization’ in turn was in opposition to Sanskritic ‘civilization’. This opposition was based on the declaration that Tamil antiquity was ‘not sullied by caste and Brahmanical Hinduism’. In its ‘essence’, it is a resistance to Sanskrit-based knowledge of the world. It is also a resistance, by extension, to the ways of being that are seen as derivatives of Sanskritic antiquity, namely Brahmanical Hinduism and later Indian-ness and its aggressive foregrounding of Hindi, a language within the same linguistic family as Sanskrit.

46 https://www.firstpost.com/politics/karunanidhi-and-tamilness-kalaingars-literary-cultural-legacy-cannot-be- separated-from-his-politics-4942981.html

To illustrate this, I turn to the words of yet another significant Dravidian leader of the DMK, Annadurai. In his iconic text Thee Paravattum (May the Fire Spread), first published in 1948 with numerous reprints, he outlines the many reasons for which Ramayana must be burnt. This epic text is associated with the ancient Sanskrit canon (there is however the Dravidian rendition known as the Kamba Ramayanam. But here he is referring to the Sanskrit text Valmiki’s Ramayan). He says: “Art reflects a race’s heartfelt inner culture. India is a subcontinent where many races reside. Therefore there are many different kinds of art here. Aryan art and Dravidian art are different, contrary, and given to clashing – this is what scholars tell us (here he is referring to the Colonial scholarship mentioned earlier). Aryanism lords it over Dravidian art and laws. Today it is Aryan justice that rules. This is because we have allowed Aryanism to triumph over Dravidian art. This is why it is important that Tamil art reflects Tamil norms, morals, Tamil traditions of courage, chastity, love…”47 (Emphasis my own)

Here the term Aryan refers to what is used in linguistic and literary scholarship to connote the Indo-Aryan language group, that includes Sanskrit. But the term is also used here as a racial description for those who reside in northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, with affiliation to Hindi, especialy those among them who are of the Brahmin caste. This is one of many examples from Anna’s own words that conflate Sanskrit-Aryan-Brahmin-Indian-Hindi and place the Dravidian, which in turn is increasingly conflated with Tamil, in opposition to it. Thus, this evocation of Dravidian/Tamil antiquity and its opposition to Sanskritic/Aryan antiquity, forms the ground for the ways in which TamilThanmai is constructed as a way of being and as a sense of self .

The second element in the evocation of antiquity is that this mobilization of Tamil antiquity and its resistance to the Sanskritic/ Aryan/ Brahmin/ Indian formation is premised on the construction of a Tamilness that is ‘pure’ and to whom the latter is the ‘other’. The basis for the ‘purity’ goes back to the work of Caldwell, the missionary-based Tamil scholar mentioned earlier. In the introduction to his book Dravidian Language Family under the subheading “The Dravidian languages independent of Sanskrit” he declares that earlier scholars have wrongly assumed that the Dravidian languages were derived from Sanskrit. Further he argues that Dravidian languages

47 V. Geetha. வ.埀தா, Aanmaiyo Aanmai ஆண்மமயயா ஆண்மம [Macho o Macho] (Chennai: Unpublished 2012)

17 can do away in entirety with Sanskrit derived words and that they will flourish in a ‘purer and more refined style’ as a result. He goes on to say that little work of note has been done by Brahmins in Tamil and that all such work is of ‘native Tamilians’ (by which he means non- Brahmins) and Brahmins are at best commentators on the subject48.

Caldwell’s contention of the Tamil language’s difference in linguistic origin was and remains a significant contribution to diversity the Colonial rendition of South Asia as consisting of a singular dominant ancient language. However, his evocation of Tamil antiquity was presented here as a potentiality that will contribute towards ‘purity’. Further, his case for purity is tied in with placing on record the contributions of ‘native Tamilians’, by which he means non-Brahmins in opposition to Brahmin scholars’ otherwise privileged place within scholarship. This contention of the participation of Brahmin scholars in Tamil language and literary spheres across the 19th and 20th Centuries has been complicated and analyzed by many scholars since49. This quotation, for our purposes, epitomizes the purity of the Dravidian/Tamil construction which is independent of the Aryan/Sanskrit/Brahmin construction.

This purity persisted most potently in the ‘pure Tamil movement’ that began in the late 19th, early 20th Centuries spearheaded by Maramalai Adigal, a non-Brahmin Tamil scholar, among many other scholars both Brahmin and non-Brahmin50. The ‘pure Tamil movement’ as it exists even today in Tamilnadu has moved far beyond just language purity to referencing a ‘civilizational purity’. Bharathidasan, Dravidianist Tamil poet and writer of the 1920s, is recognized as the major inspirational figure for this iteration. As a supporter of Periyar and later the DMK, he was instrumental in translating the earlier pure Tamil movement into the civilizational opposition required for the Dravidian movement from the 1920s.

It is in this context that the DMK leader Annadurai, in a speech during the agitation against Hindi being declared the ‘official national language’ in 1965 (which was often referred to as the

48 Caldwell as quoted in Kailasapathy, K. 1979. "The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-Evaluation". Social Scientist. 7 (10): 23. 49 Raman, Srilata. 2007. Self-surrender (prapatti) to God in Śrīvaihṣṇavism: tamil cats and sanskrit monkeys. London: Routledge. 50 Kailasapathy, K. 1979. "The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-Evaluation". Social Scientist. 7 (10): 23.

18 second Anti-Hindi agitation), evoked another ancient mythical story with Sanskritic roots, Nala Damayanti.

“It may be alright for Aryan tradition to consider a woman, who carries her leprous husband on her head to his mistress’s house, as being a civilized act. But that a woman, of her own choice, would do this, is morally unthinkable for us, something that, according to our Tamil ways, cannot even be imagined… To tie leprous Hindi to Tamil can only sully the purity of Tamil…51” (Emphasis my own)

The basis for the historical constructions and iconization of ‘Dravidian’ or ‘Tamil’, is not one of co-existence with other antiquities. The Dravidian response to the privilege given to Sanskritic antiquity and its perceived derivatives of Brahmanism, Hindi and India, was that of the declaration of its own purity52. This purity in turn required an ‘other’ that dictated all that we53,

(Tamils) are not. This process of defining the other in a Saidian sense54 became imperative to hold up the pure Tamil self. This juxtaposition of the ‘pure’ self and the other is essential to the construction of DravidaThanmai.

Third, this juxtaposition of Tamil antiquity, its purity and its ‘other’ is constructed as being in constant conflict. More accurately, Tamil purity is seen as being under constant threat by the Aryan ‘other’. V. Geetha observed this relationship as it manifested in Dravidian public discourse from the late 1940s-1970, in her play Aanmaiyo Aanmai, as the creation of a ‘Dravida Maayai’, the Dravidian delusion that was propagated by Annadurai and others in opposition to what they termed ‘Arya Maayai’ or the Aryan illusion. Further, she established this juxtaposition as being gendered and patriarchal. She has carefully mapped, through the words of these leaders, particularly the words of Anna, the construction of the gendered dichotomy of the

51 V. Geetha. வ.埀தா, Aanmaiyo Aanmai ஆண்மமயயா ஆண்மம [Macho o Macho] (Chennai: Unpublished 2012) 52 This description, it is important to observe, is uncannily close to the basis of Brahmanism itself – the arch nemesis of DravidaThanmai. Brahmanism too holds at its core, purity and otherness that is derived from birth and is the source of assumed Brahmin superiority. 53 Here is an instance of the use of ‘we’, as it would be ingenuine for me not to acknowledge that this thought does not construct me as well, to some measure, and has a deep affective pull even if I am engaged in rigorous pictorial and critical analysis of the same. 54 Said, Edward W. 2004. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

‘Disassembling Aryan seductress’ and the ‘chaste Dravidian wife’55. With regards to the theme of the Aryan seductress versus the Dravidian wife, Anna asks rather evocatively in a statement that succinctly expresses his attitude towards all the relevant languages, in one of his speeches during the Anti-Hindi agitation: “When you have your cousin Tamil, your wife-to-be; And your beloved mistress, English; Why do you need that shameless slut, Hindi?”

In his book Thee Paravattum Anna described the threat of Aryanism as follows:

“Even after thousands of years, Aryanism has shown no sign of letting go, even to the tiniest extent, of its loud arrogance. It fed the imagination, drove out thought, depressed the original inhabitants of this land, and landed them in Brahminism’s snare. It spread like a weed on our yielding earth and left our brave people in tears. It is Brahminism which has made the brave, tough Tamil hollow-cheeked and shrunken, which has made him a pauper living in a hovel56.”

These images do not remain only in the realm of lingusitc opposition. They are also translated into material realitites and are used in the context of critiques of economic policies in the Indian nation state. Even within comments on material realities, however, the use of poetic alliteration (in the original Tamil) takes precedence over concrete evidence. About the imbalance in access to economic resources between the northern and the southern parts of Independent India, Anna and other leaders of this period repeated in many speeches, the slogan:

“Vadakku valargiradhu! Therkku theygirathu! (The north is flourishing! The south is languishing!)57”

The Dravidian response to this constant threat, within this discourse, was to propose a long line of brave heroes who have fought to protect the language, lands and people. Traversing time and space, kings, chieftains and other warriors, this is the lineage that Anna traced for himself. He constantly invited fellow Tamils to continue in this legacy of bravery. These warriors invited by Anna and other leaders, were, as V. Geetha shows, always male, and the women in turn were chaste wives and brave mothers who birthed these warriors.

55 V. Geetha. வ.埀தா, Aanmaiyo Aanmai ஆண்மமயயா ஆண்மம [Macho o Macho] (Chennai: Unpublished 2012) 56 ibid 57 ibid

He began many of his speeches with the following words from his collection of letters called Thambikku Kaditham (Letters to my Younger Brother) – the word ‘Anna’ in Tamil means older brother– which are now iconic of the oratory style that has been established as a crucial aspect of Dravidian political mobilization58:

“Brothers, Proud Men of my Race, Kinsmen, Blood of my Blood, Flesh of my Flesh! Brother Commander, Brother Leader of the Fearless Heart, Leading Lights of the Rationalist Society, all of you who that I hold dearer than my life…59”

The Dravidian response of bravely protecting Tamil is, in turn, to be based on the ancient pure history of the language and its land, a basis which was to serve as a source of strength even as it remained suppressed by the ‘other’.

This points to the fourth major component of how Dravidian antiquity is evoked in public discourse – that of a united Dravidian society with fraternity that is coterminous with egalitarianism. This strength-giving antiquity, as mentioned earlier, was ‘not sullied by caste and Brahmanical Hinduism’. The roots of this formulation predate the iteration of the Dravidian movement led by Anna and Karunanidhi as illustrated above. In the Self-Respect Movement’s mouthpiece publication, Kudiarasu, an unnamed woman writer, in a reformist register reminiscent of the Self-Respect Movement’s uncompromising rationalist critique of caste hierarchy, religious rituals, superstitions, etc., writes in 1948 as follows:

“Each of our women has to reform herself. We must rid ourselves of the notion that there is high and low in religion. We need to completely destroy that sense which makes one feel ‘I am of a high caste, she is of a lower caste’, and widen our understanding...Each of our brave chaste women has an indelible place in the history of our land, I mean, the history of Dravida Nadu. We are their descendants and so why should we grovel and bury ourselves in the muck beneath?60”

58 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 59 Thambikku Kaditham , Letters to my Brothers, Ezhiloviyam, Dravida Nadu, 28.5.55Translation my own 60 V. Geetha. வ.埀தா, Aanmaiyo Aanmai ஆண்மமயயா ஆண்மம [Macho o Macho] (Chennai: Unpublished 2012)

This writer, unlike other Self-Respecters, does not express a radical critique of the notion of ‘chastity’. The Self-Respect Movement was instrumental in evolving language and discourse that challenged and provided alternatives to normative ideas of chastity, marriage, childbirth, etc., and identified the connections between these institutions of patriarchal oppression and caste hierarchy. Nevertheless, this quote reaffirms the chaste wife, the ancient Tamil past, its purity as well as its role in strengthening the fight against Aryan suppression. Simultaneously however, this quote also reaffirms that which makes the Self-Respect Movement different from later iterations of the Dravidian Public discourse in its evocation of an egalitarian society. The Movement always acknowledged it as a process of building fraternity. They do not rely as heavily on the notion of a pre-given Tamil unity, fraternity and resultant egalitarianism. V. Geetha has shown that for the self-respecters, as with a few other instances in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in public discourse in the Tamil context:

“…the ideal of fraternity was sought to be realized in and through shared practices61”

Apart from this exception of the Self-Respecters and a few other formations, within Dravidian public discourses, this unsullied past, constructed based on literary sources, provides a history that in turn offers the potential for egalitarianism based on a pre-given fraternity between all those of the Dravidian ilk. This potential egalitarianism, based on an alternative radical vision of the past62, is often seen as being synonymous with Tamil past and of Tamil everyday experience. It is this synonymity that constitute TamilThanmai.

This radical vision proposes a unified and egalitarian Dravidian identity that emerges from a ‘history’ based on literary sources63. The role of ‘literary history’ in the construction of ‘history’ is at the core of claiming a distinct and glorious past for ‘Tamil’ and its people and is crucial to our understanding of TamilThanmai.

V. Geetha critically maps a possible history of ‘fraternity’ as invoked by difference voices in the Tamil context. She says:

61 Geetha.V. "How might a Sociology of Fraternity look like?" Lecture given as part of the Ghurye Memorial Lecture Series, Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, Bombay, October 9th, 2015. 62 Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University. 63 ibid

“It seems to me that such gesturing (towards ‘fraternity) speaks to a vision of the good society, and one which is not necessarily congruent with our glorious past or our civilizational mission – but which rests on how we live in the present and together.”64 (Emphasis my own)

Keeping in mind V. Geetha’s critical voice, it will be useful to consider in detail the iconic text by Tamil scholar K. Sivathamby, Literary History in Tamil: A Historiographical Analysis65, published in English in 1986. This small text is significant for its rigorous analysis of the meaning of literary history, specifically for Tamil and its role in constructing history using Marxist conceptual frameworks. As a scholarly text, it is invaluable for the ways in which it maps this history and points out the many gaps that are yet to be filled. Simultaneously it is useful to study as a primary source in identifying TamilThanmai’s presumption of a unified ‘Tamil’ with the synonymity of the potential for and the reality of fraternity, bordering on egalitarianism. Further, Prof. Sivathamby, or simply ‘Professor’ as he is commonly referred to in Tamil scholarly circles, is a giant in his field. Hailing from Sri Lanka, he traveled regularly to Tamilnadu and was a mentor to many later generations of scholars who have emerged as significant voices in their own right. This scholarly significance is not unnoticed in the institutionalizing of Tamil-ness. For instance, he was given place of pride at the last major International Classic Tamil Conference (which comes from a long line of conferences organized to promote the growth of Tamil language and heritage) organized under the leadership of DMK leader and then-Chief Minister of Tamilnadu M. Karunanidhi. The importance of this text, its scholar and the assumptions and defaults within it both construct and illustrate that which is core to TamilThanmai.

Very early on in the text, Sivathamby declares:

“Literature hereby creates the mode of consciousness and this can in a historical perspective become an indicator of national consciousness”.66 (Emphasis my own)

64 Geetha.V. "How might a Sociology of Fraternity look like?" Lecture given as part of the Ghurye Memorial Lecture Series, Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, Bombay, October 9th, 2015. 65 Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University. 66 ibid

Contextualizing it for Tamil, he goes on to declare as follows:

“It is common knowledge that in Tamil, literary history has served this function rather conscientiously and quite well at that. Works like … are, in fact, 'applied historical' studies wherein the evidences found in Cankam and post Cankam literatures have been judiciously (and otherwise) used to reconstruct the social life of the ancient Tamils”67. (Emphasis my own)

It soon becomes clear that Sivathamby here is referring to ‘Tamil-ness’ as a ‘national consciousness’. To make this point clearer he outlines the reasons for this ‘national consciousness’ amongst Tamils. He explains that such a consciousness as being “shaped by the historical fact that the Tamils had to live under and share with non-Tamils a culturally alien polity, which led to language as the major identity marker of this group (the Tamils)”. He says this fact is true even before the Colonial period where Tamils lived under kings who were ‘non- Tamilian’. He says the impact of these rulers were not as high as during Colonial rule as they were not ‘culturally alien’ - by which he means that most of these kings adapted Tamil practices or let them remain without imposing any other unified culture upon their subjects. But under rule by non-Tamilians who sought acculturation of their subjects within their own respective cultures, he states that ‘naturally the mode of consciousness relating to the legacy of literature’ (emphasis my own) would be one of claiming a ‘national consciousness’ based on language and linguistic identity68.

While there is adequate truth to this statement, the relationship between ‘non-Tamilian’ polities and the ‘Tamils’ is more complicated than a simple relationship of hegemony and suppression as is always the case in all societies with myriad identity markers co-existing with one another. Having said that, in spite of this inadequately complex causal reasoning for the ‘Tamils’ to ‘emphasize their antiquity’, he is not unaware of the limits and dangers of his own reasoning. This becomes apparent in the text when he warns repeatedly of the lack of ‘literary criticism’ in Tamil and how it may affect our utilizing of literary history for ‘historical consciousness’. In a rather direct critique, he declares:

“It is not the pastness of the literature alone; nor its resourcefulness to enjoyment that is important. What is important is how … to look at it so that we could clarify the genesis of

67 ibid 68 ibid

its past and delineate its modem relevance. This is literary history as criticism, something which is lacking in Tamil today.69”

It is perhaps due to this scholarly rigor that he is able to map literary history for Tamil while including, carefully and critically, its complicated parts: the role of Brahmins (who would otherwise be seen as Aryan ‘outsiders’), the Saivite hegemony in which some parts of literary history were patronized and reclaimed more than others, the significance of including contributions from non-Hindu Tamil speakers in this history such as Muslims and Christians, and even the contributions of adjacent linguistic groups such as Telugu, Kannada and Sinhala speakers. He also takes a clear stand that Tamil uniqueness is part of broader literary histories and is not an isolated entity. Towards this end, along with mapping the efforts within Tamil literary history to reach international spheres by bringing in work from other areas of Tamil speaking people such as Singapore, Malaysia and his own island of Sri Lanka, he makes a case for Tamil literary history being the basis for membership in the other ‘national’ literary histories – in this case Indian and Sri Lankan.

Along with this complex and rigorous basis and purpose of this text, we must also, from the perspective of TamilThanmai, consider the main preoccupation of the text. A majority of the text is dedicated to the subject of chronology of Tamil literary works. This project, of much prominence within Tamil literary, linguistic, historical scholarship and public discourse, is far from being politically neutral. To the contrary, it has been crucial to establishing the Dravidian ‘difference’ from the hegemonic Sanskritic renditions of the past. While the significance of all of this work, including Sivathamby’s text, has been immense in establishing diversity in ancient South Asian literary histories and in giving Tamil language and literature its rightful place, its innate agenda is what becomes visible from the perspective of TamilThanmai. This default-ness of the agenda is so all-pervasive that it barely requires mention in a text such as the one being discussed here. Sivathamby’s discussion of the ‘universal’ is a useful illustrative example. About this he says:

“Would this then mean that literary history would, after placing the work in its historical context, involve a search for the 'Universals' it is possessing? It is true that there are certain 'universals' in human life and the significance of these 'universals' lies in that they are capable of performing a social function, fulfilling a particular

69 ibid

historical need at every particular time. It would, therefore become essential not just to speak of the universals as non-variables but to see how in a particular socio- historical situation they had played a vital role”70. (Emphasis my own)

The above statement exhibits complexity as it holds within it the potential contradiction between the ‘non-variable universal’ and its ‘historical need at a particular time’. Upon closer reading of this statement and the text as a whole, from the perspective of TamilThanmai, it becomes apparent that Sivathamby does not explore the creative potential of this contradiction but instead reaffirms his ‘non-variable universal’ – that of Tamil-ness. He does not try to define the term ‘Tamilness’ in the text except for the quotation mentioned earlier which establishes a shared identity among a group of people speaking the same language in the context of this language being in a position of non-hegemony. Was this shared identity a pre-given? Was it variable across time and space? How did it interact with other shared identities of Tamil-speakers with those of other linguistic groups? Could this relationship have been more complexly relational71 along with or apart from, being one of hegemony and suppression? These are not questions we find answers for in his text.

Simultaneously, terms such as ‘history’ and ‘heritage’ are used interchangeably in the text, always followed by the term ‘Tamil’. He traces the growth of language-based nationality-identity and historical consciousness and declares ‘literary heritage as being the cause and index’ for such a growth. This tracing in the colonial period, in my opinion, may still sustain some definitional consistency with the category ‘Tamil’ given pre-existing identity formations and their interaction with colonial category-making processes72. However, in the robust and essential tradition of post-colonial scholarship, he goes on to declare that this was, by no means, the beginning of such a consciousness for Tamils. While justifiably denying colonial origins to historical consciousness through literary history in Tamil society, he does not, unfortunately, provide any indication that ‘Tamil-ness’ might be a more complex construction when historicized and spatialized carefully and rigorously. Further, he rehearses all the inclusions and exclusions of default Tamilness

70 ibid 71 Shulman, David Dean. 2016. Tamil: a biography. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press; Trautmann, Thomas R. 2009. The Madras school of orientalism: producing knowledge in colonial South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press 72 For the example of caste as an identity in Colonial ‘category-making’ see Dirks, Nicholas B. 2011. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

26 discussed earlier on in this introduction. For instance, in his discussion of the colonial era, he places on record the significance of the ‘Brahmin–non-Brahmin conflict’ in literary history, while the few Brahmins he mentions, he does so as exceptions in their contribution to ‘Tamil literary heritage’. Similarly, he declares the hegemony of Sanskrit and the ‘overlooked historical achievements of the South’ – meaning southern India, but mostly he is referring to the ‘Tamils’. For the 20th Century he speaks of the invocation of literary history in different ways – be it for ‘establishing cultural identity’ or for federal autonomy and ‘upkeep of government’ (during the DMK period), etc73. All of this historicizing, nevertheless, is to contribute to the maintenance and protection of the undefined category of ‘Tamils’.

Even if we admit that such a unified definition of Tamil was possible across time and space, were these ‘Tamils’ egalitarian in nature? Sivathamby’s rendition speaks fleetingly of some class hierarchy and the dominance of Saivite Hinduism. Other than this, his narrative is one of providing cohesiveness to the ‘Tamils’ through literary history. This cohesiveness is directed towards combating the hegemonic ‘foreign influences’ (Aryan-Brahmin and later Indian nation- state), which are seen to be, in complete contrast to ‘Tamil society’, hierarchical in nature. He does not express this intent in clear terms in the text. However, the preoccupation with chronologically arranging Tamil literature and the broader context of scholarship on Tamil literary history of which this text is a significant part, shows that this default intent of combating ‘foreign’ hegemony with ‘Tamil’ cohesiveness is so deeply implied that it barely requires mention. Towards this end, even though he admits to the debates around using literary sources as the predominant primary source of history, in the Tamil context, he does not consider the historicizing of the category of Tamil itself and its assumed unity/egalitarianism as part of his scholarly exercise. This is important as this pre-formed identity, its unity and egalitarianism, as per Sivathamby’s own analysis, is grounded (almost entirely) in his (and others’) rendition of Tamil literary history.

In conclusion, TamilThanmai as it emerges from the above analysis proposes a synonymity between a vision and the everyday experience of Tamil history and society. This society according to this construction, was not divided along caste lines and was not solely of hegemonic

73 Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University.

Hinduism but had ample space for Jain and Buddhist and many other traditions and expressions74. There is ample historical evidence to show the difference in caste formation in the southern parts of South Asia when compared to the northern parts and similarly vibrant histories of a multitude of religious practices abound75. And it may have been true that non-Brahmin, non- Dalits, in the absence of Brahmin hegemony, did, indeed, live in a relatively egalitarian Tamil society. But the persistence of caste-based practices in Tamil society today as well as within scholarly pre-occupation stands in stark contrast to and cannot be fully explained by, the mapping of this pre-formed unity and egalitarianism within ancient literary history76 and the present ‘Tamil’ society that this history has supposedly created. Nevertheless, this evocation of an egalitarian society was resolutely central, and did yield significant effects as the basis for a political discourse, especially within later articulations of anti-caste politics within TamilThanmai77 as will be illustrated later on in this introduction.

The construction of this imagined egalitarianism and the co-related denial of the existence of caste hierarchy is not unique to the Tamil context. In imaginations of communities and nations in the South Asian context, this was an overwhelming norm78. The prevalence of this was so overwhelming that it necessitated a school of thought, Subaltern Studies, in the 1980s, and all the critical evolutions of this school since79. This is but one example of the prevalence of unified

‘nations’ that deny fissures in the context of South Asian historical scholarship80. A preliminary description of Subaltern Studies for students of South Asian history goes as follows:

74 ibid 75 Monius, Anne E. 2009. Imagining a place for Buddhism: literary culture and religious community in Tamil- speaking South India. New Delhi: Navayana; Karashima, Noboru. 2001. History and Society in South India: the Cholas to Vijayanagar. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Champakalakshmi, R. 2012. Religion, tradition and ideology: pre-colonial South India. New Delhi: Oxford University; Umamaheshwari, R. 2019. Reading History With The Tamil Jainas: A Study On Identity, Memory And Marginalisation. [S.L.]: Springer, India, Private. 76 Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University. 77 Irschick, Eugene F. 1969. Politics and social conflict in South India. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press; Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University. 78 A school of thought in the writing of Modern Indian History spearheaded by Bipin Chandra has consistently argued for a unified ‘India’ which remains only marginally ruptured by the differences, divisions and hierarchies of caste-based divisions. For the roots of this perspective see Chandra, Bipan. 2009. History of modern India. New Delhi. Orient Blackswan 79 Guha, Ranajit, David Arnold, and David Hardiman. 1994. Subaltern studies. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 80 Duara, Prasenjit. 2007. “Introduction” in Rescuing history from the nation questioning narratives of modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

“Nationalism, they argued, was in its origins a middle-class affair, which was however constantly driven beyond its chosen limits by the persistence of popular participation. Subaltern groups were constantly engaged in resistance both to the authority exercised by the colonial state and to the local oppressions of landlords, moneylenders and capitalists many of whom were closely associated with the nationalist movement. The leadership of the nationalist movement was often pushed in radical directions by the strength of mass mobilization, and so nationalism needed to be understood both as a movement by Indians against colonialism and as a political project on the part of Indian elites to keep subaltern militancy in check.81”

It is Indian nationalism that is being commented on above. Tamil nationalism, while being a Subaltern Nationalism82 from this standpoint, is also simultaneously one that needs to be critically analyzed for its own evocation of unity and egalitarianism. That has been done to some extent for the Tamil context, primarily by feminist and Dalit scholars who feature prominently in this dissertation. However, the questioning of it from TamilThanmai is a critique that is deeper in its essence. This will become clearer in the course of this dissertation. For now, it suffices to say that the claim of a caste-free Tamil society within the evocation of the unified Tamil nation that requires a pre-formed unity and egalitarianism no small declaration. As caste connects to all social relations of production, to claim and sometimes show egalitarianism within this has an impact on the perspectives of most aspects of human life and society. Further, it merits mention here that the singular emphasis on caste, its structures, the existence of it or absence thereof, as the primary axis of analysis, simultaneously silences AND is made possible by a rendition of gender roles and their framework of patriarchal hierarchy83. The gendered nature of the Tamil evocation of unity and antiquity have already been discussed in detail, embodied perhaps most potently in the dichotomy of the ‘Aryan seductress’ and the ‘virtuous Tamil mother/wife’

81https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/modules/hi323/lectures/ranajit_guha_and_subaltern_studies_sakar_ 2016.pdf 82 Makki, Fouad. 2011. "Subaltern agency and nationalist commitment: the dialectic of social and national emancipation in colonial Eritrea". Africa Today. 58 (1): 29-52; Vaitheespara R. 2012. "The Limits of Derivative Nationalism: Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, and the Question of Tamil Nationalism". Rethinking Marxism. 24 (1): 87-105. 83 Padma, V. 2000. "Re-Presenting Protest and Resistance on Stage: Avvai." Indian Journal of Gender Studies 7 (2): 217-230; Ramaswamy, Vijaya. "Chaste Widows, Cunning Wives, and Amazonian Warriors: Imaging of Women in Tamil Oral Traditions." Asian Ethnology 69, no. 1 (2010): 129-57.

29 discussed above. To propose alternative visions to gender hierarchy, whether in the past or present, remains an arduous task in the Tamil context and is often treated as a threat to TamilThanmai itself. The anecdote at the beginning of this introduction of my own experience of being intimidated by a present-day Dravidian leader and the silencing of a play such as Aanmaiyo Aanmai in spite of being written and directed by public figures of note such as V. Geetha and A. Mangai, are one of many examples of this. To propose an ‘internal’ hierarchy of gender, especially because it addresses the private sphere and reproductive labor, is often equated with the eternal external threat to TamilThanmai. It is common, even today, to be dismissed as being Brahmin, north-Indian or elite when proposing any form of feminist critique of past and present Tamil society84. The one potent exception to this is the ideas proposed by the thinkers of the Self-Respect Movement85 between 1920 and the 1940s. These ideas, some of which have been institutionalized in a deradicalized form since,86 remain at best what V. Geetha refers to as part of a ‘Dravidian common sense’87. I would add here that this ‘common sense’ was seen from the 1960s onwards also as a memory of the past. Further, it was drowned out in the echelons of power by other concerns that contributed to an ‘agitational politics of anti- Brahminism based self-affirmation’. This dissertation will show through myriad examples how the maintenance of gender roles within the private realm and the lack of presence of women in the public realm from the 1950s to 1970 formed the basis upon which many elements of TamilThanmai are able to thrive. For now, it suffices to say that the Tamil unity and egalitarianism that emerge from Tamil literary antiquity and which are preoccupied with proving

84 This practice is far from observed or analyzed for the Tamil context. However, it is widespread and well known amongst anyone engaging in Tamil public politics. It is familiar to me from my own personal experiences of having been critiqued as being elite and thus not ‘tamil enough’ when articulating critiques against any commonly held political stands within debated in Tamilnadu. The most potent example is of the past Chief Minister of Tamilnadu J. Jayalalitha who was well documented as being corrupt and yet was mainly critiqued for being Brahmin by birth. Many of her actions were justified through her Brahmin (read outsider) identity. It was only through making her ‘amma’ that she could emerge as a significant leader in the Tamil context. For an in-depth treatment of Jayalalitha’s maneuvering of these dynamics see Keating, Christine. 2001. "Maneuvering Gendered Nationalisms Jayalalitha Jayaram and the Politics of Tamil Womanhood". Women & Politics. 22 (4): 69-88.For a more detailed treatment see https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/14453?mode=full 85Geetha V வா 埀தா Kalak Kanavu: Penniya Varalaru காலக் கனퟁ: பெண்ணிய வரலா쟁 ஆவன நாட்கம் [A Dream of a Time: A Feminist History Documentary Play ] (Chennai: Adayalam, 2009); Hodges, Sarah. 2017. Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce: Birth Control in South India, 1920--1940. Taylor & Francis 86 https://www.huffingtonpost.in/manuraj-shunmugasundaram/wedded-to-selfrespect_b_9006796.html 87 Geetha.V. "How might a Sociology of Fraternity look like?" Lecture given as part of the Ghurye Memorial Lecture Series, Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, Bombay, October 9th, 2015.

30 a caste-free Tamil society, invisibilize and stand upon other connected hierarchies such as that of gender.

Given these limitations of Tamil unity and egalitarianism, it is important to ask what then the potential of imagining a casteless Tamil society was, if any. The ‘Tamil’ person portrayed as an emancipated self – far from the controls of the external Brahmanical social order, Anna’s thambi (younger brother), for instance, was in fact a de facto reference to non-Brahmin caste Hindus. But the caste system also includes another group of people who are placed below those seen as ‘Tamil’ in this construction88. They are those who now collectively refer to themselves as Dalits. In the Tamil context, this group consists of a large number of caste groups that are at the very bottom of the caste system and are treated as untouchables. Here, it is important to remember that untouchability is a practice core to caste hierarchy and is one that is enacted by Brahmins AND by non-Brahmin, non-Dalits – the thambis – upon Dalits.

Interestingly, the potentiality of TamilThanmai’s unity and egalitarianism is best illustrated by the relationship between Tamil-ness and Dalit-ness. To understand the exclusion of Dalits from within the default subject of TamilThanmai, it is important to turn briefly to the complex history of this relationship. Early scholars who emerged from this social group, today known as the Dalits89, called themselves the Adidravidar (Original Dravidians)90. The vision of caste egalitarianism in Tamil antiquity as we receive it in TamilThanmai, is firm in its critique of untouchability. Temple entry movements defying the practice of disallowing non-Brahmins from entering temples were a significant part of the mobilizations within the Dravidian movement in its many iterations91. However, the relationship between this TamilThanmai and Dalit inclusion has a more complicated history. Of this relationship between Dravidian evocation, of what I refer to as unity and egalitarianism of Tamilness, and which V. Geetha historicizes as a fraternity, she has this to say:

“…as is evident from interviews with Dalit elders in the grain-rich districts of the Cauvery Delta, who recall with relish how Periyar’s men made it possible for them to

88 Dube, Leela. 2005. “Caste and Women” in Rao, Anupama. ed. Gender & caste. London: Zed Books. 89 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/dalit 90 Aloysius, G. 2010. Dalit-subaltern self-identifications: Iyothee Thassar & Tamizhan. New Delhi: Critical Quest. 91 Vasantha Kandasamy, W. B., Florentin Smarandache, K. Kandasamy, and Ī. Ve Rāmacāmi. 2005. Fuzzy and neutrosophic analysis of Periyar's views on untouchability. Phoenix: HEXIS.

deride and verbally oppose dominant caste, particularly Brahmin cultural pride. Likewise, anti-discrimination campaigns, such as support for affirmative action were mindful of Dalit interests. But, fraternity that emerges in and through challenging caste Hindu prejudice, acts of discrimination and violence is at one level a negative critique of inequality and absence of mutuality – for this to acquire a positive valence, to announce a new sociability requires something more dramatic, and it is my argument that such dramaturgy, with its evocative call to social affection and against caste inhumanity which was resonant in the public culture of the 1930s and 1940s gave way to a more predictable register of political and public berating – not that this was not significant, but it put by the ideal of fraternity and comradeship for one that rested on a clamorous demand for equality and justice; the one addressed fellow human beings, the other the state, and fellow human beings featured in this latter discourse chiefly as objects of irreverent criticism or alternately as bearers of rights. Dalits were thus welcomed into a fraternity of ideas in which they were told lay the seeds of their emancipation, but the ideal of fellowship which required caste Hindus to transform their lives remained dormant in this imagining of a new social order.92” (Emphasis my own )

I would further push this analysis to say that the requirement of ‘caste Hindus’ (referred to in this text as non-Brahmin, non-Dalits), to ‘transform their lives’ in order to imagine or create a ‘new social order’ did not just lie ‘dormant’ but was seen as pre-formed within the strands of TamilThanmai as mapped above. As a result, the logic of critiquing the rules of purity/pollution and untouchability is assumed as the critique of the ‘external’ Brahminism. This then enables a lack of open acknowledgement of it as a practice that is all-pervasive among ALL castes. The insidiousness of this thought and practice is illustrated by the occasional presence of this practice even among different Dalit castes, as this dissertation will show93. Similarly, all castes practice untouchability and apply the logic of purity/pollution on the bodies of women by disallowing them from inhabiting the temple space, or in some cases even the home, during menstruation94.

Meanwhile in the political sphere, while it was possible till about the 1920s95, through various iterations, for the Adidravidar to find and keep a place amongst the Dravidar, this participation

92 Geetha.V. "How might a Sociology of Fraternity look like?" Lecture given as part of the Ghurye Memorial Lecture Series, Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, Bombay, October 9th, 2015. 93 For an explanation of untouchability see Dube, Leela. 2005. “Caste and Women” in Rao, Anupama. ed. Gender & caste. London: Zed Books. For the beginnings of analyses of Dalit mobilizations continuing to be bound within particular Dalit castes in Tamilnadu see Carswell, Grace, and Geert De Neve. 2015. "Litigation against Political Organization? The Politics of Dalit Mobilization in Tamil Nadu, India Litigation, Political Organization and Dalit Mobilization". Development and Change. 46 (5): 1106-1132. For a preliminary history of practices of discrimination amongst different Dalits castes within a particular region see Singh, Amarendra Kumar. 2005. Discrimination amongst Harijans. New Delhi: Sunrise Publications. 94 Dube, Leela. 2005. “Caste and Women” in Rao, Anupama. ed. Gender & caste. London: Zed Books 95 https://thewire.in/politics/dmk-karunanidhi-tamil-nadu-caste-politics

32 has retreated since for a range of reasons, framed by but not restricted to the Dravidian movement as V. Geetha outlines above. Intellectually, the Adidravidar roots of Dravidian politics, despite the best efforts of rigorous scholars96, is still one to be stated and restated repeatedly97. Further, the TamilThanmai that we live amidst today is resolutely non-Brahmin but also non-Dalit98.

In conclusion, through this assumption of a pre-formed unity and its synonymity with lived experience of Tamil-ness, TamilThanmai reaffirms the very gender and caste hierarchies that it seeks to challenge. Meanwhile, the Dravidian challenge to Brahmanical society and caste oppressions provided a valuable language and framework for self-determination as part of the construction of Dravidian society. It is within this language that the potentiality and strength of TamilThanmai’s evocation of unity and egalitarianism lays. It is important to pay close attention to and historicize this self-determination. As noted earlier, the insidiousness of untouchability as a practice is best illustrated by its existence even within those who bear the worst brunt of it – untouchable caste groups. Similarly, the all-pervasiveness of TamilThanmai, especially its strength in making possible an imagination and reality of self-determination, is best illustrated by its existence within mobilization by the very people that TamilThanmai has excluded: the Dalits. This, alluded to in V. Geetha’s words above, will be discussed in detail later on in this introduction as well as in Chapter 3. For now, it suffices to say that an exercise in unpacking the strands of TamilThanmai as a way of being and sense of self; and its significance as a description of and a methodology for studying Tamil history will be incomplete without considering its relationship to non-Brahmin self-determination.

Constructing Dravidian Society through Self-Affirmation

Mu. Karunanidhi, the last remaining founder-leader of the DMK, passed away on 7th August 2018. Almost all the analytical articles about his life and work were celebratory of his significant achievements. These achievements are two-fold. First, self-affirmation of Tamil language and state sovereignty throughout his political life, especially in his role as the Chief Minister of

96 Geetha, V., and /Rajadurai.S.V^ 2011. Towards a non-brahmin millennium: from Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Kolkata: Samya. 97 https://thewire.in/politics/dmk-karunanidhi-tamil-nadu-caste-politics 98 ibid

Tamilnadu. Second, the establishing of the largest percentage of reservation (affirmative action) in education and employment for non-Brahmins in India99. Through these two key processes, he and the DMK were part of changing the contours of state sovereignty in Independent India and in the history of reservations. His achievements, it has been shown, were made possible by his prowess at employing the Tamil language in its written and spoken form in a way that drew the ‘masses’ to him and the politics that he represented. This was only magnified in scale by his involvement in Tamilnadu’s emergent film industry. Taking this at the starting point, the following section, with a greater focus on caste-based reservation, will map the role of non- Brahmin self-affirmation as it constituted TamilThanmai.

The processes of non-Brahmin self-affirmation in the public sphere through education, employment and participation in politics began in the late 19th Century and gained strength in the 1920s. Histories of similar affirmations of non-Brahmins in the public sphere, including Dalits, are available to us from other parts of the subcontinent such as Kerala100, Punjab101,

Maharashtra102, etc. The coming of modern education; opening up of power within governance and administration to the ‘natives’ by the British103; the naming and concretization of caste identity through the census and other mechanisms104; urbanization105; circulation of discourses of social reform106; public debates around legislations107; changes in land relations108 – all of which that simultaneously ruptured and reaffirmed existing hegemonic structures– all made for a public sphere in the subcontinent that saw, among other things, contestations around caste and

99 https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/karunanidhi-unsung-contributions-indian-federalism ; https://www.huffingtonpost.in/francis-cody/karunanidhis-legacy-a-portrait-of-a-cine-artist-as-a-radical- politician_a_23499393/; https://thewire.in/politics/karunanidhi-caste-welfare-politics 100 Arunima, G. 2003. There comes papa: colonialism and the transformation of matriliny in Kerala, Malabar c. 1850-1940. New Delhi: Orient Longman., Maharashtra, where else? 101 Mir, Farina. 2010. The social space of language: vernacular culture in british colonial Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press. 102 Waghmore, Suryakant. 2013. Civility against caste: Dalit politics and citizenship in western India. New Delhi. Sage Publications 103 Sarkar, Sumit. 1989. Modern India 1885–1947. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. 104Dirks, Nicholas B. 2011. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 105 Veeraraghavan̲ . D. 2013. The making of the Madras working class. New Delhi. Leftword Books 106 Mani, Lata. 2007. Contentious traditions: the debate on Sati in colonial India. Berkeley, Calif: Univ. of California Press. 107 ibid 108 Ludden, David. 1993. Peasant history in South India. Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press

34 gender. Non-Brahmin men and upper caste women in many regions laid claim to the public sphere through myriad channels109.The setting up of various organizations, political parties and the proliferation of publications that were part of this process of non-Brahmin self-affirmation in Tamilnadu are well-documented110. Till about the 1930s these processes involved some Dalits in

Tamil region111. After that period, however, their participation and leadership dwindled within the broader Dravidian public sphere112. The voices of Dravidian self-affirmation in education, employment and political participation that were inherited in the 1940s were both non-Brahmin and non-Dalit. The DMK’s challenge to caste hierarchy through extensive reservations stood on the shoulders of this legacy of the Dravidian movement, with all its strengths, limitations, affirmations and exclusions. This provides the historical context for reservation policies primarily aiding the social development and political participation of non-Brahmin, non-Dalits (except for some exceptions)113.

Along with reservation, the challenge to Indian federalism and the self-determination of Tamilnadu were significant components of this culture of self-affirmation constructed within TamilThanmai. Much of the 20th Century in the Tamil public sphere was marked by politics that was not Indian nationalist, but socially reformist114. It is not that Indian nationalism did not exist. In some parts, the Congress party and Mahatma Gandhi’s calls were heeded with much passion in Tamilnadu115. Simultaneously, Periyar and the Justice Party repeatedly declared that it was not the British who were the enemy but the Brahmin and North Indian. So much so that the Periyar’s Dravida Kazhagam party declared the day of Independence a day of mourning116 and

109 ibid 110 /Pandian, M. S. S.^ 2006. Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: geneaologies of the Tamil Political Present. New Delhi: Permanent Black. 111 https://thewire.in/politics/dmk-karunanidhi-tamil-nadu-caste-politics 112 While there may have been moments of resurgence in Dalit participation in the DMK, it remains to be documented. The exception of the Dalit political leader, who was also a woman – Sathiyavani Muthu is important in this regard. She was a politician who began as an independent candidate and won elections who later joined the DMK. She then left the DMK disgruntled by their lack of commitment to Dalit rights and joined the Dalit outfit- Depressed Classes League. 113 https://thewire.in/politics/karunanidhi-caste-welfare-politics 114 Here again Tamilnadu is not unique in the subcontinent. Maharashtra perhaps is the example that is most similar in its ethos of non-national public politics. 115 Arnold, David. 1977. The Congress in Tamilnad: nationalist politics in South India, 1919-1937.New Delhi: Manohar. 116 https://kafila.online/2011/01/08/periyar-on-the-constitution/

35 members of the party raised black flags on the 15th of August 1947. Periyar compared the Constitution of India to the caste affirming Brahmanical text Manusmriti, as he said both were forcefully imposed upon the Dravidians117 by north Indian Brahmins. His opposition was not so much centered on a close reading of the actual text of the constitution. He was well aware that the writing of the Constitution was spearheaded by the visionary Dalit leader and lawyer Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. His opposition was to the fact that such a document was imposed upon large sections of people, including Tamils, as a binding vision for the Indian nation-state of which all people were forced to be citizens. This imposition he characterized as the work of Brahmin north Indians. On the eve of Independence, a demand for a separate state of Dravida Nadu, or at least a refusal to celebrate the ‘independence’ of a ‘united India’118, were present in the Tamil public political sphere. Over time, as the tumultuous linguistic reorganization of states took root in Independent India and was made law in 1956, the demand for a separate Dravida nation had thawed. Anna, during his leadership of the DMK, slowly abandoned that demand and replaced it with strongly influencing the shape of Indian federalism by challenging and re-ordering center- state relations119. His successor Karunanidhi took forward this process passionately and efficiently. In that sense, an investment in constructing a robust federalism replaced the demand for Tamil national self-determination in the period between the 1950s and 1970. Tamilnadu’s intervention in the meanings of federalism in Independent India has been written about extensively120. Much of this, however, is relevant to the period after the 1970s when the DMK and later other Dravidian political parties held power in the state government. While this period is beyond the scope of this dissertation, the articulations of the demand of a separate nation-state followed by the growing investment in a strong federalism is an essential background for TamilThanmai of the 1950s to 1970.

Before we delve further into the primary forms that the self-affirmation of non-Brahmin, non- Dalit men took, it is important to acknowledge the exclusions of TamilThanmai vis-à-vis other

117 ibid 118 This political stance of a demand for a separate state was debated within Dravidianist groups as well. See http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/56866 for further details on this internal debate that led to a split in political parties. 119 ibid 120 https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/karunanidhi-unsung-contributions-indian-federalism

36 political parties. These exclusions are with regards to the perception and historicizing of national level social movements and political parties connected to them in the Tamil context. Participation by those in Tamilnadu in ‘national’ movements such as those against the British, Communist mobilization, or the Dalit participation in struggles lead by Ambedkar, are not acknowledged as being part of ‘Tamil’ political history in the way that Dravidian politics is. Congress history is acknowledged as the history of the party in Tamilnadu121. The history of the Republican Party in Tamilnadu and its predecessor, the Scheduled Caste Federation, is yet to be written122. While the immense presence of Communism-based organizing is well-documented for Tamilnadu123, its characterization in the realm of public political history of Tamilnadu is starkly different from that of Dravidian organizations and parties. In common parlance as well as within the economy of knowledge production, when it comes to the public political history of Tamilnadu in the 20th Century, Dravidian history is seen, read and collapsed with ‘Tamil history’. Other histories are characterized as being of that particular political ideology or organization in the mere spatial bounds of Tamilnadu. However, collating and reading a range of isolated literature on different political formations in Tamilnadu in the 20th Century, a picture emerges of public political life that was an intermeshing of these different political perspectives, mobilizations and agenda. A similar picture emerged in my own research. For a more accurate picture of political mobilization in Tamilnadu, people’s participation in these different strands needs to be studied from the perspective of drawing out the connections between them, rather than in isolation.

Towards this end, it is useful to acknowledge that the TamilThanmai being mapped here was not restricted to party lines. The politics of self-affirmation brought forth by the Dravidian political formations against Congress dominance was of non-Dalit, non-Brahmin men against the

121 Arnold, David. 1977. The Congress in Tamilnad: nationalist politics in South India, 1919-1937. New Delhi: Manohar; Hardgrave, Robert L. 2006. The Nadars of Tamilnad the political culture of a community in change. New Delhi: Manohar 122 While a full-length manuscript on The Scheduled Caste Federation and the Republican Party in Tamilnadu is yet to be written, both organizations feature as those which brought Dalit communities within their fold since the 1930s onwards. They are fleetingly mentioned in works by scholars working on Dalit histories in Tamilnadu such as Raj Sekhar Basu, Hugo Gorringe and D. Karthikeyan. 123 Padmanabhan, V. K. 1987. "Communist Parties in Tamilnadu". The Indian Journal of Political Science. 48 (2): 225-250; Ramakrishnan, N. நா. ராம垿쏁ஷ்ணன் .2004 Tamilakkaththil Communist Katchiyin Thotramum Valarchiyum (1917-64) த뮿ழகத்鎿ல் கம்뿂னிஸ்ட் கட்殿뾿ன் யதாற்ற믁ம் வளர்ச்殿뿁ம் (1917- 64), [The Origin and Growth of the Communist Party in Tamilnadu (1917-64)], (Vaikai Veliyeedu Madurai)

Brahmin leadership of the Congress. This leadership in Tamilnadu, before and soon after independence, was embodied by the Brahmin man Rajagopalachari, the first Chief Minister of the newly created Tamilnadu state. Even he, in spite of being the ‘other’ by way of caste, had a complex, cordial and sometimes comradely relationship with Periyar himself. His Brahminism, through his relationship to Periyar, among other reasons, was interrupted and remolded by virtue of the political landscape of his home state of Tamilnadu.124 Thus, even a Congress politician of the Brahmin caste could not be immune to the influence of TamilThanmai.

This caste-based, Brahmin/non-Brahmin dichotomy in the battle between the Congress and the DMK was soon to be replaced with a contestation between different non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes with the coming of K. Kamaraj of the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit, Nadar caste. This ousted the Brahmin presence altogether in the realm of power in the state government. Kamaraj was the leader of the Congress Party, from the 1960s onwards and another Congress Chief Minister of Tamilnadu. His caste, the Nadars, were the oppressed and upwardly mobile through access to education and economic opportunities125.

Similarly, Communist mobilization through the 1950-1960s was associated with organizing urban industrial labor and rural Dalit landless labor126. The exact connection between the Communist Party’s mobilization and the elements of TamilThanmai are yet to be mapped. An essential part of this connection, however, especially in some areas in Tamilnadu, was the deep roots of Communist mobilization among Dalits127. This often put them in direct confrontation with the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit caste men that populated Dravidian parties. As a starting point to a much larger mapping, my research shows that the Communist Party is not immune to or explicitly dismissive of the elements that constitute TamilThanmai in the period between the late 1940s to the early 1970s.

124 http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/1124 125 Hardgrave, Robert L. 2006. The Nadars of Tamilnad the political culture of a community in change. New Delhi: Manohar. 126 Sivaraman, Mythily. 2013. Haunted by fire: essays on caste, class, exploitation and emancipation. New Delhi. Leftword. 127 ibid

The impact of TamilThanmai on Congress and Communist political formations, their discourse, language and ways of mobilizing, will be explored in this dissertation. For now, it suffices to say that no political ideology or organization was immune to TamilThanmai even as they may have been excluded or marginally included within the history of the Tamil public political sphere.

Similar to the histories of other political parties, a brief characterization of Dalit mobilization adds a much-needed layering to our understanding of TamilThanmai’s exclusions and all- pervasiveness. Gorringe128 and Damodaran, anthropologists working on Dalit mobilization in Tamilnadu from the 1990s onwards, say the following about Dalit mobilization in their recent piece that sets the record straight about Karunanidhi and the DMK’s attitudes towards Dalits:

“Following the institutionalisation of Dalit social movements into political parties in the late 1990s they underwent a phase of deradicalisation and got subsumed within Dravidian politics.129”

It can be argued that this characterization, while not untrue, is also incomplete. A closer observation through the lens of TamilThanmai during the period of 1950s-1970 in this dissertation, shows that Dalit mobilization too, embodied the same ways of being and sense of self as constructed by Dravidian politics even though it excluded Dalits for the most part. This is the most potent example of the all-pervasiveness of TamilThanmai. TamilThanmai was, by the 1980s (when Dalit political party mobilization gained ground in Tamilnadu), the most, or perhaps the only legible language of politics itself. And so, for Dalits to embody it and then to be ‘subsumed’ by it has a history that goes beyond what may have been a ‘deradicalisation’ and ‘institutionalization’ in the 1990s. The contours of how TamilThanmai manifested within Dalit mobilizing in general, in the broader Tamil public political sphere, is beyond the scope of this dissertation. My own research has begun undertaking this task specifically for the period and place under study and has yielded some significant analyses in this regard.

This long caveat about other political organizations is important to understand the all- pervasiveness of TamilThanmai. At the core of this self-affirmation of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit

128 Gorringe, Hugo. 2017. Panthers in parliament: dalits, caste, and political power in South India. New Delhi. Oxford University Press. 129 https://thewire.in/politics/dmk-karunanidhi-tamil-nadu-caste-politics

39 men in the public sphere, as with the evocation of antiquity discussed earlier, is the assertion of the importance of Tamil language and identity as oppositional to Indian identity. The historical moments of such a self-affirmation were as follows: First, was through the memories of the Anti- Hindi agitations in 1937 and 1965 and second, through the system of caste-based reservation in education and employment.

The two Anti-Hindi agitations were against the imposition of Hindi as the national language, thus giving it a privileged position in policy and education all over India. These agitations saw mass participation and left a significant mark in the history of public politics in Tamilnadu130. The second one in 1965 is often identified as the campaign that mobilized large sections of society, especially students, to agitate against Hindi-imposition but also to join and/or support the DMK131. It is no coincidence that only a few years later, the DMK won its first election in Tamilnadu. In public memory and practice there exists the essence of this opposition to Hindi, which is often articulated in popular media and everyday speech. Within public politics, this history of opposing Hindi is held in high esteem as the basis of Tamilnadu’s self-affirmation against the policies forced upon it by the Indian nation-state. That these struggles were fundamentally based on the love of the Tamil language are at the core of this pride.

The second form that this process of self-affirmation took was caste-based reservation. The significance of this and the material changes it engineered cannot be underestimated in the context of caste-ridden societies of South Asia. And yet it was not without its limitations. Narendra Subramaniam is worth quoting here in detail as he gives details of the material reality of caste-based reservations for different oppressed caste in Tamilnadu. He says:

“Tamil Nadu’s educational and job reservations, which are higher (69%) than in other states, benefitted OBCs (Other Backward Castes) more extensively than Dalits and Adivasis. The Congress Party introduced an OBC quota of 25% in 1951, which the DMK raised to 31% in 1971 and the AIADMK to 50% in 1980. Less widely noted is the entitlement to OBC reservations under Dravidianist rule of a further 27% of the

130 Lakshmanan, M. “Language and the Nationality Question in Tamil Nadu, 1938–42.” Indian Historical Review 28, no. 1–2 (January 2001): 128–50. doi:10.1177/037698360102800208. 131 Forrester, Duncan B. 1967. "The Madras Anti-Hindi Agitation, 1965: Political Protest and its Effects on Language Policy in India". Pacific Affairs. 39 (1/2): 19.

population, including better-off castes such as the Kongu Vellala Gounders, that were the predominant beneficiaries thereafter. This creamy layer is at its thickest in Tamil Nadu. By comparison, the Dravidian parties raised the SC-ST (Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe) quota by less than a fifth, from 16% to 19%, below these groups’ population share of 21% (which understates the number who experience Dalit-Adivasi deprivation because Christian Dalits are not deemed SCs). The OBC job quotas are filled more than the SC- ST quotas, especially in higher posts. However, the introduction of a 1% tier for the STs in 1989 and a 3% tier within the SC quota for Arunthathiyar in 2009 helped some of the lowest status groups and the two 10% tiers created within the OBC quota in 1989 for Most Backward Castes (MBC) and denotified communities helped less advantaged OBCs. Thus, caste-targeted policies primarily aided better-off middle castes, but also offered some Dalits, Adivasis, and worse-off OBCs the slimmer pickings.”132

The specific details of caste-based reservation are in themselves, both impressive in comparison to the rest of the country, while also exposing biases towards the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes rather than the most marginalized Scheduled Castes or Dalits. The positive effects made possible by the reservation policies and through the presence of non-Brahmin non-Dalits in all spheres of public life are amply evident in Tamilnadu today133. Simultaneously, the Brahmin opposition to increasing reservation continues unabated even today.

On the whole, the continuing persistence of opposition to Hindi domination, and the extensive reservation policies, are two significant parts of TamilThanmai.

Just as with other aspects of TamilThanmai, these axes too enabled the construction of a sense of self and way of being that held within it numerous contradictions that existed not as oppositions, but as co-existent elements. The reservation policies were celebrated while the lack of proportionate Dalit affirmation in that scheme was ignored except by those writing, thinking and fighting for Dalit rights134. TamilThanmai in the 1950s to 1970 then offered a sense of self and way of being that was neither subsumed by nor a threat to Indian-ness. By the 1960s, this self,

132 https://thewire.in/politics/karunanidhi-caste-welfare-politics 133 https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2407/stories/20070420004601300.htm 134 https://thewire.in/politics/dmk-karunanidhi-tamil-nadu-caste-politics

41 while being declared to be broadly ‘Tamil’, was in effect resolutely non-Brahmin, non-Dalit, and male.

Anti-Caste language and register as a prerequisite for Dravidian or Tamil identity

In September 2017, Anita, a Dalit girl from Ariyalur in the Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu, from an extremely poor family of wage laborers, committed suicide. She had done exceedingly well in her state level 12th grade examinations, which was essential to pursue an education in a good institution in her desired field. Scoring well is even more significant for those who wish to pursue professional degrees such as medicine, engineering, law, etc. Anita wished to become a doctor. In spite of her success in the 12th grade general state exam, she was not able to score adequately in the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), standardized across all Indian states, in order to study medicine in a Government medical college – which are often the best in the country and if entrance is acquired based on merit, then substantially cheaper. This would have been the only option for Anita to pursue a career in medicine given her caste and class background. She was one of the petitioners in a case against the NEET being the basis for admission to medical school. It is upon the loss of this case that she took the decision to end her own life135.

In the aftermath of her suicide, many different political parties, organizations, the film industry, and the state government itself took to the streets to protest the NEET, and to demand that Tamilnadu be exempt from the NEET and that students be allowed to acquire admission to medical colleges based on their 12th grade marks. The NEET for its part was outsourced to an American company by the Indian government. While these protests took Tamilnadu by storm, the national media (and some local media) covered the suicide as being one of a Dalit student. This suicide was yet another instance in the long-standing debates in India about student suicides, and more specifically the overwhelming number of Dalit and Scheduled Tribe student suicides, especially in reputed institutions of professional higher education136. These debates in the national media, pushed forth by activists, journalists, lawyers and others including people in

135 https://thewire.in/education/tn-girl-suicide-neet 136 https://thedeathofmeritinindia.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/list-of-dalit-students-committing-suicide-in-last-four- years-in-indias-premier-institutions/

Tamilnadu, were, at the time of Anita’s death, close to 20 years old. It had previously reached a crescendo in January 2016 with the suicide of Dalit science student and student leader, Rohith Vemula, at Hyderabad Central University, which sparked a national level student protest across universities137.

In Tamilnadu, however, those demanding ‘justice for Anita’ and the exception from NEET took offence to her being referred to as Dalit in the national media. Repeatedly they declared that she must be referred to as ‘Tamil’ as that was who she was. Across different sections of the Tamil public sphere – state government, political parties, film industry celebrities – all took offence to the identification of her caste identity138. In the midst of this din, Pa. Ranjith, a young Dalit filmmaker who shot to fame with his film Kabali (a film that directly addresses caste discrimination), starring the superstar of the Tamil movie industry Mr. Rajinikanth, shot back with a response.

In a public debate with his colleague in the film industry, Ranjith declared139:

“We are living as Dalits only. Villages still have segregation...separate spaces for Dalits. I still live in a cheri140. Show me one village that doesn't have this!". (Translation my own)

His fellow filmmaker Ameer clarified rather calmly, in contrast to Ranjith’s anger, that while caste discrimination is a reality, some amongst us (Tamils) have gone past it and need not look at this issue through that lens.

Ranjith responded, still angry, “No, we have not, none of us have gone past it”.

Ameer, still in a calm and composed voice, while attempting to take Ranjith’s hand in solidarity, declared in a register reminiscent of Tamil public speech and oratory, that “this (Ranjith’s anger) is 2,000 years old”. His tone is a familiar one in the Tamil context which implied that the

137 https://scroll.in/article/802085/in-pictures-students-protest-after-the-shocking-suicide-of-dalit-scholar-from- hyderabad-university 138 https://tamil.oneindia.com/news/tamilnadu/english-media-s-racism-on-student-anitha-294662.html 139 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4iWGX738aE&feature=youtu.be 140 The name given to traditional Dalit quarters in villages and cities alike.

43 oppression felt by Ranjith is an external one. For Ameer his anger is a part of the non-Brahmin standpoint and is so common in the Tamil context, and thus the subject of such an anger (anti- Dalit discrimination) cannot be a creation of ‘Tamil society’. Even though the brutal oppression of Dalits is a reality in the contemporary Tamil world and dates back many centuries, Ameer’s register of speech was rooted in the access to the egalitarian Tamil antiquity discussed earlier and the movements against caste that followed.

Ranjith, still angry, refused to take Ameer’s hand, and in contrast to Ameer’s tone and language, declared in the form of Tamil that is spoken among the working classes (primarily Dalits) in Tamilnadu, with its marked machismo:

“How much longer are you going to keep denying it? How much longer will you wave in front of us the imaginary poochandi (ghost) of ‘Tamil’ (identity)? For how much longer are you going to keep on saying ‘Tamil, Tamil’. We (Tamils) have always been divided by caste. When are you all going to admit it?”

This moment is uniquely Tamil. On the one hand, almost all sections of society rose up in solidarity with Anita’s fight against the structures of oppression that pushed her towards suicide. But to declare the full extent of the reasons for her death, at the center of which was her Dalit identity and the resulting oppression, was an affront to the ‘Tamil’ voice. Anita could not be Dalit and Tamil. Her Tamil-ness and thus its implied anti-caste nature was to subsume her Dalit- ness to such an extent that the stating of the latter was an insult to the former.

For the purposes of unraveling TamilThanmai, the evocation by Ameer (and others) on that stage, of the imagined, to-be-protected, inclusive, anti-caste ‘Tamil’ identity, is as important as Ranjith’s unbridled anger and his evocation of the Dalit standpoint. Ranjith’s anger is at once shaped by, while also feeling the oppression of, this claim on an all-inclusive, anti-caste ‘Tamil’. Ameer’s faith in this all-inclusive Tamil is the basis of his support for Anita. All of this together clearly illustrates the elements of TamilThanmai.

All speakers in this instance, Ranjith, Ameer, as well as the many voices on the streets of Tamilnadu protesting the NEET, had in common the TamilThanmai discussed above. This included the heritage of opposing all things ‘Indian’; the legacy of Tamil uniqueness and

44 exclusivity; and the longstanding fight for public self-affirmation based on caste within education, employment and public politics. Ranjith’s anger and his presence is made possible because of and in spite of this TamilThanmai of the 20th Century. His language, mode of speech, and the invocation of caste identity and oppression within the system is constructed by AND is against TamilThanmai.

What then is this poochandi of ‘Tamil’ that Ranjith is furious at? This poochandi I argue is the default anti-caste register that is implied within the language of TamilThanmai. The very default that Ameer employed. Here, let me admit that Ranjith’s anger touched a chord within me. His exposition of the blatant falsehood that goes into the creation of this Tamilness that ignores Dalit oppression filled me with relief and hope. I was glad for his arrival on the public sphere in cinema, a field that is of enormous influence in Tamil society and always has been from the very inception of the state. But I was interested in using his moment of anger to do the work of unpacking what it is he was angry at.

To unravel the poochandi – the anti-caste register of TamilThanmai – requires a juxtaposition of that process with the socio-political history of anti-Dalit caste violence in Tamilnadu. It has already been established that the role of Dalits within political organizations, while extant, was always a tenuous relationship. The limitations of caste-based reservations for Dalit communities has already been mentioned above. But perhaps the most potent juxtaposition of the anti-caste register within TamilThanmai would be the history of sustained caste-based violence which enjoyed state neglect at best and complicity at worst. While such violence occurred in the pre- independence period too, the following outline takes as its time frame the post-Independence period till the late 1960s. This was the period of the DMK coming into its own, socio-politically, and before its first electoral victory. This is also the relevant periodization for this dissertation. One way to mark this period is to bookend it with two major instances of brutal violence with lasting legacies in Tamilnadu – the Mudukulathur violence in 1957 and the Keezhvenmani massacre in 1968. A timeline of the history of public politics in Tamilnadu that is bookended by these two incidents centers the version of this history from the Dalit perspective.

The Mudukulathur violence can be traced back to the early 1950s141. Access to education and employment among people of oppressed castes had begun to challenge the thus far unchallenged power of the ‘Thevars’ – the honorific term used to describe those of the three castes that made up the collective category of ‘Mukkulathor’, literally meaning ‘three castes’ and comprising the Maravar, Kallar and Agamudaiyar castes142. In the Mudukulathur area, the dominant Mukkulathor caste was the Maravar. This community and their leader in the early part of the 20th Century onwards, Muthuramalinga Thevar, enjoyed unbridled power over land and thus were at the top of the economic and socio-political pyramid in society143. This power was first disrupted by access to education and employment under British rule by those of non-Thevar castes: other non-Brahmin, non-Dalits such as the Nadars, as well as the Pallars – a Dalit caste144. It was further disrupted by electoral politics in post-Independence India. In the 1950s, Nadars and Dalits affiliated themselves to the Congress party – the Nadars through their fellow caste- member and Congress leader Kamaraj145, and the Pallars via the Depressed Classes Youth league146. Meanwhile, the Thevars, while holding an enormous amount of socio-economic power, had not accessed education and employment as much. At the same time, they continued to demand their decriminalization as they were still on the list of castes in the colonial Criminal Tribes Act147.

By the 1950s, Muthuramalinga Thevar had affiliated with various major political forces in the state – the Congress and the Dravidian organizations – and finally became the Tamilnadu leader of the All India Forward Block, which had socialist credentials. This was originally an off-shoot

141 Manikumar, K. A. 2017. Murder in Mudukulathur: caste and electoral politics in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi. Leftword 142 Ibid 143 Ibid 144 Hardgrave, Robert L. 1966. "Varieties of Political Behavior among Nadars of Tamilnad". Asian Survey. 6 (11): 614-621. 145 Ibid 146 Gorringe, Hugo. 2005. Untouchable citizens Dalit movements and democratisation in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 147 Pandian, Anand. 2008. "Pastoral Power In The Postcolony: On the Biopolitics of the Criminal Animal in South India." Cultural Anthropology 23 (1): 85-117.

46 of the Congress and became a separate party after Indian Independence148. He believed that none of the other organizations supported the cause of ‘his people’ – which meant the Thevars149. Caste-based clashes between Nadars and Pallars on the one side and the Thevars on the other were common throughout the 1950s and were escalated by the Congress increasing their political base and votes in successive elections150.

It is in this context that a local government agent in the area called a meeting to curb the caste violence in 1957. Mr.151. Immanuel Gnanasekaran, an educated young man and leader from the Pallar caste, attended this meeting along with Muthuramalinga Thevar (or Thevar for short) and representatives of the Nadar caste. Thevar, however, believed he was the representative of the Pallar as well. Here, it is important to remember that as per caste hierarchy, the Pallars were, indeed, owned by the Thevars whose land they worked on. Thevar did not allow Mr. Immanuel Gnanasekaran to sit on a chair throughout the entire meeting, or even to sign the peace agreement. Lower caste individuals were not allowed to sit in front of Thevars. Nevertheless, Thevar took offense to his very presence in that room, which he thought amounted to the Pallars being given an equal seat at the table. He reprimanded his caste-kin for ‘allowing’ such disrespect to happen to him. The next day, Mr. Immanuel Gnanasekaran was murdered by a group of Thevar caste men in public. This led to further violence with the massacre of Pallars by Thevars152.

What followed was a complex set of legal, semi-legal, governmental and illegal proceedings that reflected the complex relationship of subjugation and the striving for self-affirmation between the Thevars, Pallars, the police and the Congress government at that time. This has now been

148 All India Forward Bloc. 1945. Programme of post-war revolution: Draft manifesto of the Forward Bloc, the vanguard of Indian revolution. Ideology and programme for freedom, democracy, socialism & a classless society. Bombay: A.V. Srinivas, for National Youth Publications. 149 Sendurpandian, M. (1997). Communal Clashes In Ramanathapuram District During 1957 And The Revealation Of Forward Bloc Leader U. Muthuramalinga Thevar Before The Advisory Committee. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 58 (1997): 615-22. 150 Manikumar, K. A. 2017. Murder in Mudukulathur: caste and electoral politics in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi. Leftword 151 All names of Dalits, especially if they do not have initials have been used with the prefix of ‘Mr’. It is common practice in caste society to refer to Dalits without last names or initials. This is a sign of devaluing and disrespect. The use of Mr is being employed here as a way of countering such disrespect. 152 Manikumar, K. A. 2017. Murder in Mudukulathur: caste and electoral politics in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi. Leftword

47 well documented by the Dalit scholar K.A. Ravikumar153. Several Thevars were arrested for their brutal crimes, but they were all acquitted and released when the DMK came to power under the Chief Minister-ship of Anna154. Further, the observance in 2002 of the 45th anniversary of the killing of Mr. Immanuel Gnanasekaran, was the context of yet another brutal incident of caste violence in another town, Paramakudi155.

The Mudukulathur violence is significant to the tracing of TamilThanmai. The release of the brutal murderers of the Thevar caste in this incident was one of the first acts of the DMK government after coming to power. What is now established by research on the caste-dynamics of electoral politics is that the Mukkulathor were the basis of political power for Dravidian parties in the period after the 1950s156. This process can be traced further back from the 1950s as the Mukkulathor were part of the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit support base of the Dravidian Movement earlier as well157. But the Mudukulathur incident, its aftermath and the ongoing valorization of Muthuramalinga Thevar is evidence of the Mukkulathor base of Dravidian politics158. Meanwhile, Muthuramalinga Thevar, often referred to as Thevar, is worshipped as akin to a god among Mukkulathor communities in Tamilnadu, many of whom belong to Dravidian parties, and his picture can be found, often next to those of Periyar, Anna and Karunanidhi. This incident and its living memory set the tone and formed the texture of caste relations and violence in post-independence Tamilnadu.

In February 1967, the DMK, along with coalition parties, won its first election in Tamilnadu and Anna became the Chief Minister of the state. In December 1968, the brutal massacre of 44 Dalits

153 Manikumar, K. A. 2017. Murder in Mudukulathur: caste and electoral politics in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi. Leftword 154 Ibid 155 Parthasarathi, Muthukaruppan. "Paramakudi Violence: Against Dalits, Against Politics." Economic and Political Weekly 46, no. 44/45 (2011): 14-17. 156 See Subramanian, Narendra. 2002. "Identity Politics and Social Pluralism: Political Sociology and Political Change in Tamil Nadu". Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. 40 (3): 125-139. For the most detailed data- based analysis of this. However, the Mukkulathor base of the DMK is taken as given within scholarship on caste and electoral politics in Tamilnadu. 157 Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 158 Hardgrave, Robert L. "The DMK and the Politics of Tamil Nationalism." Pacific Affairs 37, no. 4 (1964): 396- 411. doi:10.2307/2755132.

– mostly women and children – took place in Keezhvenmani village in Thanjavur159. This incident has been well documented by multiple sources immediately after and since. Without rehearsing the details here, it will suffice to say that this massacre where Dalits were burnt alive by Thevar landowners was a coming to head of a much longer history of agrarian crisis whose burden was borne disproportionately by the Dalits who worked the land in addition to facing the everyday violence of caste practices160. The incident is remembered as a galvanizing force amongst Dalits across the state161; as a watershed moment in the Communist Party of India

(Marxist)’s support for Dalit communities in that district162; and for the impunity that the killers enjoyed under the newly-formed DMK rule. Soon after the release of those accused in the Mudukulathur massacre, the DMK watched as the Thevar killers of Keezhvenmani were acquitted of their crimes as they were ‘gentlemen landowners’ who were unlikely to commit such crimes directly163. This incident is often cited by contemporary leaders and ordinary members of Communist parties in Tamilnadu as being the moment when they abandoned the Dravidian cause and committed to Communism as they no longer saw Dravidian politics as representing Tamil people164. It played a key role in the history of the emergence of radical Communist politics in Tamilnadu that believed in taking up arms and was based amongst the agricultural poor in the state165.

For the mapping of TamilThanmai therefore, this early part of public politics in post- Independence Tamilnadu is essential. While caste violence continued unabated with complicity

159 Kanagasabai, Nithila, The Din of Silence - Reconstructing the Keezhvenmani Dalit Massacre of 1968 in SubVersions, Vol.2, Issue.1, (2014), 105- 130. 160 Ibid 161 Sivaraman, Mythily. 2013. Haunted by fire: essays on caste, class, exploitation and emancipation. New Delhi. Leftword. 162 Tharamangalam, Joseph. 1981. The communist movement and the theory and practice of peasant mobilization in South India, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 11:4, 487-498; Sanmugasundaram, S. சன்믁க毁ந்தரம் பச, Keezhvenmani Kurippukal அமர ꏂற்றாண்翁 பகா翁ங்கனퟁ: 埀ழபவண்மணிக் 埁잿ெ்ꯁகள் [ A half-century nightmare: Notes on Keezhvenmani] (Thanjavur: Anmai Publishers, 2018); Varatharajan, U. Ra. வரதராஜன் உ. ரா. Venmani பவண்மணி. (Madras: Bharathy Publishers) 163 "Gentlemen Killers of Kilvenmani." Economic and Political Weekly 8, no. 21 (1973): 926-28. 164 In an interview with the Poet Ingulab, who was a young college going man in 1965 during the Second Anti-Hindi Agitation, he notes the Keezhvenmani Massacre as his point of change from Dravidianist politics to Marxist- Leninist leanings. Com. Valluvarasan, interviewed in this dissertation has a similar trajectory of the shift in his political leanings. 165 Tharamangalam, Joseph. 1981. The communist movement and the theory and practice of peasant mobilization in South India, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 11:4, 487-498

49 or a blind eye from the Dravidianists, the Dravidian leaders were also building a discourse of ‘the people’ which in its essence was, as outlined above, ancient, self-affirming and also anti- caste. But this anti-caste rhetoric did not address the violence perpetuated by the non-Dalit, non- Brahmin castes although this was well underway during the time of the formation and rise of the DMK. Simultaneously Dalit participation and leadership within the DMK is a complex story which, in its essence, indicates a lack of explicit political will to mobilize Dalits as part of the membership, process of ideology-creation, or leadership166. The connection between this lack of political will and the politics of assuaging majority communities in order to ensure electoral victory has been well-documented167. The material realities of the lack of Dalit participation in Dravidian politics or being unable to benefit as much from the emergent reservation policies for education and employment have to be juxtaposed with the innate anti-caste register within TamilThanmai as it evolved during this period. Here it is useful to turn to the commentaries by historians and thinkers who have emerged from the Dalit community and their allies in contemporary Tamilnadu168.

As established earlier, the other aspects of TamilThanmai – antiquity and self-affirmation – were used to create a language that invoked ‘the people’. This mobilization and a construction of a register of speech within TamilThanmai, are consolidated in the practice of Tamil oratory. Bates has recorded and analyzed the evolution of Tamil Oratory and its aesthetics. He identified the profound centrality of this oratory to the history of Dravidian political mobilization. This oratory involved the reclaiming and popularizing of literary Tamil. He analyzed this process as follows:

‘The Dravidianists centamil (pure/ancient Tamil) revolution embodied a proper distinction insofar as to register difference between cemmai (fine/superior) and kochai (cheap/inferior) iconically models a distinction between leaders and people; it embodies a civilizational distinction insofar as the purity of Tamil iconically modeled a distinction between Dravidian and Aryan civilizations; it embodies an epochal distinction … an

166 https://thewire.in/politics/dmk-karunanidhi-tamil-nadu-caste-politics 167 https://thewire.in/politics/karunanidhi-caste-welfare-politics 168 The works of Stalin Rajangam and K.A. Ravikumar and of allies of Dalit movements and intellectuals such as Geetha.V and Perumal Murugan are important in this regard.

antiquity… ; it embodied a political distinction as cemmai and kochai Dravidianist and Nationalist… valorizing the former and stigmatizing the latter…’169

Stalin Rajangam in his speech on ‘Writing Dalit History170’ points out how the declaration of antiquity is used as a way of establishing social structures as ‘pure, unchangeable, superior and permanent’. Connected to this, commenting on the cemmai and kochai of the Tamil spoken register and the former being used for political mobilization, he says indicates an awareness of the caste identity of its audience. Given that main audiences were non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men in the Dravidian public sphere, Stalin Rajangam points out that the very register of language excludes Dalits. He identifies a long history of mobilizing cemmai language to speak with non- Brahmin, non-Dalits, while a different register was in use by those that attempted to speak to Dalits, for instance the Christian missionaries that sought to convert Dalit communities to Christianity, as early as the mid-18th Century171. Stalin Rajangam admits to the lack of adequate sources to methodically prove the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit nature of Dravidianist Tamil oratory, or its earlier iterations in the Tamil public sphere172. However, the juxtaposition of the material realities of the caste constitution of the Dravidian public and the absences in Dravidianist language of a holistic critique of caste hierarchy and its violence, enables significant analyses.

It makes possible a conclusion that the antiquity and self-affirmation of Dravidianist language fed into an anti-caste politics that was anti-Brahmin but simultaneously condoned, through silence and negation, the violence perpetrated on Dalits by non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes – in this case the Mukkulathor. It is then unsurprising that upon ascension to power the, DMK would enable the exoneration of the Mudukulathur murderers and the impunity of the Keezhvenmani ‘gentlemen killers173’.

169 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 170 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfZ8of1gGo4 171 Viswanath, Rupa. 2014. The Pariah problem: caste, religion, and the social in modern India. New York. Columbia University Press. 172 See ibid for an in-depth analysis of the relationship between Dalit Mobilization, missionary efforts and the colonial state in the turn of the 20th C which begins to map this history. 173 "Gentlemen Killers of Kilvenmani." Economic and Political Weekly 8, no. 21 (1973): 926-28.

TamilThanmai

This discussion provides an adequate segue to introduce the subject of this dissertation, as one of its many contributions is to map this anti-caste register in Dravidianist speech as it appears in everyday life. Before that however, I will lay out a map of what emerges as a working definition of TamilThanmai from the above analyses. TamilThanmai, as the term Thanmai in Tamil suggests, is an essence, a way of being, a discourse and an aura.174. It is this multifarious meaning of this word that makes it useful for us here. Combining Thanmai with the public political discourse of Dravida or Tamil, takes away its possibly solely private connotations. It provides instead, the connotation of an essence within a person and/or collective of people, as it lives and breathes in the public sphere. It is an essence that is both intimate and public. Beyond relegating the concept to the private or public realm, it defies such boundaries and maps what makes a person who they are, in the public political sphere. This self-perception then enables us to live, speak and move as we do in the public political sphere. In that sense TamilThanmai insists that public actions have deep affective roots. This nature of TamilThanmai enables an affirmation of the commitment to a public political life while simultaneously providing a way to complexly hold the contradictions within that life.

TamilThanmai is also historically constructed. Here, it is traced for the period between the 1950s to 1970. There were monumental changes in the Tamil public political sphere after this period with the coming of new leaders and political parties175 which are beyond the scope of this work. Suffice to say that it is important to carefully trace the details of this concept for different time periods. Even for the period under review here, the above-mentioned strands are but a few, and with different forms of research and methodologies, many more may be added to this. Simultaneously, even while being ever-changing, it establishes a way of being that is aspired to by all, albeit differently during different periods. The most potent evidence of this is TamilThanmai being the aspiration of those who have historically been excluded by it. As

174 Burrow, T., and M. B. Emeneau. A Dravidian etymological dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Clarendon Press, 1984. 175 Geetha. V, and /S V Rajadurai^. 1991. "Dravidian Politics: End of an Era". Economic and Political Weekly. 26 (26): 1591-1592.

52 mentioned earlier the ‘institutionalizing176’ of Dalit politics, upon closer examination, may be seen as precisely this quest towards speaking and being ‘Tamil’ by imbibing these strands of TamilThanmai. Thus, this concept is, at once, all-pervasive, continuing, and ever-changing. This is made possible as in its lifetime, thus far, it has been, and remains, a source of self-affirmation, gaining of aalumai (personhood), and of power – social, political, economic and affective. Simultaneously it also holds within it the essential need to deny that power to those outside of its main constituency. This denial is often based on the very same social structures against which it stands – namely the caste system. This push and pull are neither acts of hypocrisy nor planned strategic acts of ensuring power to some – especially among ordinary members of public political life in Tamilnadu who do not hold any real political power. It provides, for those who live with it, including myself, a way to value and hold dear the resistance to the very practices that we in turn practice on others. This is done by what has been documented and analyzed to be the affective call to language-protection, cultural identity, nationalism etc177. This documentation thus far is often celebratory of these practices as a source of resistance and self-affirmation178. In other analyses, its potential is recognized while its contradictions are identified simply as its limitations179, or as a deradicalization of the politics over time. Neither of these kinds of documentation explores the reasons for such ‘limitations’ or changes over time180. In other analyses these contradictions have been used to devalue non-Brahmin self-affirmation’s potent critique of the caste system and Indian national hegemony181 in one fell swoop. All of these dichotomous approaches have limited but important analytical uses for understanding this history. Beyond them, however, TamilThanmai as an essence enables us to see this history holistically by neither rejecting its potential (realized to a significant extent for some) to provide

176 Gorringe, Hugo. 2017. Panthers in parliament: dalits, caste, and political power in South India. New Delhi. Oxford University Press. 177 Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 178 /Pandian, M. S. S.^ 2006. Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: geneaologies of the Tamil Political Present. New Delhi: Permanent Black. 179 Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 180 Geetha. V, and /S V Rajadurai^. 1991. "Dravidian Politics: End of an Era". Economic and Political Weekly. 26 (26): 1591-1592. 181 Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 1997. Passions of the tongue language devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. Berkeley: University of California Press

53 self-affirmation against oppression, nor condoning the practicing of those oppressions upon others.

To write history through this lens is made easier with seemingly smaller units of analysis. To be rigorously grounded in place, people and time provides the methods needed to be able to carefully and in depth trace such nuances. It necessitates, for instance, what Dalit historians in Tamilnadu are now calling ‘ur varalaaru’ – loosely translated as place history or local history182. This thesis is inspired by this method while also not attempting to create a cogent ur in the process of writing this history. To create an ur varalaaru that is not bound by any one idea of ur, it needs to be constantly challenged and disrupted by individual stories. In order to do this, this dissertation uses the methodologies of feminist oral history as part of its historical ethnography to listen to individual stories183. In this same tradition, it listens to the silences as much as the spoken words184. This is an essential part of tracing TamilThanmai as many of its elements emerge not so much from speech, but from the silent spaces in between.

Before we proceed to the details of the dissertation, it is important to lay down yet another essential element – that of its masculine nature. Just as its evocations had particular caste groups in mind, it was a conversation between men – ‘brothers’. The honorific ‘Anna’, meaning elder brother, given to the DMK leader, is a huge shift away from the evocations during the period of the earlier Self-Respect Movement. Anna and his regular addressing of the Thambi 185 (younger brother), enabled among other things an erasure of women themselves and of the practice of identifying gender as a structural category in the public political sphere. The history traced here

182 See Stalin Rajangam. ச்டா쮿ன் ராஜாங்க믍, Ezhuthak Kilavi: Vazhimarikkum Varalaaru Anupavankal எ폁தாக் 垿ளힿ: வழிமறிக்埁믍 வரலா쟁 அꟁபவங்கள் [Unwritten Words: Interruptive Historical Experiences] (Chennai: Kalachuvadu Publications, 2017) AND Perumal Murugan Ed. பெ쏁மாள் 믁쏁கன் , Saadhiyum Naanum சா鎿뿁ம் நாꟁம் [Caste and I ] (Chennai: Kalachuvadu Publications, 2013) AND Vaanamamalai, Na. நா வானமாமமல, Thamilar Panpatum Thaththuvamum த뮿ழர் ெண்ொ翁ம் தத்鏁வ믁ம் [Tamil Culture and Philosophy] (Chennai: New Century Book House, 1973) 183 Srigley, Katrina, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Franca Iacovetta. 2018. Beyond women's words: feminisms and the practices of oral history in the twenty-first century. New York. Routledge. 184 ibid 185 Arignar Anna. அ잿ஞர் அண்ணா, Thambikku Annavin Kadithankal தம்ꮿக்埁 அண்ணாힿன் க羿தங்கள் [Letters from an Older Brother to his Younger Brother] (Chennai: Perumaai Puthakalayam, 2010)

54 is a story of men who are supported by women cast186 as brave mothers, sisters, wives and daughters who make possible this way of being187.

V.Geetha traces this shift in Aanmaiyo Aanmai and ends the play with the question ‘where are the women?’. Detailed research to answer that question is yet to be done. This dissertation will establish the resolutely masculine nature of TamilThanmai. The default Tamil person invoked by DravidaThanmai/TamilThanmai is a man, a brother, a father. This masculine essence is constituted by and also constitutes TamilThanmai. Its all-pervasiveness that makes it the aspiration of all, even among those excluded by it, is strengthened by its masculinity. The closer analysis of Dalit mobilization, suggested earlier here, is one possible area of research that might make this palpable.

Further, this masculine nature and the exclusion of women leaves the task of keeping alive the dictums of caste and religion to women. This role played by women grounds TamilThanmai’s register of simultaneous scorn as well as condoning of such structures and practices188. Men get to express disappointment at the women in their lives for not shunning these practices as a show of interest in their politics. Simultaneously, they will also acknowledge that the women ‘take care of the home’ including keeping in place caste and religion, especially in the spheres of marriage and other life rituals. They will declare that they participate in them to appease their

186 Sangari, Kumkum, and Sudesh Vaid. 2006. Recasting women: essays in colonial history. New Delhi: Kali for Women (Zubaan). 187 Forrester, Duncan B. 1967. "The Madras Anti-Hindi Agitation, 1965: Political Protest and its Effects on Language Policy in India". Pacific Affairs. 39 (1/2): 19. AND for an analysis of the casting of women as mothers in the First Anti-Hindi Agitation see Ganesan, Uma. 2011. Gender and caste: self-respect movement in the Madras presidency, 1925-1950. Cincinnati, Ohio: University of Cincinnati. 188 Geetha.V in her unpublished piece where she re-assesses the history of Self- Respect Movement’s history from the perspective of contemporary realities of Dalits and of caste in general in Tamilnadu, she has this to say about the interaction of gender with Dravidianist politics: “Domestic spaces thus emerge as fraught and guarded and women, entrusted with their upkeep emerge as primary guardians of caste honour, since they actually perform those quotidian acts that marks and affirms separateness. For many non Dalit young men the experience of bringing home male friends thus becomes a trial that is as challenging as seeking a bride from another caste; male sociability that seeks to encompass both domestic and public spaces appears vulnerable on this count, and often sons have to entreat and school their mothers into accepting their friends and serving them food, not to mention washing their plates. A mother serving food and water in ways that actively compromise a guest’s self respect thus appears the very epitome of castehood, so to speak. I have called attention to women`s responses to caste not because they are unique, but because, as feminists we have not sufficiently accounted for, understood or developed a critique that helps us address the manner in which women`s roles in the household and their expectations of conjugality heed a caste script and actively renew caste interiority, which, ironically enough is built on distance and difference.

55 wives. However, it is the holding of these practices by the women that enables them to literally live their public political lives with all its contradictions. In short, the masculine nature of TamilThanmai and its lack of space for women has maintained a space for it to survive as a way of being that is embodied by men without it disrupting any existing structures of life, which are held in place by their women. Even when women engage in the public sphere, they, like the Dalits, must aspire to and inhabit this essence, and their assigned role within it. Without fulfilling this role, they will not be allowed to be political subjects and will simply be relegated to the realm of ‘the outsider’. This dissertation is about men, as the process of tracing this history through women requires a methodology very different from the one used here. It would involve inhabiting spaces very different from those in which I spoke with the men. Further, while it is still possible to trace the history of men in the public sphere from the perspective of TamilThanmai, to do the same for women would involve a much more holistic tracing of all aspects of life, especially those that are not considered part of public politics and yet are very much constitutive of it. The dissertation will mention the voices of women as they make themselves heard as part of the narratives being analyzed here. But I have made a conscious choice to tell the story of the men to establish beyond doubt the masculine nature of this public sphere and thus add strength to the question – ‘where did all the women go’. Simultaneously, by tracing this story through the lives of men, I hope to illustrate TamilThanmai as a methodology that is constitutive of, relevant to, and thus may be applied to many communities, including those excluded by it – namely Dalits and women.

TamilThanmai: The Sulur story

This dissertation traces TamilThanmai through the lives of 30 men who were part of the public political sphere in Sulur, a place an hour from Coimbatore city in Tamilnadu. Sulur is known for its sustained commitment to the Dravidian movement from the early 20th Century onwards189. It is also an oasis for those of the Kallar (Thevar) caste, originally from the Thanjavur area, who have settled in Sulur from the 9th C onwards190. It is one among very few places in the area that are not populated by the Kongu Vellalar – the dominant non-Brahmin, non-Dalit caste of

189 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995) 190 Ibid

Coimbatore district. Even today, the party spearheaded by Muthuramalinga Thevar, the Forward Block – populated by those of the Mukkulathor castes – fight elections in only one constituency in the Coimbatore district – that of Sulur. Sulur has a self-declared pride in its history, expressed most effectively in the text Sulur Varalaaru (History of Sulur), researched and written collectively over a decade by those affiliated to Dravidian politics – mostly the DMK in Sulur – and published in 1998. The book is a treasure of how those emerging from this perspective map their own village – now a mid-sized town – with regards to the institutions of religion and caste as well as its intellectual and political history. These elements are contextualized in a broad history of political economy, local governance etc. For the purposes of this dissertation, Sulur Varalaaru’s tracing of the participation of Sulur in every iteration of the Dravidian movement, during different periods are of enormous significance. For all these reasons outlined above, a historical ethnography of Sulur is a bound and yet broad-based context that is ideal for exploring TamilThanmai. Its self-declared rootedness in the Dravidian movement, the existence of all other political strands within this place, and the pre-existing discourse of the primacy of history, all make Sulur the ideal place for the task undertaken in this dissertation.

Chapter 2 of the dissertation is a spatial analysis191 of Sulur and the people there who lived public political lives. With spatializing as the primary methodological approach, the dissertation will explore particular aspects of public political life in Sulur in order to write the history of and from the perspective of TamilThanmai from the 1950s to 1970.

Chapter 3 is focused on the one Dalit leader I was able to identify and interview in Sulur. He was by no means the only one from his community to participate in public politics in the period under review. However, he was the only one still alive during the time of my research and was the only significant leader of repute within his own community. By tracing his life, we are able to map the contours of TamilThanmai in Sulur. Simultaneously, the exclusion of this leader from the history of Sulur’s public politics that I observed in Sulur Varalaaru and in my other interviews, provides a vantage point from which to view the ways in which exclusions of TamilThanmai are created and practiced.

191 Warf, Barney. 2009. The spatial turn. London: Routledge.

Chapter 4 will tell the story of a friendship between two young men who grew into Dravidian politics from their youth in the 1940s. Their differing political paths later on in life, when juxtaposed with their resilient friendship, provides an opportunity to map the deep affective roots of TamilThanmai. It shows us how TamilThanmai is a mode of self-affirmation to those who may not otherwise have accessed such an affective political space. Simultaneously, it shows the boundaries of TamilThanmai as it manifests in the interior and exterior192 lives of the men described and analyzed here.

Chapter 5 is about the Anjaneya Deha Payirchi Salai – the Anjaneya Gym, that was at the center of much political person-making from the 1940s onwards. This long-standing physical training space and its role as a stage upon which the theatre of public politics was rehearsed, tells the story of how such politics lives in the bodies and minds of these men. The consistent place that the gym holds in the lives of these working-class, non-Dalit, non-Brahmin men of Sulur helps us bring TamilThanmai home to the bodies of those who constitute it and are constituted by it. It exposes TamilThanmai’s profound influence and unwavering rootedness in the hearts and minds of these men, while also exposing its boundedness vis-à-vis caste and gender.

In the conclusion, I will delve into a moment in Sulur during the Pongal festival (a traditional festival to celebrate harvest in Tamil societies), as a way of mapping the shape of TamilThanmai as it lives in Sulur today. The description of this moment and the analyses that follow from there enables a way to establish the historical continuity and change in the texture193 of TamilThanmai. The conclusion will end with a set of questions and possible directions in which to use TamilThanmai for the period after 1970 and for the future.

The dissertation is centered on the created archive of extensive interviews. Further, it leans heavily on hitherto-unseen textual and visual material that has been recovered from the interviewees themselves. Apart from these sources it uses material collected from local archives

192 See Mahmood, Saba. 2012. Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. For the most useful analysis of the interior and exterior that is relevant to this dissertation. Also ref. Ch. 4 for a detailed discussion of the Tamil literary concept of Agam and Puram. 193 Nārāyaṇarāvu, Vēlcēru, David Dean Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2006. Textures of time: writing history in South India, 1600-1800. Delhi: Permanent Black.

58 in Sulur that were available in party offices, public libraries, government offices and other public meeting places.

The kernel of the idea for this dissertation came into being after Aanmaiyo Aanmai was first performed. I was required to play a character that was to have the audience in splits. However, that was not to be. There is nothing worse for an actor than a joke that falls flat! We as a group of Tamil feminists had gotten together to create and imagine a history that might include all sections of Tamil society, or least to try and ask why some sections were not included. And to do it through comedy. This intervention, though, was met with a tension in the space. That tension was complex, for us and for our audience. It was not easily explainable through difference in standpoints or dichotomous perspectives. The tension emerged from a thing that was of deeper significance and affective value to all of us in that space that day. Seven years later, I can call that unspoken, mounting tension in the audience Dravida Thanmai or Tamil Thanmai.

Chapter 2 Spatiality and Temporality of TamilThanmai in Sulur

TamilThanmai as laid out in the introduction is a perspective and a methodology through which we can trace public political history in the Tamil context. For a layered introduction to Sulur – the place that this dissertation is based on – it is essential to illustrate TamilThanmai as a method. In the description of Sulur that follows, I bring together myriad strands amidst which we can place a history of the essence and the way of being of public political history. Its focus is the period between the 1950s to 1970.

Space is at the core of Sulur’s web of social, political and economic relations. In and through this web, every strand of public politics is formed and re-formed. The physical structures of the place, together with its natural and constructed boundary markers, are a good starting point for mapping Sulur. They stand testament to social structures and hierarchies. Upon a map of physical structures, boundary markers, and the social structures that they symbolize, I will place a map of Sulur’s spaces that are relevant to public political history. Those maps are then populated with their inhabitants. After that, I will move to examine how those spaces and people interacted with and molded one another.

At the end of the chapter, I have created a multilayered temporal map of major social, political and economic historical markers that speak back to the spatial mappings that preceded them. This temporal map provides the ground upon which the dissertation constructs a history of and through TamilThanmai. Marking Sulur through a relational mesh of interwoven elements rather than through isolated introductions of society, economy and politics helps us to observe, analyze and understand the Thanmai of the life and brea(d)th of everyday public politics.

Mapping space, Mapping power

Figure 1: Google map image of Sulur

Figure 2: This map is a representation of Sulur as it emerged through my field work, for the purposes of this dissertation.

Key: 1: Trichy Highway 10: Pallar area 20: Udayasuriyan Reading Room 2: Big Pond 11: Sweeper Colony 21: Thangam Shopping Complex 3: Noyyal River 12: Market Grounds 22: Paavendar Peravai 4: RVS educational institutions 13: Mosque 23: Ariviyal Poonga 5: Mathiazhagan Nagar 14: Collectorate office 24: Pechumuthu’s house 6: Anjaneya Gym 15: Small Pond 25: Communist Party office 7: SRS Puram 16: Anna Kalai Arangam 26: Ramu Barber shop 8: Paraiyar area 17: Panchayath Office 27: Present-day DMK office 9: Robertson Memorial Church and 18: Sulur Bus Stop 28: Government hospital school 19: Navamani Cycle Stand 29: General graveyard

On the Trichy highway from Coimbatore, the first sign of our proximity to Sulur is when we feel the cool breezes from the Periya Kulam – the Big Pond. Since the 1920s, when Sulur was still a village, this pond has been one of the two water bodies that serve as the primary source of water194. The edge of the Big Pond serves as Sulur’s western boundary. The northern boundary, also a water body, is the Noyyal river, a major source of water for the entire region. The river holds much importance in Sulur. It is at the center of a district-level campaign to address the urban factory pollution that is affecting the river. Many Sulur residents, including some of my interviewees, are involved in the campaign to ‘Save the Noyyal River’195. For our purpose, the eastern boundary of Sulur is Mathiazhagan Nagar that is across the street from the imposing Ratna Vel Subramaniam (RVS) group of private educational institutions – engineering, medical and arts colleges. The RVS group comprises a wealthy family who settled in Sulur in the 1970s and built these institutions.

Many of the homes in Mathiazhagan Nagar are of the Arundhathiyars, who were primarily landless laborers, while some were families of bonded laborers. Some of the homes are of other Dalit castes who were also landless. These small plots of land that make up Mathiazhagan Nagar were allocated by the local government to those who did not own their own land and homes in 196 Sulur in the 1970s . While the demand for these homes was presented to the government in the

194 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 238 195 https://www.thehindu.com/features/kids/Save-the-Noyyal/article13368437.ece 196 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010), 270

62 early 1960s by those in power in the Panchayath (the local governance body)197, the plan took a decade to come to fruition. The parts beyond Mathiazhagan Nagar are seen as an extension of Sulur today, but from the 1950s to 1970, this area formed the eastern edge of Sulur. This was also where the Arundhathiyar community traditionally lived, even before Mathiazhagan Nagar was demarcated.

Much of the land north of the Trichy highway, west of Mathiazhagan Nagar, belongs to the large extended family of Congress Party leader and Kallar landlord S.V. Lakshmanan (commonly referred to as SVL). Since the early 1900s, this family has been a major landowner and still owns almost 400 acres198. They are the single largest land-owning family of the Kallar caste to partially succeed the Brahmin Rao family who previously monopolized vast tracts of Sulur land. The Raos owned close to 1,500 acres of land in this area till the turn of the 20th C199. By the 1950s-1970, members of the SVL family had secured a dominant presence among the ranks of government officials, intellectuals and political party leaders200. SVL himself patronized the local Congress party and was a close aide to its regional and national leaders201. Among the many local institutions that SVL patronized was the Anjaneya Deha Payirchi Salai – the Anjaneya Gym, a significant institution in the public political lives of many of my interviewees.

The southern boundary of Sulur is SRS Puram. This area is named after S.R. Subramaniam, a former Panchayath president (1970-1978), landowner, textile mill owner, and philanthropist. Many among his family, such as my interviewee the late. Su.Ra. Thangavelu, commonly referred to as “Thalaivar (Leader) Thangavelu”, were and are leaders who brought Sulur together, cutting across party and political lines for the ‘public good of the town202’. The SRS family comes from a long line of Kallar Panchayath Presidents who took over leadership of local governance from the SVL and other powerful Kallar families in the 1970s.203

197 Set of demands submitted to P. Kakkan, Minister of Public Works (Madras State) on his visit to Sulur, 25th November 1961, Ariviyal Poonga Library, Sulur 198 Kumaravel, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 15th July 2017 199 SVL Ragunathan, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 29th May 2017 200 Annotated family tree refer Figure 7 201 SVL Ragunathan, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 29th May 2017 202 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017. 203 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010)

One edge of the SVL family’s land borders the Paraiyar Dalit caste settlement. It lies to the east of Market Road that runs northbound, off the Trichy Highway. This is the local home of the Church of South India204. The Robertson Memorial Church was established in 1910 by Mr. Robertson, a British missionary, who also set up a primary school there. This church and school primarily served the Paraiyar community. It was later brought within the ambit of the Church of South India, which was consolidated in 1947205. Other communities later joined this congregation although the church is still associated with the Paraiyar Dalit caste. The Pallar Dalit caste settlement is across the street from the Robertson church, but they are not part of its congregation. There is no historical analysis or explanations for why the Pallars may not have converted to Christianity in this region. The Pallar Dalits are mostly agriculturists. While some own a substantial amount of land206, many others are wage workers.

On the other side of the church, further north on Market Road, is the settlement called the Sweeper Colony. It belongs to 40 families, also of the Arundhathiyar caste, who for generations worked for the local Panchayath as sanitation workers. They acquired these homes during the 1950s as employee quarters.

Further west of the Sweeper Colony on Market Road is the weekly market ground from which the road gets its name. This 100-year-old market still functions and is a source of much pride. This market made Sulur the economic hub for agricultural produce from surrounding villages. Within Sulur, the market was the grounds for various power tussles amongst powerful members of the Kallar caste. Further west on Market Road is the only mosque of Sulur. Across the street from the mosque is a large establishment which has served as the government office through the many iterations of local governance that Sulur has experienced before and after Indian independence. From the 1950s to 1970 it housed the ‘Collectorate’ office. The Collectorate is the

204 The Church of South India was formed as a denomination in 1947. However this Church comes from a long history of relationships between Churches in South India and Dalit communities. See here for a brief note on the CSI Church: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Church-of-South-India . See here for a brief note on Dalits and Christian Theology by a theologists in South India: http://www.religion-online.org/article/the-emerging-dalit-theology-a- historical-appraisal/ See Rajkumar, Peniel. 2010. Dalit theology and Dalit liberation: problems, paradigms and possibilities. Farnham, England: Ashgate; Mosse, David. 2012. The saint in the banyan tree: Christianity and caste society in India. Berkeley: University of California Press; Viswanath, Rupa. 2014. The Pariah problem: caste, religion, and the social in modern India. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 205 Ibid 206 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017.

64 governance unit above the Panchayath. Many Panchayaths, including the Sulur Panchayath, together formed the collectorate. In the period under study, Sulur Panchayath was part of a larger Collectorate whose office was housed in this building. Today, Sulur is the center of a larger governance unit known as the Block, which in turn consists of many Collectorates207. The office has been converted to the Block office.

Behind this government office is the Sinna Kulam – the Small Pond, facing the Big Pond. Further southwest of the government office, all along Market Road that curves southward, is the government girls’ high school, government boys’ high school, primary school, the current Collectorate office, the land registry office, and many temples. Market Road then reconnects with the Trichy highway208 at the Sulur government hospital.

North of Trichy highway, bordering the Pallar settlement on the west, is a cluster of buildings that was of foremost importance to public politics in Sulur. This includes Sulur’s bus stop, the 100-year-old Panchayath office building (the oldest government building of Sulur) and the Anna Kalai Arangam209 – Anna Cultural Stage, the literal and figurative stage upon which much of public politics in Sulur was enacted.

The caste-based structuring of space in Sulur can be mapped with the Trichy Highway as the dividing median. The highway cuts through Sulur in the middle and all three of the Dalit areas are to the north of the highway. To the south are the areas where other castes reside. It is home to newer developments in Sulur’s history, built especially during Sulur’s transformation from village to town in the 1960s. Ownership of much of the land, on either side of the highway, can be traced to few large landowning Kallar families of Sulur, those that gained prominence in the early 1900s and those that acquired land as recently as the 1970s210. Caste is mapped on to the

207 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010) 208 According to Sulur Varalaaru (history), this highway has functioned as a main road from 1912 when it was first built. Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 53 209 While there is no clear evidence of when this stage was built, my interviewees spoke of large public meetings being held there from the 1920s onwards. The narratives suggest that it may have been a place for public meetings upon which a stage was built and slowly grew structurally from this period onwards. 210 Ref to annotated family tree Figure 7

65 space through settlements old and new. All Dalit settlements to the north of the Trichy Highway are in the margins of the town, as is the case elsewhere in Tamilnadu and South Asia211. For Sulur this margin includes the lands traditionally inhabited by Arundhathiyars upon which more recent land allocations were made to form Mathiazhagan Nagar, and the Pallar and Paraiyar settlements that remain as they were without any major spatial interventions or transformations.

Observing this physical mapping of caste onto space is crucial to understand the hierarchical differences across communities based on the logic of caste212 that includes separation, exclusion and untouchability. In some instances, the logic of caste even outweighs the kinship emerging from shared caste identity. We see this when we explore the differences between the Arundhathiyars of Mathiazhagan Nagar and those of the Sweeper Colony. Just as with areas traditionally inhabited by different caste communities, even the more recent institutional physical structures in Sulur, from the old market and the church, to the recently built government offices, ALL exist in the context of this spatial logic of caste. The history of and through TamilThanmai is bound by this physical structuring of power in Sulur.

Another striking aspect of Sulur’s geography is its temples. Sulur has more than a hundred temples and the number continues to grow213. Most of them are dedicated to different versions of the female goddess Mariamman, evoking the landscape occupied by the Kallars in their native Thanjavur214 region. Since Sulur is inhabited by descendants of the Kallar community from the

211 Refer Joel Lee. "Odor and Order: How Caste Is Inscribed in Space and Sensoria." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37, no. 3 (2017): 470-490 for the most recent and rigorous application of longstanding scholarship on placing caste in space by scholars such as Appadurai and more specifically for Tamilnadu by Hugo Gorringe’s work. 212 The best source to understand this from is the succinct and rigorous writing of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. For a contextualizing of his relevant writing that clarifies the logic of caste see Rege, Sharmila. 2013. Against the madness of Manu: B.R. Ambedkar's writings on Brahmanical patriarchy. New Delhi. Navayana Publishers. 213 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 177 214 For an outline of the history of temples in the south see Stein, Burton. “Temples in Tamil Country, 1300-1750 A.D.” The Indian Economic & Social History Review 14, no. 1 (January 1977): 11–45. See here for a broad outline of history of Mariamman worship in Tamil regions Hanumanthan, K. R. "The Mariamman Cult of Tamil Nadu—A Case Study in Cultural Synthesis." Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 41 (1980): 97-103. Mariamman is recognized as a ‘village goddess’ or ‘folk deity’ in literature on the Tamil south across disciplines. Along with this the Sanskritization of this tradition has also been noted. One element of this Sanskritization is the participation of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes in this process before and during colonialism. The Thanjavur area and the main Siva temple in Thanjavur- the Brihadeeswara temple is acknowledged as a key part of this process where Kali, another name for Mariamman or the mother goddess was converted into Parvati, the wife or consort of Shiva to whom the temple was dedicated by the Chola kings. The Kallars of Sulur are connected to this complex historical process. For

Thanjavur area, it is not surprising that these goddesses have travelled with them. The presence of these myriad temples is spatially overwhelming. It is hard to walk more than half a kilometer in Sulur without passing by a temple. Most are at least 50 to 60 years old, if not older. These temples are also archives of the sub-communities of Kallar families, each known as a koottam (group). Every temple built and patronized by a Kallar koottam has a plaque with extensive lists of individual patrons, who are often distributed across class backgrounds215. They range from large landowners to medium-sized ones as well as working class patrons who contributed what they could. Many goddesses of these temples are kulatheivams, clan goddesses of that particular koottam.

The Arundhathiyars and Pallars too have their own temples – often dedicated also to female goddesses. Those are however much smaller – both in physical area and patronage. The Paraiyar community still continues to patronize temples even though the church has substantial influence. Their relationship to Christianity is not an absolute one but is connected to many other socio- political elements as will become clearer later in this dissertation.

For the history of TamilThanmai, the temples are an archive of caste hierarchy – its persistence and significance in Sulur. The temples will feature in this dissertation often as the spaces where traditional caste hierarchy interacts with and is interrupted by the Dravidianist movements. Temple-based activities are testament to the continuation of caste and religious practices even as those living public political lives, leaders and members alike, simultaneously invoked Dravidianist anti-caste and atheist political registers of speech. In that sense they serve as one of the most visible markers of TamilThanmai. This is further enabled by the gendered nature of TamilThanmai where the women of the household were made responsible for maintaining temple-based caste and religious rituals even as they were absent within public political spheres. Thus, although an in-depth study of the temples is beyond the scope of this dissertation, these

the history of Sanskritization see Xavier, S. "An Analytical Study On Sanskritisation Of The Deities Of Folk Tradition With Reference To Tamil Nadu." Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 70 (2009): 621-34. 215 Ponni Arasu, Picture of Engraving on Plague Mariamman Temple with List of Donors, February 14th, 2017, Sulur, Personal Archive

67 physical structures, just as they dot the landscape of Sulur, also dot the analyses here. In that sense, they are an essential backdrop to writing the history of and through TamilThanmai216.

6.1 Spatializing everyday public political lives

Figure 3: Sulur official government map, 1980-1981

Public politics in Sulur interacted in very telling ways with physical structures of hierarchy and difference. I outline below a rough map of two types of public spaces that related to public political life. The first type covers spaces that were explicitly intended for political purposes. The second type comprises everyday spaces of work and leisure that were reconfigured by people to act as hubs for public politics217.

At the epicenter of the first type of physical structures was the Anna Kalai Arangam and its surroundings, including the Panchayath Office and the Sulur bus stop (Refer Figure 2). These

216 Mines, Diane. P. 2010 “Lost and Found: Villages between Anthropology and History." In Village Matters: Relocating Villages in the Contemporary Anthropology of India, edited by Nicolas Yazgi and Diane P. Mines. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010; Hugo Gorringe. 2016. "Out of the Cheris : Dalits Contesting and Creating Public Space in Tamil Nadu". Space and Culture. 19 (2): 164-176. 217 For a robust analysis of the continuance of this practice in Tamilnadu see Cody, Francis. 2011. "Echoes of the teashop in a Tamil newspaper". Language and Communication. 31 (3): 243-254.

68 spaces acted as meeting places for men who were engaged in public politics. For instance, they would congregate in a spot near the bus stop to commemorate those who have passed away. Typically, they would exhibit photographic portraits of the deceased person, adorn it with garlands and make a few speeches in their honor218. Such events are widely publicized through printed posters plastered all over Sulur. More recently they are promoted through WhatsApp messages in Tamil. The exact spot where this occurs, described above, is marked with a flagpole and stone markers that date back to the 1940s, if not earlier. The proximity to Anna Kalai Arangam on the one side and the bus stop on the other, made it symbolically and practically the ideal spot for this purpose. The Panchayath Office building is as old as Sulur as a governance unit. Many of my interviewees served as elected members in the Panchayath. From the 1940s, they sat in this building, across party affiliations, drank tea and talked politics. They continue to do so today.

The second major cluster of built structures crucial to public politics included the Anjaneya Deha Payirchi Salai (Anjaneya Gym), the Navamani (Nine Pearls) cycle stand, and the Udayasuriyan Padippakam (Rising Sun Reading Room). None of those spaces exist anymore. However, my interviews establish them as crucial spaces during the 1950s to 1970. The Anjaneya Gym was crucial for political mobilizations and for shaping the bodies and minds of men of the Kallar caste in Sulur who engaged in public politics. Since its inception in the late 1930s, it functioned from inside the premises of the Sooraththamman goddess temple, located on the Trichy highway219, not far from the Anna Kalai Arangam. It remained there until 2008 when a land dispute led to the displacement and the eventual closure of the gym. Its members trained in weightlifting, sparring, silambam (a traditional martial art involving fighting with long sticks), yoga and bodybuilding. They trained every day, before and after work. In the same space, these men wrote and rehearsed the plays – political and mythical – which they performed in Sulur and surrounding areas. Such members, a large number of whom were my interviewees, were mobilized by the Congress leader SVL to join in activities for the ‘public good’ as well as for

218 Ponni Arasu, Picture of Poster Announcing Su. Ra’s demise near Sulur Bus Stop, June 20th, 2017, Sulur, Personal Archive 219 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 476

69 work supporting the Congress Party in the 1950s and 1960s. The gym is at the center of the fifth chapter of this dissertation.

As it was primarily patronized by SVL, this gym was seen as being supportive of the Congress till 1964. In that year, however, the emergent supporters of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK - Dravidian Progress Party) asserted their independent party identity. After a complex process which was of great emotional significance to those involved, the gym was split. The Jeyamaruthi Gym (Victorious Hanuman Gym) was formed then and continues to exist today, albeit as a very different political formation. Recollecting this split brought tears to the eyes of my interviewees when they spoke of it, even after 53 years. It was more than merely a split in party affiliation and institutions. It was a break in the deeper camaraderie and kinship formed through the collective actions of physical, emotional, and political training that was the signpost of these men’s everyday lives, for close to half a century. My interviewees revealed that the gym played an overwhelming role in their evolving a sense of self. This was the most earnest rendition of collective self-affirmation that I could trace in this history of public political life. Their commitment to the space and its many tasks, and the meaning it gave to these men, their bodies and minds, is profound. They ran this institution while possessing barely any economic resources and alongside full work days and an all-consuming family life. This genuine sense of affiliation and the resulting fraternity in the gym is unmatched by any other aspect of public life traced in this dissertation. In Chapter Five, I argue that pure party-based political spaces did not create the kinds of affective ties that held together all those at the gym. Further, I will show that the history of the gym and its members provides an important analytical layering to TamilThanmai in how it enabled an embodiment of politics.

The Navamani cycle stand, a shop for repairing and renting bicycles, was next to the Sooraththamman temple complex and was part of this same cluster of significant structures where public politics was lived. It was started by nine men (hence the name Navamani) committed to Dravidian politics in the late 1950s220. This shop was displaced by the same land

220 The one remaining member of the ‘nine pearls’ I was able to interview, Mr. Ramu, who is a barber by profession, was not able to provide an exact date for the beginning of the shop. Based on a rough calculation of his age (which is also hard to ascertain accurately as he did not have a birth certificate or any other record) and his approximation of his age when he became part of the group – his twenties- it is possible to ascertain that the shop began in the late 1950s.

70 dispute that displaced the gym. Many interviewees spoke of the Navamani group as a symbol of hope221: nine young men who formed a small business which was committed to the life and success of the Dravidian movement, which during this period meant a commitment to the DMK and its leaders. Being from humble backgrounds, they showcased the self-affirmation that the Dravidian movement gave them by participating as equals in the market and thus claiming their space in the public sphere. As a result, this cycle store, beyond being just a business, was a hub of political conversation and activity.

The cycle store was located across the street from the Udayasuriyan Padippakam. The Udayasuriyan or rising sun is the symbol of the DMK party that had established reading rooms in different parts of Tamilnadu222. Here Sulur men congregated every evening to read many different newspapers. They also stocked up on brief essays, booklets, newspapers, and magazines affiliated to the party and its leaders. These reading rooms in Sulur, as in many parts of Tamilnadu, played a crucial role in political conscience building and mobilization223. This reading room was one among many such spaces that existed in Sulur till about the early 1970s.

Apart from these spaces, men read newspapers and conversed with one another in tea shops, barber shops, grocery shops and cycle shops owned by various supporters of the different political parties. I noticed early on in my research that all these institutions were in the part of Sulur that is populated by the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit, Kallar caste. None of them were in the Dalit areas. I asked my interviewees if Dalit men came to these spaces. The responses ranged from ‘No, they did not’224 to ‘We asked them to come but they never do225’, to a slightly more self—reflexive ‘They would come but wouldn’t feel too comfortable and would stop coming after a while226’. In that sense, then, these spaces were resolutely for non-Brahmin, non-Dalit, Kallar men alone.

221 Ramu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017; Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 222 Genesis and growth of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam: a study, http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/10603/20360 . Most literature on the growth of the DMK mentions the reading rooms as a crucial part of their mobilization. 223 ibid 224 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 225 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 226 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

I was under the impression that there were no public political spaces inhabited by Dalit men that were similar to those described above. It wasn’t until months into my research that I met K.M. Jeyaraj, around whom Chapter Three of this dissertation is structured. He served variously as the principal of the local government high school, the president of the milk cooperative and as the district and state level leader of a range of Dalit organizations affiliated to political parties. Along with all these activities, he and a group of young men locally set up the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam227 (Tagore Youth Organisation), named after the nationalist Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. This space was in the street that runs along the Robertson Memorial Church in the Paraiyar area. The young men who met at this space were Dalits of the Paraiyar caste. They too, like their Kallar counterparts across the street, engaged in activities of ‘public good’. For many of my interviewees, most of whom are of the Kallar caste, their public political spaces were viewed as being ‘general’. To the contrary, K.M. Jeyaraj and his affiliates made no secret of the fact that inspired young men who sought to serve their own specific caste community had set up the Tagore Youth Organization and patronized it. Needless to say, the ‘general’ for Kallar men was indeed only for Kallars even if not acknowledged as such. The third chapter of this dissertation will be dedicated to analyzing the life and works of K.M. Jeyaraj as a way to unpack the limits of TamilThanmai vis-à-vis caste while also establishing the ways in which its elements are pervasive across caste amongst ALL men who lived public political lives. This analysis is possible by closely observing, at the very outset, the spatial location of this organization as being away from similar spaces patronized by those of the Kallar caste.

Here the questions arise of how and if those not in proximity of these built structures of public politics participated in public political life. An exchange with Mr. Maakali228, an Arundhathiyar elder, sheds some light on this subject. He now lives in the Mathiazhagan Nagar in a small hut on the land granted to him by the Panchayath Board in the 1970s. This grant was part of the scheme to provide a small plot of land to all those who did not own their own land or house in Sulur. The area where these plots were granted was traditionally inhabited by the Arundhathiyar caste. Many of the grantees were also Arundhathiyar as that community largely comprised landless

227 Not marked on Figure 2 because the street no longer exists 228 All names of Dalits, especially if they do not have initials, like in the case of K.M. Jeyaraj have been used with the prefix of ‘Mr’. It is common practice in caste society to refer to Dalits without last names or initials. This is a sign of devaluing and disrespect. The use of Mr is being employed here as a way of countering such disrespect.

72 laborers. In order to begin a conversation with him about his participation or lack thereof in public politics between 1950 and the 1970s, I asked him if he had heard of the popular Dravidian thinker, leader and member of the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit Naicker caste, E.V.R. Periyar, from the nearby town of Erode. He had indeed heard of him and recounted what he had read about Periyar’s thoughts on ‘women’s empowerment’– that women need to be treated as equal to men. I asked if he knew about his thoughts on caste. In response to that he said he didn’t know much about that and quickly added that “he came here (Sulur) many times, but he never crossed the street229”. It was as if Mr. Maakali’s rationale for not knowing about Periyar’s thoughts on caste was because he did not spatially cross the boundaries of caste in spite of frequent visits to Sulur. This is corroborated by numerous narratives of Periyar’s visits to Sulur that most of my interviewees placed in the vicinity of the Anna Kalai Arangam. He spoke at the Anna Kalai Arangam and stayed in the homes of the Dravidianist wealthy Kallars of Sulur. Maakali then did not see himself as having access to or being part of the public political spaces outlined thus far.

This conversation with Mr. Maakali indicated that he took the lack of spatial crossing to mean that Periyar’s thoughts on caste were not as relevant to him. This can be read along with a similar conversation I had with him about India gaining independence. He told me of how he ‘heard’ about independence. As a young boy in the 1930-40s, he knew that there were movements against the ‘rulers’ far away. He did not quite know where or who they were. He knew about the burning and derailing, in the 1940s, of the nearby British airbase (now an Indian air force base) and of trains carrying goods belonging to the ‘(British) government’. He even knew that his own direct landowning patron was part of the efforts to overthrow this government. His patron was affiliated to the Congress Party. Mr. Maakali ‘heard’ of independence because this landlord hired an autorickshaw to announce the news of ‘independence’ and fly the Indian flag on ALL the streets of Sulur, including the Arundhathiyar street. This autorickshaw went past young Maakali’s house. And then he knew that the ‘country’ was independent. His response to this now, as it seems to have been then, was nonchalant. In both moments, with independence as with Dravidianist ideas about caste, Mr. Maakali made it clear to me that the political propositions and thoughts in question were not of much relevance to him. While anti-caste Dravidianism became irrelevant to him by not inhabiting his space at all; independence inhabited his space as a

229 Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017.

73 distant reality that was relevant only to his landlord and which his landlord only informed Mr. Maakali about230.

This limitation notwithstanding, Mr. Maakali and others like him, through the 1950s-1970, could access political literature and through that were spectators to political conversations in myriad other everyday spaces. However, access to all public spaces, such as the tea shop for instance, were in themselves bound by caste. The practice of untouchability entailed lack of access to these spaces for those of lower castes. Equal access to such public spaces was at the core of many struggles across Tamilnadu. The Dravidian movement was a key part of that struggle 231. Thus, even as Mr. Maakali felt that the Dravidian movement was irrelevant to his everyday life and surroundings, the effects of anti-caste Dravidian self-affirmation opened up public spaces to him in ways unimaginable before.

K.M. Jeyaraj and his compatriots were part of these struggles for access to public spaces in Sulur. He, like Mr. Maakali, gained from the impacts of the struggles by the Dravidian movement but did not see the movement itself as his own. He was also simultaneously influenced by myriad other political strands that then guided his public political life.

What follows is a map of everyday spaces in Sulur which were not intended to be the centers of public political life. In that sense they were different from the Anna Kalai Arangam, the Padippakams or the Anjaneya Gym. Guided by my own experience of field work and with a focus on spaces that emerged as key to my interviewees, this map includes shops and other such spaces. Through this map, I will introduce some of the key persons in this dissertation. As the large majority of my interviewees were Kallar, much of these spaces were inhabited by those of this caste. The implications of this will be discussed further on.

6.2 Everyday spaces, its people and politics

Every morning, during my fieldwork, I had tea brought from a nearby shop to a shoe shop in the Thangam shopping complex. This shopping complex is located across the street from the Sulur

230 ibid 231 /Pandian,M.S.S.^(2000)‘Dalit Assertion in Tamil Nadu: An Exploratory Note’, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy 12 (3–4): 501–17.

74 bus stop on Trichy Highway. This shop was a business owned by Comrade Valluvarasan, a member of the DMK till the late 1960s and a Communist since. This space became my comfort zone as my friendship with Com. Valluvarasan evolved into a warm and honest one. I went to him with difficult questions as and when they emerged. I trusted him to treat me with the fondness and respect that a politicized elder would a young person with interest in politics, who in turn they count on for contributing towards a hopeful collective future. We often disagreed on questions of political affiliations, patriarchy, morality, caste and the path to change or revolution! It is the kind of relationship where these disagreements added vibrancy to the conversations. After the first cup of morning tea, he would direct me to persons I could interview and sometimes take me to their homes or other spaces himself on his frail and yet functional motorbike. We would often debrief after every interview. I interviewed him over many sittings.

My relationship with the shoe shop as a space for political conversations was not unique. Com. Valluvarasan had more visitors who came there regularly to engage in political conversations, than those who came to buy shoes! The conversations were about local, state-level and national issues. Sometimes they were about ongoing immediate political concerns and at other times about longstanding deeper political questions. I became a part of these conversations. Often, even the few customers who came to the shop to actually buy shoes were pulled into these conversations. I met many of my interviewees here as they visited habitually to converse.

Com. Valluvarasan is now a member of a fringe Communist party of the radical persuasion232. He began his political life and spent much of his youth in the DMK. He is from a poor Kallar family. As a young man, from the 1950s to 1960s, he and his friend Su.Ra. Subramaniam worked for the DMK. Su.Ra. was able to access upward mobility economically as a small businessman and remained in the DMK till his demise on 2 May 2016. Com. Valluvarasan became a Communist after the DMK electoral victory in 1967. This victory was in close proximity to the massacre of Dalits in Keezhvenmani village in Thanjavur district in December

232 As his affiliations frequently change it is not possible to identify the group. Further, many of the fringe left organizations are criminalized by the state and thus it would not be safe to identify him with any one of these groups. In my entire time in Sulur and through myriad conversations, he never mentioned the name of his party to me. It was easy for me to ascertain from other circumstantial sources, this information is not of particular relevance to this dissertation.

1968233. This incident led many young men to be disillusioned with Dravidian politics. While the extent of the shift from the DMK to Communist parties during this time has not been clearly mapped for Tamilnadu, there are narratives of significant young leaders and ideologues of the many Communist parties emerging and flourishing during this time234. Com. Valluvarasan, although not a major leader of Dravidian or Communist parties, was one such young man.

Valluvarasan and Su. Ra. remained friends across party lines. Valluvarasan presided over Su. Ra.’s memorial meeting upon his passing and made sure all the death-related rites were as per his friend’s wishes – without religious ritual – as per the Dravidianist practice. Su. Ra.’s children called Valluvarasan periyappa – a kinship term referring to one’s father’s elder brother. This friendship is the subject of the fourth chapter of this dissertation to understand better the affective relationships that were created by, and which persisted beyond differences in party affiliations. Com. Valluvarasan’s public political life, for the purposes of this dissertation, is a narrative that raises myriad questions. It illustrates the inspiration that the Dravidian movement was to young non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men in the 1950s and 1960s. His life also shows the crashing of this hope – when their heroes did not fulfill their promises. Com.Valluvarasan’s turn to Communism and the change this brought about in his articulations of caste and class are significant to our story. Simultaneously, the persistence of ways of being, sense of self and essence enabled by TamilThanmai become visible in Com. Valluvarasan’s public political life in spite of massive changes in his party affiliations. This essence is highlighted poignantly in his relationship with Su. Ra. and was expressed publicly upon the demise of his friend. The political lives of these two men and their friendship which cut across the boundaries of public and private,

233 Sivaraman, Mythily. 2013. Haunted by fire: essays on caste, class, exploitation and emancipation. New Delhi. Leftword. 234 Three key interviews with Communist affiliated leaders and thinkers of Tamilnadu confirmed this for me. The Poet Ingulab who was an avid DMK supporter during the Anti-Hindi agitation in 1965 marked the Keezhvenmani massacre as the turning point in his political trajectory. /S.V.Rajadurai^ in his interview with me also traced a similar trajectory. While he remained a historian of the Dravidian Movement, he lent his intellectual support to the Marxist-Leninist struggles that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His writing and speeches in different parts of Tamilnadu are identified as a crucial element in this history. Along with this my interview with Comrade Nallakannu a significant leader who remained in the Communist Party of India after the split in 1964 and remained so even after the formation of the ML acknowledged to me the significance of Keezhvenmani is turning many cadres within his own party to ML movements. All three of these voices are significant to the history of Communism in Tamilnadu and are useful to ascertain this trend although a more detailed analysis of this moment is wanting.

76 and across party lines, provide significant ways of understanding history of and through TamilThanmai.

Yet another space that I visited regularly is a few feet from the shoe shop – the office of Paavendar Peravai (Paavendar is the title for the Tamil poet Bharathidasan) – Paavendar Association, referred to just as Peravai. This small room with a table, few chairs and a large standing fan is also a library of Tamil magazines and small booklets. This space was opened in the period after the 1980s and thus is beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, it is the space that maintained many of the values that are associated with the Dravidian movement. My interviewees were amongst the many men, across generations, who met every evening at the Peravai on weekdays to read the newspaper and speak to one another about contemporary and past politics. Many of my interviews took place here and this was one of the libraries where I collected textual material that is relevant to my period of study.

The Peravai is on Kalangal road, opposite Anna Kalai Arangam, off the Trichy Highway. The walls of the room are adorned with every major Tamil political leader – from Periyar and Anna to Velupillai Prabhakaran – the leader of the more recent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the now extant secessionist Tamil nationalist organization in Sri Lanka. It had many pictures of the Tamil thinker and poet that the institution was named after – Pavendar Bharathidasan. He was the architect of the ‘Pure Tamil Movement’ that sought to bring forth speech and writing in ‘pure’ Tamil words as a way of ‘conserving’ Tamil235. This practice of speaking ‘pure Tamil’ was default among many of my interviewees – especially when in public political spaces such as the Peravai. Com.Valluvarasan spoke in this style at all times and insisted that all those who came to chat with him at the shoe shop do so as well. I was regularly corrected and reprimanded when I used common English words mixed in with my Tamil, such as ‘road’ or ‘train’.

The Peravai was also the headquarters where research for the book Sulur Varalaaru236 was coordinated. This collective project documents Sulur’s history based on textual sources and more than a hundred interviews with Sulur residents who were over the age of 60 in the 1990s and is

235 Kailasapathy, K. 1979. "The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-Evaluation". Social Scientist. 7 (10): 23. 236 Gauthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995)

77 an important reference point for this dissertation. It took almost eight years to complete the book. The labor for it was undertaken by Kallar men who were politicized in the 1980s. The team consisted of about six to seven people. It is primarily a hagiographical text that begins with a history of Sulur from ancient times and provides socio-economic, administrative and political context through the ages. After this, it is primarily a celebration of Sulur’s role in protecting and developing the ‘love of Tamil’, the Dravidian movement and many other such small and large political processes in Tamilnadu. The text is a collection of facts about Sulur based on oral and textual sources237. The textual sources were collected from public and private archives and collated into the narrative. This text informed this dissertation as Sulur’s own self-representation of its history. While an analysis of this text alone from the perspective of TamilThanmai is possible, that has not been undertaken here as it was written many decades after the period under study. However, its hagiographical tone and the elements of Sulur that it chooses to highlight and celebrate – the ‘love of Tamil’, Dravidian politics, big public gestures of anti-caste politics among others – are testament to TamilThanmai of a later iteration. In this dissertation, Sulur Varalaaru is used simultaneously as a primary source of invaluable oral and textual material and also as a secondary source that highlights elements of TamilThanmai as it was imbibed by Dravidianist men of a later generation who worked on this text.

The Peravai is the last remaining institution that enables us to imagine what the erstwhile Dravidian reading rooms may have been like. Men of Communist persuasion do not come to the Peravai238. Neither do those who are members of or are drawn to Anna Dravida Munnetra

Kazhagam (ADMK)239. This party was formed in 1972 as a break away from the DMK. It was led by M.G. Ramachandran and later the recently deceased J. Jayalalitha – both of whom have served as Chief Ministers of Tamilnadu from the 1970s onwards. The Peravai, according to the men who frequent it, is the last vestige of an older, ‘purer’, Dravidian politics which in the current milieu translates into an unsaid but known support for the DMK240.

237 ibid 238 Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017. 239 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 240 Senthalai Gauthaman Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 13th March 2017

Here I met many who were not directly part of this dissertation’s subject matter but became essential for my research. I met Varadaraasu, a retired mill worker who has been active with the Peravai since the 1970s. His father Naatrayan, also a retired mill worker was a Congress worker and a significant part of the Anjaneya Gym. Varadaraasu, like Com. Valluvarasan, was a point person who directed me to many interviewees. He himself was of a generation that was politicized in the 1980s (and thus beyond the scope of this dissertation). Simply being at the Peravai in the evening enabled me to meet many people and to map across time the continuing legacies of Dravidian politics from the 1940s. I met Bus Driver Murugesan241 and V.K.

Sanmugavel242 who have been members and field workers for the DMK from the 1950s onwards. I also met Thamizhnenjan243, who is of Varadaraasu’s generation, who told me of the Nakkeerar Mandram, a group committed to ‘pure Tamil’ ideals along with Communist leanings, in the 1970s. This is one of the few groups I learnt of that indicated a direct continuity from the previous generation of Dravidian politics in Sulur. The Nakkeerar Mandram was a search for Dravidian ideals to hold on to when they were coming crashing down following the DMK’s electoral victory, which was quickly followed by actions that seemed to many members of the party to be contrary to its ideals. The most visible of such actions was the silence of the DMK government with regards to the brutal massacre of Dalits in Keezhvenmani. It was this upheaval that led the Nakkeerar Mandram, unlike earlier Dravidian spaces, to expose themselves to Dravidian as well as Communist politics244. This coming together of ideas has a vibrant lineage in Tamilnadu and was highlighted most potently in the Self Respect Movement245. It was undone during the Anna and later Karunanidhi governments which brutally suppressed Communist voices246. In many ways, the Peravai is the last remaining vestige of a Dravidian past as well as a space where the contemporary forms of Dravidianism are lived.

241 Murugesan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 242 V. K. Sanmugavel. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 243 Thamizhnenjan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 27th April 2017. 244 ibid 245 Geetha. V., and /Rajadurai.S.V^ 2011. Towards a non-brahmin millennium: from Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Kolkata: Samya. 246 See mention of suppression of Trade Unions in the 1970s here: https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2018/stories/20030912006102200.htm For a more detailed history of Communist mobilization in Tamilnadu and suppression by the DMK see Padmanabhan, V. K. 1987. "Communist Parties in Tamilnadu". The Indian Journal of Political Science. 48 (2): 225-250

These snapshots of a time after the period under consideration here, that I got a sense of from the individuals who frequented the Peravai, provided important perspectives as I progressed with my research. The Peravai was a space where I could get as close as possible to feeling the essence of previous iterations of Dravidian public political space as well. Having this experience was influential in how I observed and listened to the details of the everyday lives I was mapping for the 1950s-1970. The Peravai was also an invaluable resource for this dissertation for its textual archives and for being the space in which I could undertake research, both by conducting interviews and by observing everyday public politics in action.

Another significant archive of textual/visual material and a meeting space for interviews was the Ariviyal Poonga, the Science Park. It is located further south from the Peravai on Kalangal road, in close proximity to S.R.S. Puram. The walls of this privately-owned public library are adorned with pictures of hundreds of scientists from around the world. The Ariviyal Poonga was patronized by the now deceased Thalaivar Thangavelu. He owned the entire building in which the library was located. The rest of the building was home to many small businesses.

The Ariviyal Poonga was an institution patronized by him at a much later stage in his intriguing public political life. Thalaivar Thangavelu was Panchayat President of Sulur from 1996-2006247. He was the brother of the late. S.R.S who was also Panchayath president and after whom S.R.S Puram is named. They are one of the major landowning Kallar families248. My initial introduction to him was, however, not as landlord/ patron or Panchayath President. Neither was it in his capacity as a community elder with a deep commitment to general civic duty who brought together different factions within Sulur. I interviewed him to understand the history of Communist mobilization in Sulur. There was only one unified Communist Party in India before the split in the party around 1964249. All my interviewees, if Communist, were part of this organization. They chose diverse affiliations in the early 1970s. But their fundamental politicization in the period between the late 1940s to the late 1960s was in the unified

247 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010), 373 248 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 249 Ramakrishnan, N. ன் . ராம垿쏁ஷ்ணன் .2004 Tamilakkaththil Communist Katchiyin Thotramum Valarchiyum (1917-64) த뮿ழகத்鎿ல் கம்뿂னிஸ்ட் கட்殿뾿ன் யதாற்ற믁ம் வளர்ச்殿뿁ம் (1917- 64), [The Origin and Growth of the Communist Party in Tamilnadu (1917-64)], (Vaikai Veliyeedu Madurai)

Communist party. Thalaivar Thangavelu’s public political life is a crucial element in this history for Sulur.

Thalaivar Thangavelu was among the few in Sulur who went against the grain of dominant Dravidianist politics. Until the second half of the 1970s, Thangavelu was the black sheep of the family. He walked away from familial duties and privileges, to be a full-timer in the Communist Party. The death of his elder brother SRS in 1978 and the sudden death in 1991, of the next patriarch of the family and SRS’s son Ponmudi, who was also Panchayath President, placed Thangavelu in the position that he had shunned thus far– of being the chief patriarch of the home and of Sulur via the Panchayath Presidency. He began civic/public work in Sulur outside of the Communist party in the late 1970s and was later elected Panchayath President and remained so between 1996 and 2006250. Thangavelu’s complex social position and his negotiation of it in his public political life will feature in this dissertation at different junctures. His expression of TamilThanmai is different in important ways from most of my other interviewees. His re- creation of himself as a public figure that fore fronted a civic duty that strived for the general public good was influenced by the ideals of rationality, unity and justice – resembling Nehruvian socialism251 as much as it did pre-DMK Dravidian thought. Ariviyal Poonga stands as a physical manifestation of this complex political position that Thalaivar Thangavelu inhabited.

In complete contrast to Thalaivar Thangavelu, I spoke with other Communists in spaces very different from the Ariviyal Poonga. I met the now deceased Comrade Pechchumuthu in a small room attached to a piece of prime property he owned in Sulur. My interview with him was his last. This shop was rented out as a pharmacy. This structure was in a lane next to the bus stop, thus making it extremely lucrative. He was able to acquire this small piece of property through a lifetime of work in the textile mill252. Even though he lived a stone’s throw away from the center of public politics in Sulur, by the time I met him, he was largely immobile. Pechchumuthu was a barely educated Kallar man of very little means. When I met him, his living conditions were abysmal. His room consisted of a bed with metal trunks under it where he stored his belongings.

250 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 251 Sherman T.C. 2018. "‘A new type of revolution’: Socialist thought in India, 1940s- 1960s". Postcolonial Studies. 21 (4): 485-504. 252 Pechchumuthu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 14th March 2017.

Additionally, he had a small cupboard with his few other belongings. He had a large-sized photograph of his wife, Kaliammal next to his bed. She passed away a few years ago and this relationship, as it emerged in his interview, was at the core of his public political life. She hailed from a wealthier Kallar family who supported the DMK. She defied her family to marry a young, poorer Communist man. Pechchumuthu was asked by his party to stand in local Panchayath elections in 1952 although there were, by his own admission, only about five Communists in Sulur at that time. However, they wanted to mount a resistance to the power wielded by the Congress-DMK combine in Sulur at that time, the details of which will follow later on in this chapter. He asked his wife to stand on his behalf and she followed his wishes. Not only was she a candidate but she stood directly against the mighty Congress leader SVL. Even though she lost, Pechchumuthu had antagonized his in-laws and she her own natal family. He was asked to leave the home where they lived then which was owned by Kaliammal’s family. His Communist comrades helped him. He recalled with tears in his eyes the story of his wife supporting him against her own natal family253.

Figure 4: Pechchumuthu in his small room with a large picture of his wife Kaliammal

Pechchumuthu tried to connect local labor issues such as those among the Panchayath’s sanitation workers who lived in the sweeper colony, to the broader Communist movement in Coimbatore district and Tamilnadu state. He engaged in every day ground level work of speaking with working class, lower caste persons about Communist politics as a path of

253 Pechchumuthu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 14th March 2017.

82 struggle254. His Communist ideals made it a default practice for him to attempt organizing ‘the proletariat’ across caste lines. However, this did not translate into a broader critique of caste structures or practices. He was one among very few of my interviewees who did not access the anti-caste register of Dravidianist speech available to men of his generation who were engaged in public politics. This register discouraged explicit caste-ism in speech which is otherwise default in Tamil. He articulated his work with the sanitation workers as a question of labor struggles. His default casteism, however, was made apparent by blatantly caste-ist speech where he referred to his age-peers and of people older than him, who were of Dalit castes, in the informal, disrespectful singular form of Tamil speech255. This contradiction is of particular note as he was also the only non-Dalit who worked directly with Dalit communities – specifically the sweepers – to organize themselves and ask for their rights. This was corroborated by Mr. Kittusamy who is of the sweeper community256. We will return to Kittusamy later. For now, it is important to note that Pechchumuthu existed as an anomaly, simultaneously, in his blatant caste-ist speech and in his political choice of working directly with the sweeper community. He embodies TamilThanmai through both these seemingly contradictory elements that made up his public political life.

I met the other significant Communist of Sulur, Iyyasamy, in a room that was the office of the erstwhile unified Communist party and now houses the Communist Party of India (CPI) office. Just like his Dravidianist colleagues, Iyyasamy continued to read newspapers and visited the still remaining old office. This office is adjacent to the Peravai and received the same newspapers. Not many other than Iyyasamy frequented the Communist party office. But for him, to inhabit this space and welcome anyone who may come through was a symbol of his lifelong commitment to Communism. Not surprisingly, this was his preferred space for my interview with him. The office, although barely used now, is yet another addition to the cluster of buildings that were part of public political life in Sulur from the 1950s onwards. Much of the textual material in this space has been destroyed since, causing Iyyasamy much dismay. However, the

254 ibid 255 Pechchumuthu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 14th March 2017. 256 Kittusamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 10th June 2017.

83 room, the name board and the flag pole with the Communist flag still remains. Iyyasamy has now become the de facto caretaker of this space.

Iyyasamy, also a barely educated Kallar man like Pechchumuthu, owned and ran a small corner store near Mathiazhagan Nagar. He is a significant figure in the field of theatre in Sulur. He created plays that were mythological, political and sometimes both. His affiliation was to the Communist party. As he was only educated till the 5th grade, he learnt to read Tamil by himself by reading newspapers at the beedi (tobacco rolled up in a leaf that is used as a cigarette) factory where he worked. One of his first sentences in his interview with me went as follows:

“From a very young age, I read newspapers of all the different political parties. I read them in detail for years. After which, I made an informed decision to be a Communist and I will remain a Communist till I die.257”

Iyyasamy wrote, directed and trained generations of actors in plays both for local performances in temple festivals as well as those with political messages to travel as part of party campaigns. He characterized his role through the 1950s and 1960s as a Communist cultural worker. His role as a cultural worker gave him access to elements of the public sphere of which TamilThanmai was a part. He was deeply influenced by and included in his artistic expression the oratory style of Dravidian leaders258. He was part of the broader world of cultural practice that utilized traditional forms of dance, music, instruments, etc. for electoral and other political campaigning259. Simultaneously, his art practice wasn’t just relegated to the realm of politics but was also part of other spaces such as temple festivals, and later in other media, such as the radio260. It was in this capacity that he intersected with the Dravidian public political sphere. While the choice to participate in temple festivals and the like was also a financial one, his sense of self and pride in being an artist emerged from creating art for politics. Like his Dravidianist colleagues he did not see this participation in religious spaces to be contradictory. Although the

257 Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017. 258 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press 259 Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017. 260 ibid

Communist Office and Iyyasamy’s art practice are largely defunct now, the ongoing presence of him in that office is a reminder of a significant aspect within the history of public politics in Sulur.

Behind the cluster of buildings including the Anna Kalai Arangam, Panchayath Office and bus stop and not very far from Pechumuthu’s home, are the homes of the oldest DMK leaders of Sulur – Appan Balasubramaniam and Sinnaiyan. Located on small streets in and around this cluster, these homes were spaces for political conversations and some of them had verandahs in the front which made them public and private simultaneously. Many nostalgic memories of politics in the 1950s and 1960s involved anecdotes with these verandahs as their stage.

Appan Balasubramaniam was 101 years old when I interviewed him, making him my oldest interviewee. He had carefully preserved, wrapped in a plastic bag, his most valued belongings. This bag was my textual and visual archive from his home. The contents of this bag and the careful manner in which he shared them with me shed light on his affective ties to Dravidian politics. The bag had a pocket-sized book of ‘Dravidian values’ from 1944 and newspaper clippings about Dravidian party conferences he had attended, as early as 1936.

Figure 5: The book of Dravidian values in the picture is shown along with an adult hand for scale. This extremely small book with fragile pages was preserved from 1944.

He belonged to a previous generation than many of my other interviewees and was amongst the few who was reminiscent of the pre-DMK iteration of Dravidian politics. He saw the current state of Dravidian parties a result of many decades of ‘corruption’ of the ‘original vision’ through ‘compromises made for political power’. He himself never held a post in the party or in

85 local governance in spite of being a committed lifelong member of the DK and later the DMK261.

Sinnaiyan’s home was on a street not very far from Appan Balasubramaniam. Sinnaiyan, although Appan Balasubramaniam’s contemporary in the DMK, had a very different political journey. Sinnaiyan stood in Panchayat elections on behalf of the DMK many times and won. He served on every single Panchayat board from the first one in 1953 till 1991. When asked why he made the choice to stand in elections repeatedly, he said: “Every time it was some mama, machan, thambi who asked me to stand and so I obeyed the loving requests from the young ones.262”

This statement by Sinnaiyan is very significant to our understanding of TamilThanmai. He was referring to actual biological kin, who were in positions of power within the Sulur branch of the DMK as well as within the Panchayath. At the same time, he was using the same terms to refer to non-biological kin relations made through political affiliation, thus evoking the language of a broader fraternity that Dravidian politics had provided to him. Apart from this, he was also referring to caste kin. The use of biological kin terminology for both biological and non- biological fraternities simultaneously broadened his political world beyond his family, while also reaffirming caste relations. In all fairness, however, Sinnaiyan, by the time of our interview, no longer exhibited a close affective relationship to the party or its values. He spoke of his decision to stand in elections repeatedly more as a default habit than a commitment to the party or politics. The representation of Sinnaiyan by other interviewees and men of later generations of the Dravidian persuasion was that of him as the ‘grand old father’ of Dravidian politics in Sulur, specifically of the DMK. But Sinnaiyan, at the point in his life when he narrated his life story to me, was disinterested in that mantle and all the ethical responsibilities that came with it.

Sinnaiyan too, like Pechchumuthu, had preserved his belongings in a metal trunk. He made its contents available to me and that became my archive from his house. It was Sinnaiyan’s old pictures that introduced me to Mr. Kittusamy. He showed me photographs of a retirement

261 Balasubramaniam, Appan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, May 29th 2017. 262 Sinnaiyan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 9th June 2017.

86 function at the Panchayath that was obviously of a junior employee who was being ritualistically celebrated for his service as per the convention of government offices. This person wore the uniform of a sanitation worker thus putting him at the bottom rung of those employed by the Panchayath. From his body language, it was palpable that the hierarchy between him and Sinnaiyan was not based on his employment alone but also on caste. I asked him who he was. Sinnaiyan said: “Avanaa, he is sweeper Kitta263”

The first word in that statement is a non-formal, disrespectful, singular way of referring to a male person in Tamil. I was taken aback as the person in the picture was not Sinnaiyan’s friend and looked either of the same age or older than Sinnaiyan. It is culturally offensive to address an older person or a peer, who isn’t your friend, in the singular form in Tamil. My own cultural conditioning led me to respond with shock and discomfort. The only available explanation for this is the caste-based practice of infantilizing and speaking in the singular about those of the lower caste, even if they are older or are age-peers. Sinnaiyan’s mama, machan – kin, biological or otherwise – do not include Mr. Kittusamy and others like him within the broader Dravidian fraternity. For Sinnaiyan, Mr. Kittusamy was neither part of the Dravidian public sphere nor was he a subject upon which Sinnaiyan must enact his anti-caste politics. Mr. Kittusamy’s existence and his hierarchical relationship to Sinnaiyan was not of relevance to the latter’s political register or everyday public political life. This meant that he could, as a matter of habit, engage in everyday traditional caste practices of his caste-kin, the Kallars, in his manner of speech and action. He did not view this practice as a counter to his Dravidianism. TamilThanmai provides space for the existence of this contradiction – unstated and unconscious.

263 Sinnaiyan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 9th June 2017.

Figure 6: Sinnaiyan garlanding a sweeper. Kittusamy in the center

Mr. Kittusamy may not have been relevant to Sinnaiyan’s own perception of his public political life, but for this dissertation that has mapped such a life, of Sinnaiyan and others, Mr. Kittusamy is of enormous significance. I then found my way to the Sweeper Colony in order to find Mr. Kittusamy. Sinnaiyan could not give me an exact address for Mr. Kittusamy. This is yet another reflection of the spatial organization of caste hierarchy. While most non-Brahmin, non-Dalits would have specific addresses for their homes, Dalit dwellings would be identified by dominant caste members as being in the general area of the Dalit quarters. So, for Sinnaiyan, sweepers such as Mr. Kittusamy simply lived in the ‘Sweeper Colony’. I walked to the Sweeper Colony and asked the first person I saw where I could find Mr. Kittusamy. They pointed to the house right off of Market Road, on the main road of the Sweeper Colony. This small house was part of the government housing given to those with permanent sweeper positions in the Panchayath in the 1950s. This particular house was available to Mr. Kittusamy’s family, even though he had retired. This was because his wife Mrs. Aarayee, also a sweeper, was still in government service264. These homes were made available for permanent occupancy by generations of

264 Kittusamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 10th June 2017.

88 sweeper staff by the Panchayath leader, landlord and wealthy Kallar, Chairman Karupanna Thevar who created this housing scheme for the Arundhathiyar sweepers in 1926, during his many terms as the then Sulur Union Board President from 1920-1937265.

Mr. Kittusamy and the Sweeper Colony provide a significant history of a specific expression of caste relations as it was mediated by the institution of the local Panchayath. Mr. Kittusamy and others who have held the sweeper positions in the Panchayath were entirely from the Arundhathiyar caste. The job passed down from parents to children within these families. The relationship between this group of Arundhathiyars and the Kallars who held positions of power within the Panchayath was a caste-based hierarchy that was then embedded within mechanisms of local governance. This translation of traditional hierarchical and hereditary caste relations, into more recent formations of state machinery, in this case local governance, was molded by and existed within the context of Dravidian politics.

It was this group of sweepers who, as part of their duties, performed manual scavenging266 as running water to toilets within homes became available to Sulur only in 1984. This time period when running water became available coincided with what is celebrated by many of my interviewees as the end of manual scavenging in Sulur. It is a matter of pride to have abolished manual scavenging in Sulur as it continues to exist as a practice in many other parts of Tamilnadu and is a subject often of legal battles and public debate267. Further, it is celebrated as a victory for Dravidianist politics that the practice was banned in Sulur. While there may have been some articulation of a political will to end the practice (extent of which is unascertainable from existing sources), it wasn’t abolished till the coming of running water to homes thus making the practice irrelevant.

265 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010), 133 266 Manual Scavenging is the work of clearing other persons bodily waste done by fellow human beings. This practice challenged and still continuing in India is a matter of much concern. See here for an simple explainer of the situation: https://thewire.in/labour/manual-scavenging-sanitation-workers 267 See here for the Gazette addressing the law prohibiting Manual Scavenging: https://ncsk.nic.in/sites/default/files/manualsca-act19913635738516382444610.pdf See here for a recent judgment from the Madras High Court in the case asking for payment of compensation for those working as manual scavengers who have lost their lives on the job: https://barandbench.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Madras-HC- Manual-Scavengers-June-4-2018.pdf But the campaign to end the practice altogether is still on and has taken the form of another Petition in the Supreme Court of India: https://www.newsclick.in/petition-sc-seeks-end-manual- scavenging

The coming of running water was made possible through access to water from the Siruvani Dam in the neighboring state of Kerala. This is celebrated as an important victory for the Panchayath president at that time, S.R.S – Thalaivar Thangavelu’s brother and DMK leader in Sulur268. This coming of water was approved in 1978 and was executed only by 1984. The approval coincided with the establishment of quarters for those employed in the Indian Air Force that lived next to the airbase right outside Sulur. As these housing quarters needed this water and given that Sulur was en route, it gained access to water as well269. It is important to note here that the political will to abolish the practice of manual scavenging, however extensive or minimal, did not extend to a point of realigning everyday sanitation practices. Instead, it was channeled towards bringing public services – in this case running water – using political power. The redundancy of manual scavenging as a result of this was but a by-product.

From the perspective of sweepers such as Mr. Kittusamy and Mrs. Aarayee, this practice of manual scavenging was at the core of them being seen as separate even from their own caste kin. While this is unsurprising as the relationships between different Dalit castes often reflect the same logic of caste as practices by dominant castes –separateness, hierarchy, exclusivity and untouchability270, the sweepers’ practice of manual scavenging made them ‘untouchable’ even to their own fellow caste members. Spatially, this is reflected in the considerable distance between the Sweeper Colony and Mathiazhagan Nagar, the area where the Arundhathiyars lived traditionally and continue to do so today. This spatial separation is enacted in every aspect of the relationship or lack thereof between the sweepers and the other Arundhathiyars.

I met Pattakkarar Sankaran, another member of the Arundhathiyar caste, in his home in Mathiazhagan Nagar. He holds an important ritual place in the community. He also filled the

268 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010), 283 269 ibid 270 There is some literature on the complicated realities of caste based discrimination and untouchability amidst different Dalit groups. See here for one fact finding report of a contemporary conflict: https://www.sabrangindia.in/article/battle-over-common-lands-splinters-dalits-periyars-tamil-nadu See here for treatment of this issue in the Dalit writer Bama’s novel: https://sowndarya.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/a-discourse- on-animosities-between-two-dalit-communities-their-internal-differences-and-conflicts-as-portrayed-by-bama-in- vanmam/ ; See Charsley, Simon. "`Untouchable': What Is in a Name?" The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2, no. 1 (1996): 1-23. For a succinct and useful analysis of the history of the term ‘untouchable’ and how it leaves complications such as discrimination amongst oppressed castes unaddressed.

90 caste based reserved seat in the Panchayath board multiple times. In his interview he spoke of the sweepers as untouchable and asked me: “Would you drink water in the house of people who cleaned other people’s shit?271”

Mr. Kittusamy, on the other hand, articulated the sweepers’ response to this discrimination by claiming ‘sweepers’ as his caste identity. He accessed the dignity that came from having a government job by shunning the Arundhathiyar caste identity and embracing being a ‘sweeper’. Even after admitting, after some time, that they were, indeed of the Arundhathiyar caste, he informed me that they would not marry into the other Arundhathiyar families that weren’t sweepers. Further, the sweepers are hereditarily loyal to the Kallar caste members of the DMK who held power in the Panchayath. This loyalty is essential if they are to access a sense of self- respect and dignity that comes from the government job, even though, the work itself is deeply disrespectful to their bodies and their dignity. Pechchumuthu, the Communist who worked amongst this community, mobilized them to ask for better conditions of work and life from their employers – the Panchayath. Mr. Kittusamy said, and his wife and other community members agreed that: “Pechchumuthu helped us a lot at the individual family level. He cared about us. But we would never, as a Community, antagonize those in power by joining the Communists.272”

The history that emerged from Mr. Kittusamy and his fellow sweepers is a coexistence of providing jobs through institutionalizing caste-based relationships within local governance. This then cushioned the complicity of those in power in a practice as demeaning as manual scavenging. This contradiction is a precondition for the sweepers’ access to self-respect in spite of the nature of this work. For those of the Kallar caste who wielded power within the Panchayath, their Dravidian politics enabled them to imagine that public services such as granting employee housing to this community and bringing running water to Sulur, and as a by- product, make manual scavenging redundant, is indeed a reflection of their commitment to anti- caste politics. This imagination has no space to consider making more radical changes to everyday practices within dominant caste households and communities, such as changes in caste- hierarchy based speech or their dependence on manual scavenging for basic sanitation all the

271 Sankaran. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 272 Kittusamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 10th June 2017.

91 way up to the late 1990s. This specific instance, with its contradiction, even if it isn’t recognized as such, is a poignant example of TamilThanmai.

Next door to the Sweeper Colony on Market Road is the Robertson Memorial School and Church. This Church, which is associated primarily with the Paraiyar caste, is central to their public presence in Sulur. In stark contrast to the sweepers, the Paraiyars did not profess loyalty, in the least, to the DMK or its leaders. They are organised around this 100-year-old Church. ‘The Church’ as it is commonly known, is at the center of the Paraiyar community’s self- respect and affirmation of their commitment to education which resulted in upward mobility for the community. Almost the entire Paraiyar community in Sulur was educated at this school from the 1950s. Many of them secured jobs as government school teachers, for which till about the 1970s, an 8th grade education was adequate273. This is not unique to the Paraiyars in Sulur but is common across caste for those who went to school in the 1950s and 1960s. However, upward mobility via education specifically for a Dalit community is an important history in Sulur and in Tamilnadu in general, especially in connection to the Church of South India (CSI), to which this church belonged after the 1940s.274.

The Robertson Memorial Church, till the 1970s, was the only English-medium primary school in Sulur. Children, across caste, were sent there from the 1940s onwards. It continues to be considered a respected educational institution275. In spite of it serving all the castes in Sulur, it was the Paraiyar community that the missionaries of the church originally addressed, and it was they that took upon themselves the task of raising resources to build up the small shed that doubled up as the school and church, into a larger structure. From 1964-1971, members of the Paraiyar community formed a group that worked towards this goal. Mrs. Pavunammal, a retired

273 Pavunammal. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 274 The Church of South India was formed as a denomination in 1947. However, this Church comes from a long history of relationships between Churches in South India and Dalit communities. See here for a brief note on the CSI Church: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Church-of-South-India . See here for a brief note on Dalits and Christian Theology by a theologists in South India: http://www.religion-online.org/article/the-emerging-dalit-theology-a- historical-appraisal/ See Rajkumar, Peniel. 2010. Dalit theology and Dalit liberation: problems, paradigms and possibilities. Farnham, England: Ashgate; Mosse, David. 2012. The saint in the banyan tree: Christianity and caste society in India. Berkeley: University of California Press; Viswanath, Rupa. 2014. The Pariah problem: caste, religion, and the social in modern India. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 275 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 400

92 school teacher of the Paraiyar caste, was part of this group. She mobilized women in her community to collect resources. She and other women went from house to house holding open the ends of their saris276 asking for donations of rice. This rice was then sold to raise money to build the church277. Mr. Dhanraj278, who was also part of this group, spoke of these years as an example of his community having enabled their own ‘advancement’ by educating their children and by prioritizing the Church. The Church and the school for Mr. Dhanraj and others of his community were not generic public institutions that promised social upliftment. These institutions were those that the Paraiyar community felt a sense of ownership over and was the key to their self-affirmation through education279.

Mr. Dhanraj, unlike Mr. Maakali, was not nonchalant about the irrelevance of other public politics in Sulur to his own caste kin. To the contrary, he was angry at the disregard for his community amongst others, especially amongst those who wielded power. In my interview with him, his anger crystallized in his characterization of one of his own fellow caste members – Mr. Arumugam, commonly referred to as MP (Member of Parliament) Arumugam280. MP Arumugam, whom I was unable to meet as he was already deceased, left behind one of the more built-up houses in the Paraiyar area, where his descendants now live. He was the only non-Kallar candidate from Sulur who stood for elections on behalf of the Congress party and won to become a member of the first Parliament of independent India in 1952, headed by the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He filled the seat reserved for members of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe281 castes in Sulur and was elected unopposed282. Mr. Dhanraj spoke of how little MP Arumugam did for his ‘own people’, i.e., fellow Paraiyars. He perceived him as primarily obeying the wishes of the local patrons and landlords of the Kallar caste who held power in the

276 To ask for donations in rice and to ask for such donations to be placed in the sari ends is a ritualistic way of collecting donations usually done for religious festivals. In that sense it is seen as a sacred endeavor to be collecting money this way. This is apt given the role of the church in the lives of those in this community. 277 Pavunammal. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 278 I will expand further on my meeting with Mr. Dhanraj in the following chapter. 279 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 280 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 281 This is the colonial categorization of oppressed castes that have been retained in the post-independence period. 282 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 56

Congress Party283. My interviews with MP Arumugam’s family members – his son and daughter-in-law – corroborated this characterization. They articulated it not just as his lack of interest in his ‘own people’ but also in his family284.

Of interest for this dissertation, however, is the stark contrast between this characterization of MP Arumugam by his own family and community and that of members from the Kallar caste. In the book Sulur Varalaaru285 as well as in my interviews with those of the Kallar caste, MP Arumugam was proudly held up as the beacon of Dalit participation in public politics in the 1950s and 1960s. In Sulur Varalaaru itself, his caste identity is not mentioned and upon enquiry I learnt that this was based on a request from his family members who asked that he not be identified by his caste. They said that this was to protect his family members from being identified and documented as Dalit in a text that may circulate well beyond Sulur. This, they felt, would jeopardize their positions in their workplaces and other such spaces that they inhabit286. Within those involved in public politics in Sulur, his caste identity is well known and declared. Besides, the spatial location of his home, at the heart of the Paraiyar caste enclave of Sulur, meant that he was of that caste. This proud characterization of his political role is done along with an awareness that he stood in elections at the behest of his patron, the Congress leader of the Kallar caste, SVL, and won. For Mr. Dhanraj then, MP Arumugam is a symbol not of pride for the Paraiyars, but of the disregard for this community amongst the Kallars287.

Both characterizations of MP Arumugam – of pride by the Kallars and anger amongst the Paraiyars – involved descriptions of his commitment to Gandhian ideals in his personal space and practices. He only wore Gandhian Khadi cotton and did all his chores himself. He professed an honesty while he held public office to such an extent that he did not use his influence even to further career goals of his own children. His son, in his interview to me, expressed continuing hurt by this choice that has had lasting effects on his work life288. Meanwhile, Mr. Dhanraj

283 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 284 Sivasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017 285 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 56 286 Senthalai Gauthaman. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur. 13th March 2017. 287 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 288 Sivasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017.

94 described to me the scene at the street on which MP Arumugam’s house still is. He spoke of the long line of fancy cars that stood on that street and neighboring areas, where local landlords and industrialists would line up for his official approval in his capacity as an elected member of parliament289. We cannot ascertain the accuracy of this statement by Mr. Dhanraj. However, it is possible to ascertain that he could not have had a long electoral career within the Congress party without supporting those who were wealthy in the area, who in turn, historically supported the Congress Party, before and right after independence. Further, SVL, his own patron, was part of that network of the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit landowners and industrialists. MP Arumugam would have had to support them to remain in the service of his patron.

MP Arumugam’s relationship to SVL has some similarities with that of the sweepers and the DMK Panchayath leaders. It mimics a similar translation of caste patronage into electoral politics and governance. In that sense, the celebration of him by non-Dalit renditions of Sulur’s public political history is made possible by his loyalty to the Kallar landlord. Simultaneously, Dalit renditions of him and his role in public politics portrays him as uncaring towards his fellow caste and familial kin. As a result, far from being celebrated by his own kin, he was tolerated at best. This has much in common with the accessing of dignity by Mr. Kittusamy and other sweepers in their government job through their loyalty to Kallar DMK Panchayath leaders, even as they continued to perform the undignified work of manual scavenging and were shunned for it by their fellow Arundhathiyars. Both these contradictions are known and yet remained unspoken by my interviewees, reminiscent of the mode of speech made available to them by TamilThanmai.

A potent interruption in this similarity between these two men’s stories is MP Arumugam’s access to Gandhian politics and its potential for building a dignified harijan (people of God) self290. If I could have interviewed MP Arumugam, I would have had some material that may have helped ascertain what this political understanding meant for his everyday life and role in public politics in Sulur. This was not the way he had been historicized in Sulur Varalaaru, nor characterized by my interviewees including those of his own family. Even the fact that he lived as per the Gandhian ethos in his own personal space was made available to me only after my

289 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 290 https://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf

95 insistence on learning more about him from his family members. They did not think of it as an important detail and spoke of it as his quirky private practice and not much else291. More sources and a resultant deeper analysis of MP Arumugam’s Gandhian ideals may have yielded interesting results. However, given available sources, it is possible to conclude that he was far from being a representative of his own caste, and to the contrary, was beckoned to participate in oppressive caste hierarchy and privilege in his public political life as a politician.

As a sharp contrast to MP Arumugam, Mr. Dhanraj insisted that I meet K.M. Jeyaraj, whom he believed to be a significant Dalit leader of Sulur. I expected Mr. Dhanraj to name yet another person who worked at the behest of a Kallar landlord but was perhaps a bit more useful to his own community. Instead, he named K.M. Jeyaraj, a significant leader from the Paraiyar caste292. He, unlike MP Arumugam, is not mentioned in Sulur Varalaaru or by any of my interviewees. He was my last interviewee in Sulur. As the center of Chapter Three of this dissertation, he is the starting point of my treatment of Sulur’s history from the perspective of TamilThanmai. For this mapping of public politics in Sulur through the interaction between people and places, from the perspective of TamilThanmai, K.M. Jeyaraj’s role is, simultaneously, central and peripheral. It is central in that his public political life has much in common with practices that are made possible by the ethos of TamilThanmai. It is marginal in that TamilThanmai primarily addressed non- Brahmin, non-Dalit men and in that sense, K.M. Jeyaraj was not part of the group of persons invoked thereof. This seemingly contradictory positionality is, in itself, made possible by TamilThanmai and will become clearer in Chapter Three.

Mapping Time, Mapping lives and histories

TIMELINE (needs to be put in the format of a time line) • 1916: Sulur Union Board created

291 Sivasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017. 292 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017.

• 1920-1937: Chairman Karupanna Thevar headed local governance

• 1925: Self-Respect Movement

• 1937: Anti-Hindi Agitation

• Late 1930s: Setting up of the Anjaneya Gym

• 1942: Burning of British air base in Sulur and derailing train with British goods

• 1944: Dravida Kazhagam was formed

• 1946: Hanging of Chinniampalayam mill workers

• 1947: Indian Independence / Day of mourning declared by Periyar

• 1949: Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was formed

• 1952: First National election

• 1956: Linguistic reorganization of States – Tamilnadu formed

• 1962: DMK wins many seats in state election

• 1964: Split in Anjaneya Gym

• 1964: Split in Communist Party

• 1965: Second Anti-Hindi Agitation

• 1967: DMK electoral victory

• 1968: Keezhvenmani Massacre

• 1969: Further split in Communist party to form Marxist-Leninist Party

What follows is two related timelines for the period from the 1950s to 1970 that can be used to contextualize and ground the public political lives of my interviewees. All the material highlighted in these timelines emerged from the interviews and have then been contextualized with other sources more broadly. First is of the creation, presence and influence of the relevant political parties and related iconic moments in Sulur and the surrounding areas. This map will be relational to how these parties and moments impacted the public political spaces and people

97 described in the preceding section. The second timeline is of the socio-economic conditions that were most relevant to the interviewees in this dissertation. This history of socio-economic changes, including within agriculture, the coming of industries, natural and man-made disasters such as droughts and mass pest attacks on crops, etc. form an essential background for the public political lives of my interviewees. Here, unless mentioned otherwise, the people involved are entirely men from the Kallar caste. The implications of this will be discussed further on in the chapter.

7.1 Significant moments in the emergence of political parties and everyday public politics

Sulur’s history with Dravidian politics goes back to the early 20th Century. This coincides with significant changes in Sulur as a governance unit under the British government. In 1916, Sulur was made the center of the local governance unit and acquired its own Union Board293. This Board was headed by Chairman S.V. Subbaiyar from 1916-1919. This Chairman was the last person of the Brahmin caste to hold a leadership post in local governance. Starting from 1919, this position became a monopoly for Kallar men. These men were local landlords committed to Dravidian politics. A significant figure amongst them was Karupanna Thevar who was Chairman for multiple terms from 1920-1937294. From the 1920s onwards, wealthy men like him, belonging to the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes all over Tamilnadu, supported Periyar’s Justice Party295. Sulur was no exception to this. Soon after, this support was extended to the Self- Respect Movement and then the Dravidian Party in 1944. From this emerged support for the DMK from its inception in 1949296. Men of the Kallar caste held power within all of Sulur’s political parties, including the DMK. They were from a few prosperous families that then became dominant within local governance. For instance, Chairman Karupanna Thevar’s grandson S.K. Karupannan was President of the Panchayath from 1965-1970. Other men of the

293 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010) 294 Ibid. 295 /M. S. S. Pandian^’s Brahmin and non-Brahmin: genealogies of the Tamil political present. (2006) 296 ibid

98 same caste both preceded and followed him into that post297. In short, Sulur’s relationship to Dravidian politics from its inception was an affirmation of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit caste identity within local governance, which in turn reaffirmed existing privilege based on land ownership amongst those of the Kallar caste.

This influence of Dravidian politics was not just restricted to the echelons of political power in local governance. Sulur was rife with proud stories of people participating, not just in the second Anti-Hindi agitation in 1965, but in the first one, as early as 1937. This was when the then newly elected Chief Minister Rajagopalachari, a Brahmin and a Congress Party representative, attempted to make the teaching of Hindi compulsory in schools in Tamilnadu. Ordinary residents of Sulur participated in the protests against this attempt and even courted arrest298. It is in this context that the Padippakams (reading rooms), propagated by the different iterations of the Dravidian movement and later spread by the DMK from the 1950s onwards, took root in Sulur. Young men gathered there to read newspapers, party magazines, listen to speeches by leaders on the radio and play games. This was their social life, every day after work.

Simultaneously, the Congress Party also had a presence in Sulur. Like the Dravidianist parties, the Congress too was primarily supported by a member of yet another landowning Kallar family, SVL. Outside of the realm of the privileged, the Congress party is perhaps the one with the least presence amongst non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men in Sulur today, as compared to the DMK. Most of my interviewees put on record the existence, in public memory, of activities connected to the struggle for Indian independence in and around Sulur. Further, Sulur Varalaaru noted that in 1942, a train carrying goods belonging to the colonial government was toppled by a group of men, some of whom were from Sulur. In the same year, the air force base that still exists in Sulur, then under the colonial state, was burnt down. Both these activities were connected to the call of ‘Quit India’ that emerged as a rallying cry from Gandhi and his compatriots in northern

297 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010) 298 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 449; Radhakrishnan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017.

India at that time299. These incidents often served as a starting point for many of my interviewee’s life stories irrespective of their political affiliations then or now. They spoke of these as some of the earliest political activities they were aware of as teenagers or young men in their 20s. Although support for the Congress party in terms of numbers is hard to ascertain for Sulur, incidents connected to the Congress and the struggle for Indian independence are resolutely present within public memory and as significant moments in the public political lives of my interviewees300.

In terms of everyday life, starting in the late 1930s, my interviewees, as young men or boys, were organised through the Anjaneya Gym whose main patron was the Congress leader SVL. Given this patronage, it was largely seen as a Congress-based institution. This only changed as late as 1964 when gym members who were attracted to the DMK asserted themselves, which became one main reason among others for a split in the gym. The Congress party members amongst my interviewees – Naatrayan (father of Varadaraasu from the Peravai), Mariappan and Kamakshi – were all deeply involved in the gym. Eighty-Four-year-old Mariappan made sure to demonstrate a considerable number of pushups before we began our interview in order to show the significance of the gym to his body and self301. Kamakshi is still involved actively in electoral work for the Congress Party. During my fieldwork, he was engaged in campaigning for the impending elections. As with the others, he, remains in excellent physical shape and holds in high esteem, almost at a spiritual level, the gym and his teachers there302. The gym is a significant space from which to understand the presence of the Congress Party. However, the default understanding of public politics amongst contemporary Dravidianists in Sulur has had an impact on how the gym has been historicized as a public political space.

299 For an analysis of a non-centralized mass mobilization in different parts of the country see: Sarkar, Sumit. "Popular Movements and National Leadership, 1945-47." Economic and Political Weekly 17, no. 14/16 (1982): 677- 89. 300 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017; Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017; K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017; Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. 301 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 302 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017.

100

To a large extent TamilThanmai’s discredits all non-Dravidianist political formations as being inadequately ‘Tamil’. This, combined with a lack of political presence of the Congress Party within local governance and in terms of broad-based membership, is reflected in how the Congress Party is thought of historically in Sulur. As a result of this, the story of the gym and the important insights it provided into public politics are also largely underplayed. For Varadaraasu, for instance, as a Dravidianist of the 1980s generation, neither the Congress Party nor the gym were part of his default understanding of the history of public politics in Sulur. His father Naatrayan’s interview was one of the last ones I managed to do, since his son was tardy in taking me to him. This was not just because he was conscious of promoting his own father’s life story, but also because he did not share his father’s sentiments toward the Congress Party. It was intriguing to witness how Varadaraasu’s attitude changed while he accompanied me to many of my interviews as I began piecing together the significance of the gym as a political space and his father’s leadership role within it. Varadaraasu became more and more thoughtful about the process of tracing the history of public politics in Sulur through the gym. He reflected on it also as someone who was deeply involved in contemporary public politics and as someone who played a significant role in the research and writing of Sulur Varalaaru. This rethinking on his part was all the more significant as Sulur Varalaaru does not mention the gym as a space for political action. Instead, it describes the gym in the register of putting on record Sulur’s part in the larger process and discourse in Tamilnadu, of honing Tamil male bodies which would then be the strength of ‘Tamil society’. In general, Sulur Varalaaru does not celebrate politics that was linked to the Congress Party as much as that of its Dravidian contemporaries. Nevertheless, Varadaraasu’s openness, intrigue, self-reflection and the resulting generous support was a significant affirmation of my instinct towards following the gym as a significant public political space in Sulur.

The history of the Congress, as it emerged from everyday life in the gym, was heavily focused on the idea of a broader ‘public good’. Over the 1950s into the early 1960s, the gym functioned as a place where Sulur’s young men were mobilized to help rid the town of its ‘vices’, such as alcohol and marijuana. SVL mobilized these young men to trash the local alcohol shop. Kamakshi and Naatrayan echoed each other when they described how SVL ordered them to get

101 rid of such shops303. They were the muscle of that anti-vice operation. However, there was a complicated backdrop to the organization and ownership of those businesses that propagated and profited from these vices. All the gym members with whom I spoke, pointed out the irony that SVL’s brother owned the alcohol shop that they were asked to attack. Another family member owned the business that sold marijuana304. The SVL family’s economic dominance is not surprising given the sheer size and power held by them in Sulur. But it does indicate that addressing of these vices in Sulur was more of an occasional performance of ‘do-gooding’. This is an important insight as concerns such as alcoholism were addressed in more sustained ways, through broad-based community mobilization in many parts of Tamilnadu at a later time305. In Sulur, for the purposes of these symbolic gestures of ‘doing good for society, these young men were seen as an ‘asset to the wellbeing of society306’. In that capacity they were beckoned to use their physical strength to do good. Apart from this, they also campaigned for the Congress Party during elections.

For gym members themselves, as will become apparent in Chapter 4 of this dissertation, these actions were based on their individual and collective affective tie to the gym, and to a lesser extent the Congress Party. Simultaneously, it was also a relationship of patronage between a rich Kallar landlord and poor Kallar workers. From the perspective of tracing the relationship between the Congress Party and everyday public political lives of gym members, this history illustrates the ways in which they furthered and affirmed the presence and strength of the party in Sulur.

Yet another moment, comparable to the 1942 anti-colonial incidents, that was flagged by my interviewees as a significant influence upon them, was the hanging of four textile workers from nearby Chinniampalayam for the crime of going on strike in 1946307. These men, avowed Communists who were part of the Union struggles in the Coimbatore area, remain important in

303 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 304 Ibid. 305 http://universalreview.org/gallery/65-dec.pdf 306 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017. 307 Chinniyampalayam thyagigal சின்னிய믍பாலைய믍 தியாகிகள் [Chinniyampalayam Martyrs] தமிழ்நா翁 கலை இைக்கிய சப쏁மன்ற믍 ககாலவ மாவ翍ட 埁폁 (Tamilnadu Kalai Ilakkiya Perumandram, Kovai Kuzhu) Coimbatore. 2014.

102 the memories of Tamilnadu’s Communist parties. Especially in the areas in and around Chinniampalayam – including Sulur – this incident is foundational. However, it was not just the Communists among my Sulur interviewees who spoke of this moment. Even if they had only heard of the incident in the news, it was significant to other interviewees as well for the blatant injustice shown towards men of their own kind at that time – young, poor, male mill workers.

Indian independence in 1947 had a curious, in-passing place in the narratives of my interviewees. It was neither a major moment, nor was it absent. Sulur saw mixed reactions in public towards Indian independence. Mr. Maakali ‘heard about independence’ through the loudspeaker announcements made from the autorickshaw hired by his patron and landlord who was a Congress member308. Late Thalaivar Thangavelu, then a teenager, remembered Indian independence as a significant political moment in his political journey309. In 1947, Periyar declared Independence Day to be a day of mourning for non-Brahmins/Dravidians. He declared that they were being ‘enslaved’ by the Brahmins/north Indians310 as they became the successors of the colonial state and became the power-holders of the Indian nation-state. In response to Periyar’s call, Thalaivar Thangavelu stood with his family and other Dravidian Party members to observe it as a ‘day of mourning’311. Dravidianists in different parts of Tamilnadu wore black, raised black flags and publicly observed Independence Day as a day of mourning312. Thangavelu, a young boy amongst such black shirts, remembers the jubilant Congress and Communist Party members who waved the tricolor Indian flag, in a counter-procession to the Dravidian one. He reflected on his thoughts at that time, partially in jest, as follows:

“I thought to myself, these people all look so happy and colorful and here we are wearing black and all gloom and doom!”313.

Already radicalized by the hanging of the Chinniampalayam workers, Thangavelu was an avid reader of a variety of political theorists. At the age of 16, he and other boys in his class hand-

308 Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. 309 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017. 310 https://kafila.online/2011/01/08/periyar-on-the-constitution/ 311 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017. 312 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/tracking-indian-communities/tamil-nadu-on-august-15-1947-euphoria- and-boycott/ 313 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017.

103 wrote a Tamil journal with summaries and analyses of the writings of Marx, Weber, Ingersoll and other thinkers. Reflecting back, Thangavelu marked his own thoughts about the contrast between the Dravidian protests and the counter-procession by Congress and Communist Party members. The moment of independence was the origin for his own Communist beliefs314. Soon after independence, in 1948, the Communist Party (at this time a unified single party) was banned after the call for an armed struggle against the new Indian nation in the Party’s national meeting in 1948. The Party, having agreed to participate in electoral politics by 1950, fielded many candidates who were in prison during the first parliamentary elections in Independent India, in 1952315. Much of its mobilization in Tamilnadu was amongst textile workers who were a significant part of the population of the Coimbatore district, where Sulur is located316. Thangavelu soon became Comrade Thangavelu – a full-time party worker till the late 1970s. His life is a significant part of the history of Communism in Sulur.

By 1952, the first national parliamentary elections had seen the coming together of the Congress and the DMK to field one unopposed candidate in Sulur. At the local level, this represented an alliance of familial, economic and caste-based powerhouses of Sulur317. The odd Communist candidate, such as Pechumuthu’s wife who opposed this coalition, proved no match318. Also, Sulur had a seat reserved for the SC/ST communities. This seat went to MP Arumugam, a loyal member of the Congress Party319. The Congress-DMK unified front for national elections was extended to local Panchayath elections. In this manner, presidents of the Panchayath Board were elected unopposed till the early 1960s320. Elections to the state-level legislative assembly were also subdued till the early 1960s; the Congress and the DMK did not compete against each other

314 ibid 315 Chakrabarty, B. (2015). Left Radicalism in India. London: Routledge. 316 Vijayabaskar, M. “State Spatial Restructuring, Subnational Politics and Emerging Spaces of Engagement for Collective Action: Labour Regimes in Tamil Nadu, Southern India.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 35, no. 1 (February 2017): 42–56.. 317 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 318 Pechchumuthu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 14th March 2017. 319 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 56 320 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010)

104 in Sulur321. At the national level, the State Reorganisation Act of 1956 established a linguistic basis for borders of India’s states. This fixing of Tamilnadu’s boundaries provoked much protest.322. At the same time, Tamilnadu, like other states, became a separate unit for the purposes of electoral politics. The linguistic construction of this unit provided a significant legitimation to the pre-existing Dravidianist mode of Tamil language-based identity and nationalism. It was in this context that in the 1962 state assembly elections, although the Congress maintained its power in Tamilnadu, the DMK won the most seats it had ever won since its inception323. Sulur, by then, was a town that resolutely supported the DMK.

This political context of the electoral growth of the DMK forms the backdrop for the big split in the Anjaneya Gym in Sulur in 1964. This split left a lasting impact on all those involved. It also coincided with the state-level mobilization for the Anti-Hindi Agitation or the ‘Second Language War’ of 1964-1965324. This, like the Anti-Hindi Agitation in 1937, was a refusal to succumb to the attempt by the national government to make Hindi the ‘national’ and ‘official language’ of the Indian nation-state. This movement provided the momentum that culminated in the DMK’s landslide electoral victory two years later in 1967. In Sulur, the second Anti-Hindi Agitation did not see as much participation as the first. Nevertheless, the early 1960s saw the formation of clear and separate factions – of the Congress and DMK men. This separation was central to the splitting of the Anjaneya Gym and the formation of the Jeyamaruthi gym by DMK supporters. The latter gained strength rapidly, obliterating the former as the gym that served as the dominant space of public politics for Sulur’s gym members.

The DMK’s public presence and broad support during the 1960s was disrupted by two significant events. First was the strengthening of ongoing Communist leanings in Sulur as an effect of the 1968 Keezhvenmani massacre of Dalits by Thevar landlords where the DMK-led

321 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 322 Tillin, Louise. "History of Territorial Design and Federal Thought in India." In Remapping India: New States and Their Political Origins. Oxford University Press, 2013. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2014. 323 Subramanian, Narendra. 2011. Ethnicity and populist mobilization: political parties, citizens and democracy in South India. New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press. 324 Forrester, Duncan B. "The Madras Anti-Hindi Agitation, 1965: Political Protest and Its Effects on Language Policy in India." Pacific Affairs 39.

105 state government made itself complicit by remaining silent on the subject325. DMK aficionados such as Com. Valluvarasan lost their faith in the party and the movement326. Simultaneously, the unified Communist Party that had already split into the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – CPM and the Communist Party of India – CPI in 1964, further split into the CPI(ML) Marxist- Leninists in 1969. Some young men in Sulur, then in their late 30s and early 40s and who already had Communist leanings, joined the ML to fight against caste atrocities and poverty. A few others, previously in the DMK, joined one of the Communist Parties. The second major rupture in DMK hegemony in Sulur, as in Tamilnadu in general, was the split that led to the formation of the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – the ADMK. The latter’s charismatic leader, M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), challenged the original party’s leader M. Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi himself took over the DMK only after the sudden demise of Anna in 1969. This was a time of much turmoil in Sulur and in the lives of my interviewees. While these two disruptions are a significant part of this history, they are beyond the scope of this dissertation and they form an end to the timeline that is relevant to us here.

7.2 Socio-economic history and public political life

Timeline (needs to be put in timeline format)

Early 19th Century: Sokka Thevar and family (including SVL in a later generation) acquire large tracts of land from previous Brahmin landlords

1940s: Marriage alliances between Chairman Karupanna Thevar and SVL families bringing together two major landowners

1942: Flood in Noyyal river

1940s: Change in rain patterns increasing dependence on irrigation for agriculture

1940s-1950s: Betel leaf farming on land collectively contracted from landlords by smaller Kallar farmers

325 Kanagasabai, Nithila, The Din of Silence - Reconstructing the Keezhvenmani Dalit Massacre of 1968 in SubVersions, Vol.2, Issue.1, (2014), 105- 130. 326 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017.

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1940s-1960s: Series of droughts in Sulur

Late 1950s-1960s: Disease to the root of the betel leaf crops destroying betel leaf farming entirely

1960s: Growth of textile mills in and around Sulur

1970s: The struggles of successive Panchayath Presidents to bring Siruvani Dam water from Kerala to Sulur begin

1984: Siruvani Dam water comes to Sulur

The political disillusionment that emerged out of the Keezhvenmani massacre was coupled with discontent about local socio-economic conditions. The history of droughts and other such disruptions to life and livelihood in Sulur is relevant in this context. This is yet another significant way to map the period from the 1950s to 1970. The description that follows is an interweaving of the history of agriculture in Sulur with the connected histories of water resources, droughts and industrialization. The lives of my interviewees till the time of my interview with them can be traced in parallel with this timeline.

Sulur before 1956 is remembered as being of fertile lands and abundant agricultural yield. Half of the agricultural land was used to cultivate betel leaves and the other half was split in two – one half for rice and cotton and the other for other grains such as millet and spices such as coriander seeds. While rice and cotton were harvested every six months, the other crops saw a summer harvest. Apart from these major crops, many different kinds of traditional grains of the region were grown in Sulur327. One of the earliest floods that my interviewees spoke of, that caused much damage, was in 1942. The Noyyal river that forms the northern border of Sulur, a major source of water and irrigation, , flooded and destroyed the crops. This flood and the period around it were spoken of as being the beginnings of disrupted rain patterns in Sulur328.

327 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 249 328 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 226

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This disruption to agriculture in the beginning of our period of study must be viewed in the context of older patterns of land ownership in Sulur. Traditionally, Sulur, like most of the Madras Presidency, was governed under the Ryotwari system during colonial times329. Almost all the owners of large tracts of land were Brahmins. Within these large tracts there were many small landowners of the Kallar caste who had the land on contract and paid taxes directly to the British under the Ryotwari system. The laborers on the land were of the lower, non-Brahmin castes, primarily Dalit and some poorer Kallars. By the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, a big change was brought about in this system as wealthy Kallars acquired ownership of land from the Brahmins.

In Sulur, this change was made possible by the acquisition of land by the ancestors of SVL, the Congress leader. In the early 19th Century, one of these ancestors, Sokka Thevar acquired close to 500 acres of land. All this land is still owned by different members of this large family many generations later. Throughout the 20th Century, this family has produced important local politicians, political party leaders, government officials, business owners, government school teachers, etc.

329 Dirks, Nicholas B. 2011. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Figure 7: This roughly annotated family tree maps all legitimate members of the SVL family with the original ancestor Sokka Thevar on top. The notes outline the number of officials, teachers and political leaders that belong to this family. Kumaravel from the recent generation in this family took me to an elderly uncle’s house who had been working on piecing together this family tree. He then gave me a copy. I filled in the annotations from conversations with this uncle and other such family members.

In a significant move that further strengthened the consolidation of landownership by one single family in Sulur, the two major landowning families entered into marriage alliances. SVL’s sister married Chairman Karupanna Thevar, while the Chairman’s sister, in turn, married SVL in the 1940s. This marital alliance had an impact on the actions of the leadership of the two major political parties – the Congress and DMK – which were led by SVL and Karupanna Thevar respectively. This was the context in which political alliances were made between the two parties during local elections, making it possible to field one uncontested candidate through the 1950s330.

Another significant economic institution in Sulur that was deeply tied to the history of agriculture was the 100-year-old weekly market. This still extant market brought together

330 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017.

109 farmers from surrounding areas to sell their produce. The control over organization and profit- making from charging for the use of the market grounds, not surprisingly, was in the hands of the same wealthy families. The lore around Chairman Karupanna Thevar’s style of managing the weekly market was abundant in my interviews. He was known and celebrated for punishing anyone who engaged in misdemeanor with public flogging. Legends of how he surveyed the market on his horse, rolling his whip around, are common in Sulur331.

The history of agriculture for my interviewees was different from that of the wealthy families discussed above. Most of my interviewees were from working class Kallar families. Through the 1940s and 1950s, as children, teenagers and young men, they worked in the betel leaf farms. Their families were part of small groups of poor farmers who pooled in their resources to acquire a contract for small pieces of the betel leaf farms from the large landowners. Betel leaf farming is a four-year enterprise. There is no yield during the first year and a half, after which, there is a monthly yield. The lack of income in the first year and a half, although of great economic hardship to the families, was to be made up by the regular and lucrative yields of the later years. In the 1950s, a disease to the roots of the betel plant began in this region332. This disease spread rapidly and after a few attempts to recreate the farms, these families could no longer bear the economic hardship. By the 1960s, betel farming in the area ended altogether. Many of my interviewees were left with no livelihood. They, along with all family members who were able to work, made ends meet with piecemeal farm work for daily wages. This period coincided with the expansion of industrialization in the Coimbatore district. The Coimbatore area was known as the ‘Manchester of South India’ from the early 20th Century because of the large number of textile mills that existed in that area, and further expanded in post-independence India333. Many young men were recruited as trainees in these mills in the 1960s and became temporary mill workers. It is only by the early 1970s that their jobs were made permanent. Many of my interviewees were

331 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017 and Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் பசன்தமல கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 556. 332 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 223 333 Chari, Sharad. 2004. Fraternal capital: peasant-workers, self-made men, and globalization in provincial India. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press

110 in their mid- or late-30s in the 1970s. They spent their childhood, teen years and young adulthood in poverty, working odd jobs to support their families334.

Connected to the history of agriculture is that of water resources in Sulur. As of 1981, 1,433.23 acres of agricultural land in Sulur was dryland – dependent on rain for irrigation335. A mere 713.52 acres were irrigated by the various water sources in Sulur. This change in rain patterns is dated back to the 1940s and the decades after, till the 1960s, which saw a series of droughts in the region. The effect of the droughts on agriculture was one the region has never fully recovered from.

The main sources of water in Sulur were the Noyyal river and the Small and Big Pond that were fed by the river. The Rasavaikkal Canal fed the big pond and had three dams that were used to provide water from the canal to different areas in moderation; and also provided water to the smaller Pungan and Oorvelan ponds. The latest addition to the water sources of Sulur was the lake created in 1971 called Kalangal lake. Sulur’s climate is impacted by the mountains that surround it on three sides. January to April remain hot months and May to August was, traditionally, the period of the south west monsoon rains in the region. A major decrease in the rains in the 1950s onwards left the river empty and thus, by extension, the ponds. The resulting droughts sealed the fate of agriculture in Sulur. Till the coming of the Siruvani Dam near Palakkad, in nearby Kerala, which was to provide water to Coimbatore city and surrounding areas, the area was solely dependent on the river and ponds for water. The struggle to bring Siruvani water to Sulur was the defining journey for successive Panchayath presidents from the 1970s onwards. In the period before, the management of existing water resources and related droughts was the major preoccupation of those in power in Sulur – within and beyond the local government336. The poor workers of Sulur saw massive change in their lives and livelihoods with the changes in rain patterns, droughts and the resulting changes in labor regimes. All of these changes connected intricately with their public political lives as they coincided with

334 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 335 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 231 336 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010)

111 significant changes and newly emergent political spaces at the state level, but also locally, in Sulur.

This interconnectedness between agriculture, water and industry will become much clearer through the life story of one of my interviewees, Palanisamy. His story is indicative of the plight of many of his generation. His story also shows the intersection of public political life with agricultural history and industrial history. In 1952, when the first round of disease hit the betel farms, Palanisamy was eight years old. He and his entire family left Sulur to work on the construction site of the Malampuzha Dam in nearby Kerala, where the main language is Malayalam. From there, they migrated to Iriyur in Karnataka, which was primarily Kannada speaking, to work in the construction site of another dam337. These were the decades of building dams in many parts of newly-independent India led by Prime Minister Nehru, who declared that dams were the ‘temples of modern India’338. Some members of Palanisamy’s family returned to Sulur in 1960 to try to revitalize the betel farm. A few of his older sisters were already married in Iriyur to those of the same caste and who also originally were from Sulur. The second round of disease on the betel farms in 1962, though, led his family and others to give up and move into agricultural wage labor. Palanisamy, a young adult at this time, joined the workforce as a daily wage worker in Sulur. His family, like others, worked at a stone quarry in Sulur. These quarries had abysmal working conditions, often dangerous to life and limb and paid low wages. When asked who owned the quarry, he evaded the question and said ‘therinjavangadhaan’, i.e., ‘local known people’. The stone quarry was owned by yet another member of the SVL family. While the quarry has since been closed, the land, still empty, and now in a prime location adjacent to the Trichy highway, still belongs to the same family339.

Palanisamy placed his public political life in this context. Reading rooms, like the ones in Sulur, were set up in the 1950s in Iriyur too by local, relatively well-off Tamils who were from elsewhere and had settled there. Poorer folk such as Palanisamy participated in some activities but were not at the center of running these reading rooms. This reading room was called the N.S. Krishnan Club, named after a famous comedian in the Tamil film world of the 1940-1950s and

337 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 338 http://nehruportal.nic.in/temples-modern-india-0 339 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017.

112 an active member and popular orator for the Dravidian movement. It is also in Iriyur that Palanisamy was trained in the folk form of Harichandran Kummi, a slow singing and dance form performed by men340.

Figure 8: Palanisamy showing me movements from Harichandran Kummi while singing

The songs spoke of leaving the homeland and being ‘orphans’ in a foreign land, with heart wrenching elements of parents mourning this unfortunate plight of their children. The song and the story within it reminded Palanisamy of his own plight at that time. During the interview, he made this connection as he narrated the story, complete with the songs and the dance. Back in Sulur, as he navigated the disease to crops and finding alternative livelihoods, he, like others, went to the Anjaneya Gym to be part of the ‘Oyil Kummi’ dance group – a local singing and dancing form, also performed by men. This group was part of Dravidian party propaganda. However, they also performed at temple festivals. This group had party propaganda songs for the Congress and later the DMK, along with songs that praised the goddesses in the temples. He was a founding member of the ‘Valibar Sangam’ or Youth Group that was affiliated with the DMK and had some overlapping members with the Anjaneya Gym. It was the only other young male space at that time, apart from the Jeyamaruthi gym that was formed in 1964. Later, he was part of the group within the Valibar Sangam that split away and joined the ADMK in 1974341.

340 ibid 341 ibid

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He was recruited as a mill worker by the late 1960s and his position was made permanent in 1972 with Rs. 230 a month, a decent salary at that time. This coincided with him joining the ADMK and slowly retreating from public politics through the 1970s. The 1970s was also when Palanisamy, like many of my other interviewees, was in his late 20s and early 30s. This is the period when they got married and soon had children342. The 1950s-1970, for Palanisamy and other interviewees, was a time of turmoil in terms or work and of economic stability, while also being one of passion in the arena of public politics. Towards the end of this period, they moved to a different phase of their lives through marriage and parenthood. While many of them remained active in public political life to some degree, most of them identify the early 1970s as the end of the unbridled passion in their public political lives. They became ‘elders’– holders of history and advisors to the next generation. This self-perceived shift in their socio-political role coincided with economic, social and familial stability in their lives.

From the perspective of TamilThanmai, the coeval occurrence of disruptions in economic means and the resultant dire conditions of poverty, along with an active public political life, is of significance. The sense of self and way of being made possible for these men in their everyday public political life was of enormous value in a context where they were otherwise strained to make ends meet and did not have opportunities to ascertain their sense of self and place in society. Connected to this, TamilThanmai’s entirely male nature during this period made it impossible for them to never imagine an intersection between their private married lives and public political lives. The wives or children of my interviewees did not inhabit the public political spaces described here. All of my interviewees articulated a refrain of how settling down into a permanent job at the mill, often followed by marriage and children, was the end of their lives as passionate everyday political workers. What they do not identify or acknowledge however, is that their marriages and home life’s non-interference in their public political lives meant that it did not imbibe the values espoused in the language and register of their public politics. To the contrary, family members, primarily spouses, held intact the practices of religion, ritual and caste, even as many of my interviewees engaged in anti-caste and sometimes atheist political work in public. This contradiction remained unidentified in my interviews.

342 ibid

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To ascertain the perspectives of the wives of my interviewees in this regard, I spent time with them in traditionally female spaces, such as the kitchen or other spaces where domestic work was underway. The method of doing in-depth interviews for hours, as I did with the men, did not seem conducive as a methodology with the women. Neither was it possible to undertake the methodology that would have helped me get a better sense of the women’s perspectives – of observing and conversing with them in spurts in spaces that were routinely theirs. These spaces include the home, temples (local and otherwise), family events, etc. Thus, an extensive description and analysis of the women’s perspectives is beyond the scope of this dissertation. What I was able to gather from conversations with the women in the midst of my interviews with men were responses to the narratives they were hearing their husbands construct for me. Sometimes they would correct dates and places in the narratives. Other times they, and sometimes even the husbands, would proudly point out how the wives would make endless cups of tea and food as the men visited one another or hosted visitors from other places in connection with their public political lives. This was seen as their contribution to politics. This was in line with their domestic duties and thus non-intrusive in the methods and content that made up the public political life of the men.

These comments from women enabled an analysis of how they viewed this contrast between ways of being in private and public realms. This perspective is essential to our understanding of TamilThanmai. The non-acknowledgement of this contrast between registers of speech within public politics and private life choices and decisions is not just a simplistic act of hypocrisy. To the contrary, these registers of speech and the sense of self and way of being acquired from them made it possible for the men involved to hold a deep affective tie to this political language in their everyday public political lives, while simultaneously keeping these languages and values outside the realm of other aspects of their lives. In that sense, this contradiction is not identified or described as being one. As a result, it is not an exception, but a crucial part of TamilThanmai. This became amply clear through this preliminary analysis of women’s perspectives.

Here it is important to note that this spatial differentiation of public and private realms is, in itself, artificial. The contrast played itself out often in both realms, enough to disrupt any clear boundary between the two. Participation in religious ritual and caste-based practices was not exclusively in the private sphere but was also part of public temple events and family events such

115 as marriages, births and deaths. These events too made up the public sphere of which my interviewees were a part. This contradiction then is an essential part of TamilThanmai.

Wives of my interviewees primarily viewed this contrast as their way of ‘bringing up the children and taking care of the family’ to make space for their husbands to live public political lives. The tone in which the women painted this picture was supportive of the importance within TamilThanmai of the self-affirmation of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men. Given this importance, the women were not resentful and instead exhibited a subdued, performative pride about playing their part in this process. At the same time, there was little space for elements of this public politics to make their way into familial practices or decisions. The familial space was not seen as essential, by either the husbands or wives, to TamilThanmai’s project of enabling self- affirmation for my interviewees. Further, my interviewees took it as ‘natural’ that their wives could not be politicized or be part of this public sphere in any capacity. This then was extended to the children. The absence of women in public politics and the resultant access for the men to a sense of self or way of being was naturalized to such an extent that it was barely noticed or commented upon.

Some of my interviewees were an exception to this trend and found ways to bring such values to their children, even if not their wives, by inculcating the love for Tamil or through choices of education made for their children. Com. Valluvarasan’s friend and lifelong DMK loyalist Su. Ra. educated his children to be lawyers. He saw this as a way of ‘giving’ his children to public service to the ‘people of the land.343’

For the purpose of mapping the lives of my interviewees, the crucial aspect is the identification of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a time of ‘settling down’ by my interviewees. They settled into permanent jobs in the mills, marriages, children and simultaneously into a relatively subdued, ritualized participation in public politics. This was in contrast to their public political life before marriage which they saw as being driven by passion. Interestingly, the ‘settling’ of my interviewees coincides with major changes in Dravidianist politics on the whole in

343 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 9

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Tamilnadu. During this period, the DMK won its first election and acquired state power. In that sense, the DMK too, locally and at the state level, settled into its position of power after many decades of passionate mobilization in the absence of state power.

Just as with the absence of women, an absence of Dalit men can also be observed. Almost the entire narrative above is primarily of men from the Kallar caste. Except for the occasional mention of Dalit men, these timelines and their interaction with everyday public political life is of relevance to Kallar men alone. What then is a similar parallel narrative for those of the Dalit caste? And how did this parallel narrative interact with the one described above? The space of public politics amongst Dalits too was essentially male. It had much in common with the public political lives of their Kallar counterparts even though the two spaces were always separate.

Whither the Dalits?

Scholars344 who have analyzed changes in agriculture during this period have also documented the history of industrialization in the Coimbatore region (of which Sulur is a part). They have established a clear connection between caste relations and economic changes. They have shown that Dalit workers, particularly the Arundhathiyars (such as Mr. Kittusamy, Pattakkarar Sankaran and Mr. Maakali) as well as the Paraiyars (such as Mr. Dhanraj and K.M. Jeyaraj) were traditionally at the bottom of the hierarchy within agricultural labor. They remained there through the 1950s and 60s, all the way up to the 1990s. This situation only shifted as agriculture itself declined significantly in the region due to industrialization. among other reasons. This industrialization, in turn, as the scholar Sharad Chari has shown, was also rooted firmly within existing local relations of caste and kinship (real and imagined)345. This meant that non-Brahmin, non-Dalit upper castes of the region dominated the industrialization process, both as owners and workers of textile industries346. It is only after the 1990s that scholars have observed some

344 Chari, Sharad. 2004. Fraternal capital: peasant-workers, self-made men, and globalization in provincial India. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press; Harriss-White, Barbara, and Judith Heyer. 2015. Indian capitalism in development. London ; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 345 Chari, Sharad. 2004. Fraternal capital: peasant-workers, self-made men, and globalization in provincial India. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press 346 The term came into usage in the 1930s referring to the parallels with Manchester, the hub of textile industry in Britain.

117 preliminary changes in this trend and members of Dalit castes have begun to join the labor force in the mills, although they still remain a minority347.

While some of the major events traced above were shared laterally between all those of the same class background, this picture is far from simple. The experiences of the droughts and the resulting changes in agricultural labor in Sulur were shared across poor families, irrespective of caste. The shift to piece work within agriculture was also a shared plight. The shift to mill work, in the late 1960s, affirming Sharad Chari’s analysis, was not part of the labor trajectories among Dalit castes in Sulur. It was more evident amongst the Kallars. Till date, Maakali remains in his position as an agricultural wage laborer. In his interview with me, he narrated stories of attempting to work in small industrial units from which he was ousted as his quick-learning was seen as a threat. Further, he stood up against untouchability in the factory space where he was disallowed from drinking water from the same pot as other workers. He eventually returned to his traditional role as an agricultural landless wage laborer348. Pattakkarar Sankaran comes from a family that was bonded as labourers to a Kallar family for generations. The social stratification imposed by these caste relations within the agricultural sector was not displaced with the coming of caste-based political representation in local governance, where those such as Pattakkarar Sankaran were elected to the reserved Dalit seats to the Sulur Panchayath349. Neither was the economic hierarchy completely displaced when some Dalits were given small pieces of land in Mathiazhagan Nagar in the 1970s, where Pattakkarar Sankaran and K.M. Jeyaraj now live. It was eventually the private informal economy of renting out houses to students in nearby RVS educational institutions, an economy that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that enabled relative economic upward mobility for them. Nevertheless, Pattakkarar Sankaran and his wife continue to live in a very small hut behind his daughter’s small constructed house. Similarly, Maakali and his wife also live in a very small hut with mud walls, in the same area. Thus, the relative upward economic mobility experienced by poor Kallars due to the coming of textile mills was not shared by the equally poor if not poorer Arundhathiyars.

347 Vijayabaskar, M. 1999. "Flexible production and labour market outcomes: a case study of cotton knitwear industry". Indian Journal of Labour Economics. 42 (4). 348 Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. 349 Sankaran. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017.

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The Paraiyar community had a different trajectory that was brought about by the coming of the church that they were part of from the early 20th Century onwards. They were educated at the English-medium school at the Robertson Memorial Church, which provided them with economic salvation as it were. They accessed government jobs, especially as teachers, in the 1950s and 1960s.

The sweeper community of 40 families that were assigned their jobs at the Panchayath Board in the 1920s have inherited that job across generations since. This remains their only source of economic stability, with no real hope of upward mobility. The dependence on this government job has stunted any other pursuit towards education or any other form of employment in this community. The safety of an assured job has placed them seemingly eternally in the same caste and class position that they have been in, now for close to a century. Their compatriots, the other Arundhathiyars, accessed (to a limited degree) education and the resulting professions after the 1990s. The sweepers then remain separate from other Arundhathiyars, fixed in their caste and class position and dependent on the Kallar landlords with power in the local Panchayath for their jobs and thus basic economic security.

Shared poverty amongst poor Kallars and all Dalits notwithstanding, the differing economic trajectories of the Dalit and non-Dalit communities mean that the above timelines based on water, agriculture, land, etc. stand altered by the Dalit perspective in Sulur. For instance, for the sweepers, the important moments within the mapping of time from the perspective of water resources was not really any of those mentioned above – those related to the two ponds, the Noyyal river, the canals or even the droughts. All actions related to this history of water, be they access to the water, or relief during the droughts, was mediated by caste hierarchy and persistent practices of untouchability. The coming of running water to most houses in Sulur, which was made possible by water from the Siruvani Dam being supplied to Sulur in 1984 on the other hand, had a profound impact on the practice of manual scavenging. This then was the most important historic moment in the history of the sweepers – not because they too had access to running water, but because it made the undignified job of manual scavenging redundant, thus freeing them of that work.

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Similarly, the non-sweeper Arundhathiyar community’s relationship to land in Sulur was marked most significantly with the inauguration of houses in Mathiazhagan Nagar, built on land allocated to all those who were ‘landless’ in Sulur – many of whom were of this community. Unsurprisingly, this program to grant land and housing to the Arundhathiyars was spearheaded by an erstwhile Congress minister of the Dalit caste, Mr. Kakkan, who was presented with this, among other demands, as early as 1961350. It took a decade and more for the plan to be executed. However, even this huge change of having a house and small piece of land to their name, for the first time in history, did not radically alter the Arundhathiyars’ socio-economic position. It was only after the 1990s, with the coming of the RVS institutions, that they were able to eke out a better living by renting out rooms in their houses. This coincided with the slow burgeoning of a generation of educated and employed Arundhathiyars in Sulur.

The Kallars on the other hand experienced a transformation in their relationship to land with an almost complete takeover of land ownership by those of their community in the early 20th C even if it was only by a few rich Kallars. Even if many Kallars did not own vast tracts of land the caste affinity meant that the ownership of land by a few elite Kallars changed the socio-economic status of all Kallars. In the beginning of the 20th C many poor Kallars were employed by these elites. Later on this caste affinity translated into the spread of small businesses among Kallars simultaneously with access to jobs at the textile mills. Both these shifts also involved acquisition of different amounts of land by Kallars as a result of their upward mobility, however minimal it was.

The Paraiyar history moved away completely from land, agriculture, water or industrialization and was centered on the Church, access to education and the resultant jobs they were able to acquire. This is not a neutral choice as the Church and education was indeed their salvation from the age-old oppression that they were subjected to within land relations in caste-based society.

Moving through the chapters that will follow in this dissertation, this coexistence of class-based intersection and caste-based hierarchy from the perspective of natural resources, economic changes and labor must be kept in mind. As an entry point from the seeming margins of Sulur’s

350 Set of demands submitted to P. Kakkan, Minister of Public Works (Madras State) on his visit to Sulur, 25th November 1961, Ariviyal Poonga Library, Sulur

120 history of and through TamilThanmai, the following chapter will center around the life of the Dalit leader K.M. Jeyaraj.

The description above of significant moments and processes in the history of party politics and socio-economic status is the foundation upon which we must place the everyday public political lives of my interviewees. It is impossible to separate these aspects from one another and it is in the interweaving of them that we may ascertain a holistic picture of the public political lives being mapped here. With this holistic perspective, we will evolve a history of and through TamilThanmai in the following chapters.

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Chapter 3 Placing Sulur’s Dalit leader in the history of public politics: The life and times of K.M. Jeyaraj

Towards the end of my fieldwork, I was faced with a mountain of material – hours of interviews; scanned scraps of paper from attics and old trunks; and published material such as government records that served to contextualize those precious scraps of paper. In spite of this extensive collection, I recognized a gap in my archives very early on in my research – that most of my interviewees were men of the Kallar caste. The absence of men from other castes was a concern that I identified as a foundational gap that required further research.

I attempted to redress this gap with the help of a Kallar man of my generation, whose political beliefs led him to share my concerns. I asked him to direct me towards Dalit elders in Sulur who may have been engaged in public politics from the 1950s to 1970. After several weeks, he informed me of a college mate from the Arundhathiyar caste who might be able to help. That person, in turn knew an older, ‘politically minded’ elder in his community who was a neighbor and a distant relative. This was how I found myself in the hut of an Arundhathiyar elder, Mr. Maakali.

His stories have framed much of my renewed perspective on Sulur. These include his stories of untouchability in public spaces; of untouchability in work environments; of Periyar and other Dravidianists actively choosing not to physically cross the spatial bounds of caste hierarchy351; and of his ‘finding out’ about Indian independence through his patron’s efforts to publicize it352, etc. All these together gave me a sense of public politics and its spatiality being restricted to Kallar men. In spite of it all, Mr. Maakali accessed political literature and public spaces such as tea shops to discuss such literature353. This literature was created and was accessible to him through the work of the very Dravidianist politics that excluded those of his community. Beyond accessing political literature, Mr. Maakali himself did not actively participate in public politics. As a result, his stories, while being of much significance, left unanswered the question of what

351 Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. 352 ibid 353 ibid

122 the public political lives of Dalit men may have been like. I was still unable to have a clearer picture of what Dalit politics may have contributed to a history through and of TamilThanmai.

In another accidental opening into the obscured Dalit histories of Sulur, the DMK leader Sinnaiyan’s photograph of Mr. Kittusamy’s retirement function, and hearing Sinnaiyan refer to him in the disrespectful singular form354, led me to Mr. Kittusamy’s home in the Sweeper Colony. Through him, I was able to explore the history of the Sweeper Colony and its residents, which added another layer to Dalit interactions with public political lives of Kallar men. Again, when I found Pattakkarar Sankaran of the Arundhathiyar caste listed in Panchayath records as a member elected several times to the Scheduled Caste reserved seat355, I was able to track him down. His narrative of his participation in local Panchayath politics brought yet another perspective on Dalit interactions with the public political life, but his participation had been marginal356. All these narratives still left unexplored the contours of Dalit public political life.

The only Dalit person who actively participated in politics, was mentioned by all my interviewees of the Kallar caste, and was within Sulur Varalaaru, was MP Arumugam. Although he loomed large over the entire length of my fieldwork, I could only partially map his life story as he had passed away and the sources left to recreate his life were inadequate. His presence in the narratives of my interviewees was significant in illustrating the terms within which a Dalit person featured as part of the public political sphere. Even participation in the highest levels of governance – such as the national parliament – was made possible for MP Arumugam through a relationship of loyalty to his patron and Congress leader, SVL357. This meant that MP Arumugam was uncelebrated by his own family and Paraiyar caste kin and seen as not having done much for them358, while being celebrated as a symbol of Dalit participation by Kallar men – leaders and members of political parties alike. MP Arumugam’s public political life resolutely remained within the bounds of caste hierarchy.

354 Balasubramaniam, Appan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, May 29th 2017 355 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010), 314 356 Sankaran. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 357 Sivasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017. 358 Ibid

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It was in this context that I sought out the Church as a way to gain access to those within the Paraiyar community, as the Church was the central public institution for this community. I spent hours talking to the priest. He had newly arrived in Sulur during the time of my research. After a Sunday service, he led me to Mr. Dhanraj, an elderly, active Church member. Mr. Dhanraj, an educated member of the Paraiyar community and a retired government employee, was a significant link to other community members. With his help, I conducted a series of interviews with those who had been involved in the Church and its public political activities. Through this I was able to reconstruct the public political lives of many in the Paraiyar community, including Mr. Dhanraj, whose primary work was towards rebuilding the Church in the 1960s and 1970s359. While this was of enormous importance to the community and provided a sense of pride to all those who worked towards it and the community as a whole, it was entirely separate from the broad-based political language, concerns and ethos that constituted TamilThanmai. My search for Dalit participation and/or perspective on this continued.

One day towards the end of my stay, out of the blue, Mr. Dhanraj expressed his shock that I had yet to meet K.M. Jeyaraj. Also, he informed me about the Paraiyar community’s primary public political space of that era, the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam (Tagore Youth Organization). This space was built by Jeyaraj and a few others. Mr. Dhanraj took me to K.M. Jeyaraj’s house immediately. We went on Mr. Dhanraj’s motorbike, through the town towards the edge of Sulur to Mathiazhagan Nagar. Like others of the Paraiyar caste, K.M. Jeyaraj too had acquired a small piece of land and a home in Mathiazhagan Nagar. His daughter and her family lived next door. After just a few minutes in his company, it was apparent to me that he was a leader whose public political life resembled those of my other Kallar interviewees very closely. I knew that I had finally found the life story that would illustrate the Dalit perspective and participation in public politics as constructed by TamilThanmai.

The delay in my learning about K.M. Jeyaraj is of note here. That I only reached his home towards the very end of my research, and that I may have considered my fieldwork complete without ever meeting this leader was appalling. This fact alone served to underline how obscured the histories of Dalit public political lives are, both in the narratives of my interviewees and in

359 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017.

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Sulur Varalaaru. This obscuring, like with the complete absence of women, is naturalized and not recognized as a limitation. Neither is it observed or acknowledged as being a contradiction to the Dravidianist register of anti-caste politics. In that sense, the naturalized obscuring added a layer of understanding to TamilThanmai. It was with this awareness that I met K.M. Jeyaraj – Dalit leader, school headmaster and leader in many Dalit political parties at the local and district levels. The narrative of his public political life and its marginality within the rest of the narratives that make up this dissertation, made it imperative that I center his narrative as a way of bringing a grounded critical analysis to the many elements of TamilThanmai.

85-year-old K.M. Jeyaraj lives in Mathiazhagan Nagar, indicating clearly his socio-economic position. Although this area is far away from the traditional area inhabited by his caste, the Paraiyars, Mathiazhagan Nagar is still a Dalit area and is thus at the spatial margins of Sulur. Equally important is the fact that living in this area indicated former landlessness and a lack of property, as these were the preconditions for allocations of land and a house in Mathiazhagan Nagar in the 1970s360. This is of note as in spite of being an educated government employee and political leader, K.M. Jeyaraj was not able to access the upward economic mobility that was possible even for the average member of the Kallar caste who lived a public political life in Sulur from the 1950s to 1970. This was due to two reasons. First was the fact that K.M. Jeyaraj’s caste identity placed him in a very different starting point socio-economically, thus making the path of upward mobility much steeper for him than his Kallar counterparts. Second, K.M. Jeyaraj’s political ideals led him to spend a lot of his life savings on a political project361, the details of which are mentioned below. These two factors together placed K.M. Jeyaraj in a socio-economic position where the small house and land in Mathiazhagan Nagar was the best he could do by way of ensuring economic stability for himself and his family.

By the time I met him, he was worn out, weak, quite inarticulate, and very hard of hearing. In spite of these obstacles, K.M. Jeyaraj’s life story quickly emerged as that of a quintessential public figure and leader, not just in Sulur, but at the Coimbatore district level. Born in 1931, he

360 Set of demands submitted to P. Kakkan, Minister of Public Works (Madras State) on his visit to Sulur, 25th November 1961, Ariviyal Poonga Library, Sulur 361 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017.

125 traced the origins of his public life to the Quit India Movement 1942362. During this movement called by Gandhi, there were a few activities undertaken by those associated with the Congress in the Sulur area. This included many from the Paraiyar caste. The Adi Dravidar Youth Organisation was one such Congress-affiliated group in the Paraiyar area of Sulur. The leader of the organization at that time, a Mr. Mariappan, entrusted 11-year-old Jeyaraj with the task of keeping safe the large picture of Gandhi that adorned the walls of the office363. He was to carry the picture away in order to protect it during police raids. Jeyaraj, despite having lived many decades of an eventful life since then, recounted with a smile how he carried the large picture on his 11-year old head and kept it safe at his home. Soon after, the Congress office was raided by the police but no incriminating evidence of the group’s association with Gandhi or the Congress was found that day. As a 15-year-old, K.M. Jeyaraj and his peers collected close to 100 signatures to stop the sale of the land that belonged to the Church and the school364. They succeeded in stopping the sale. The Church and school still stand.

‘Leadership positions drowned me in my 20s!’ Jeyaraj exclaimed365. From the ages of 21 to 30, he served in multiple leadership positions366. He was the Secretary of the Sulur branch of the Adi Dravidar Youth Organisation, 1952-1961. From 1956 to 1961 he also served as the President of the Palladam Taluk Depressed Classes League367. (Palladam is the name of a town while ‘Taluk’ is the term for the administrative division within the larger Coimbatore district. Sulur fell under the Palladam Taluk at that time.) This organization is commonly referred to simply as ‘The League’. The League, a Congress-affiliated group for Dalits, also called Harijans (in Gandhian and Congress idiom) or Scheduled Castes (in official state language), was led by its national leader, Babu Jagjivan Ram368. K.M. Jeyaraj rose to the district level leadership in the League and

362 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 363 ibid 364 ibid 365 ibid 366 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 367 ibid 368 http://www.ambedkar.org/research/THEORISING%20THE%20DALIT%20MOVEMENT.htm

126 served as Secretary for the Coimbatore District, from 1961 to 1965369. From 1965 to1970 he became the Joint Secretary of Tamilnadu for the All India Oppressed Classes Forum. From 1974 to 1976 he was a member of the State Executive Committee of the Thazhthappattor Munnetra Kazhagam (Oppressed Classes Development Organisation) led by Ms. Satyavani Muthu, then the only Dalit leader within the DMK370. This group was the Dalit face of the DMK. But this group fizzled out in a few years as its leaders became unhappy with the DMK’s lack of commitment to anti-caste politics and left the party. Later, Ms. Muthu joined MGR’s ADMK when they came to power in 1977371. From 1971-1976, Jeyaraj served as member of the state executive committee of the Ambedkar People’s Organisation372. From 1976-1982 he obtained a paid government position as President of the Sulur Milk Cooperative – an entity he was instrumental in creating373. After this, through the 1980s and 1990s, he dabbled in electoral politics as an independent candidate in elections and with various breakaway groups from the Congress374. He officially left the Congress in 2014375. As this brief timeline illustrates, K.M. Jeyaraj lived a very active public political life at the local and district levels. This life began very early and blossomed at a rapid pace while he was of a very young age. As a result, he was an important figure from Sulur, in the broader histories of Dalit mobilization in Tamilnadu between the 1950s-1970 and after.

K.M. Jeyaraj was educated up to high school, an enormous feat for anyone in his generation in Sulur. It was an even bigger feat for a person from a Dalit community. Sulur did not have schools locally after the 5th grade when those of his generation were growing up. So, any further education involved long travel to nearby villages and towns, which was often not prioritized by poorer families. K.M. Jeyaraj showed enormous drive very early on and that, combined with the

369 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 370 ibid 371 Sathiyavani Muthu stands out as one of the few Dalits and few women DMK leaders’ in the period after the late 1960s. See Forrester, Duncan. "Factions and Film stars: Tamil Nadu Politics since 1971." Asian Survey 16, no. 3 (1976): 283-96. For more details on her joining and then resigning from the DMK 372 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 373 ibid 374 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 375 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017).

127 focus on education emerging from the Church, enabled him to prioritize and acquire such education. He started his career as a teacher in government high schools and rose to the rank of Headmaster (Principal) before he retired. Having laid foundations of education for himself that were advanced for his time, he maintained his focus on education in his professional life and rose up to the highest possible ranks within a school. This too was no easy feat for a Dalit person to have accomplished at that time.

His wife, of the same caste, was also a high school teacher. He did not mention her name throughout the interview376. Since K.M. Jeyaraj’s children did not want to speak with me, I was unable to ask them their mother’s name. Mr. Dhanraj did not know her name. While K.M. Jeyaraj spoke of his wife with much respect, she was still the support for the primary political work, which was his own. In that sense, her ‘namelessness’ is a poignant comment on the gendered nature of how K.M. Jeyaraj understood his own public political life and the role of his wife as a supportive figure in it.

Before delving deeper into K.M. Jeyaraj’s public political life, a quick note is essential about how his work related to that of the other major acknowledged Dalit public figure of this period in Sulur – MP Arumugam. MP Arumugam was, among other things, a Member of Nehru’s Parliament, the first one in independent India377. His political life primarily consisted of elected political positions that he held based on winning the reserved Dalit seats on behalf of the Congress. K.M. Jeyaraj did not participate in electoral politics as a candidate throughout his public political life. The crucial difference between the historicizing of these two leaders in Sulur, both by my interviewees and in Sulur Varalaaru, is the clear presence and celebration of MP Arumugam within the history of public politics and the complete absence of K.M. Jeyaraj. It is not coincidental that MP Arumugam’s public political life was deeply tied to that of the Congress leader SVL. K.M. Jeyaraj, on the other hand did not have any mentor or patron, Dalit or otherwise. Connectedly, K.M. Jeyaraj did not invest time and energy on working for the main

376 While I tried to ask him what her name was multiple times, his diminishing hearing and other cognitive skills made asking of any questions hard. Because of this barrier, I was unable to ascertain her name till the end of our interview. 377 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995), 56

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Congress Party, but instead was focused on mobilizing its Dalit outfits, both locally and at the district level. MP Arumugam on the other hand was firmly rooted in the mother party and its participation in electoral politics at the state and national levels. This comparison is of note only because these two men were contemporaries and of the same caste/class background. The enormous difference in their public political lives and the resultant historicizing of the same is a comment, yet again, of the pre-conditions that needed to be fulfilled for the acknowledgement of Dalit participation and leadership during that time. It stands testament to the elements of TamilThanmai that are firmly rooted in non-Brahmin, non-Dalit dominance even as it clearly espouses anti-caste language.

K.M. Jeyaraj’s last and ongoing struggle that he was in the midst of when I met him, is a testament to the persistent exclusion of Dalits within public politics. He had been embroiled in a case for close to almost three decades, against the state government, which was by this time fully entrenched in Dravidianist leanings. This case was with regards to the Scheduled Caste reservation of 1% per district, for permits being issued to private bus companies for running public buses378. He showed in court that this policy had not been executed in the Coimbatore district. In 1987, he spent all of his and his wife’s life savings setting up a bus company himself, to fight for a permit under this reservation scheme379. This case was ongoing in 2017 and had left him penniless and with no inheritance for his children. It was their disappointment with him in this regard that led his children to refuse to speak to me about his political life. They saw his public political life as having been the cause of their troubles. When I met him, he was tired and demoralized about the case even as he continued to fight it. This case is beyond the scope of this dissertation. But it is important to remember it, as this is the present, rather unfortunate context for the narrative that follows of a significant and principled political thinker and leader such as K.M. Jeyaraj.

...

The present chapter, primarily focused on K.M. Jeyaraj’s public political life, consists of three parts. The first section explores the extensive preface of Jeyaraj’s powerful anti-caste treatise,

378 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 379 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017.

129 that also serves as his autobiography380. I have mapped his main arguments for ‘Caste

Annihilation’ and ‘Revolution’381 in caste-ridden society. This is an important text that shows the differences in political outlook and visions of social change between K.M. Jeyaraj and my other interviewees. This discussion of K.M. Jeyaraj’s political thinking leads into the second section that outlines his actions in Sulur’s public sphere, and serves as a framework to explore how they intersected with those of my other interviewees. The third section is an exercise in reading the modes of speech of my non-Dalit, Kallar interviewees to track the ways in which caste was spoken, unspoken, explained, morphed, slipped through the cracks, and silenced, as they narrated life-stories of public politics; stories they witnessed and/or participated in. Following those descriptions, I proceed to ask: what constitutes the ‘public’ in Sulur? How did caste feature within the purview of the renditions of public politics by my interviewees and in the text Sulur Varalaaru? What do the answers to these questions contribute towards our understanding of the history of and through TamilThanmai?

K.M. Jeyaraj’s unpublished text, treatise and autobiography, Nam Naattu Adimaigal (The Slaves of our Nation), is difficult to read because it is haphazard in structure. His failing health, both physical and mental, seems to be reflected throughout the manuscript. He wrote it in 2014 when he was 82 years old, after having lived the exhausting and complicated life of a principled, poor, Dalit man. However, despite those limitations, the text is endowed with a legitimacy received via a preface written by the well-known Dalit Dravidian leader Sathiyavani Muthu. This preface and its illustrious author serve to underline K.M. Jeyaraj’s place in the public political realm of Dalit leaders in Tamilnadu. When I met him, he was still awaiting the time and resources to see the book through to fruition. However, given the challenges of health and financial resources, the chances of its publication were rather slim. If it were to be published however, it would circulate within the ambit of small booklets that get distributed, often from person to person, within those who were part of his many political spaces. The world of Tamil print publication has a vibrant

380 Dalit life narratives as expressions of dissent is now a well-documented and analyzed field of research. This much needed work often invokes such life narratives in Tamil given the volume of such material in the Tamil language and the significance of Dalit scholars who have been doing sustained scholarly work in the Tamil context especially since the 1990s. See here for a more recent example from within this field of scholarship: Shankar, S. and Charu Gupta. 2017. “My Birth Is My Fatal Accident”: Introduction To Caste And Life Narratives." Biography 40 (1): 1-16,295-296. 381 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017)

130 culture of small booklets being published and circulated at every level – towns, cities, or the whole state. Most persons who see themselves as thinkers and politically engaged persons sees it as part of their political work to publish such texts on a range of subjects, including autobiographies. Many of them are self-published or are published by small local presses. K.M. Jeyaraj’s text was languishing without support, as was its author. However, if it should be published, respect for K.M. Jeyaraj, along with the legitimacy provided by Sathiyavani Muthu, would mean that the book would circulate within the Dalit political networks. Nam Naattu Adimaigal is very much a part of this publishing culture and economy and would have circulated, as all of these booklets do, within the political networks of the author.

The text has three main parts. The first is a long treatise that seeks to identify the ‘curse of caste’ upon society. Following that, it methodically proposes solutions for each facet of this oppression. The second part provides examples of newspaper coverage on the many issues that are evoked in the treatise. And the third part has brief reports on various meetings, events and other activities of some of the Sulur groups with which K.M. Jeyaraj was associated. The first two parts provide a broad-based context for the third. He declares at the very beginning of the text that all the materials in it are based on his experience of several decades traveling to many different places and bearing witness to caste discrimination. This experiential knowledge, he adds, was further sharpened by his consistent reading of a range of material on caste-based oppression and violence – from newspaper reports to academic texts. However, he explicitly states that his experiential knowledge is at the core of this text382.

K.M. Jeyaraj’s writing, alongside the materials that I gathered from my interview, enabled a close examination that mapped out what public politics meant for him. His autobiography serves as a framework with a specific methodology – of grounding experiential knowledge in a broader context – to outline his political inspirations. The thoughts that it contains in turn offer additional insights into his political approach and the actions of his life. Such insights have allowed me to frame this chapter where this Dalit leader receives his proper place within the history of public politics in Sulur between the 1950s and 1970.

382 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017)

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Nam Naattu Adimaigal: The Slaves of our Nation – A window into a Dalit leader’s mind

Nam Naattu Adimaigal is based on the fundamental premise that Dalits are slaves in Indian society and that the village unit within such a society is a ‘slave camp383.’ K.M. Jeyaraj exposes the nature of this system by his focus on two main elements, firstly, the power derived from socio-economic structures, and secondly, governance-based official political power. Before delving into these aspects, he provides a brief historical framework. He writes of how activities undertaken only by Dalits, such as playing a particular kind of drum, the thappu or parai, was formerly respected by society at large. As he describes, the drums ‘galvanized troops in kingdoms to go to war’384. Those same activities have since become devoid of respect. He goes on to argue that British colonial rule and its maintenance of law and order relatively reduced the impunity granted to those who perpetuated violence in the name of caste385. This relief, he says, was undone with the coming of independence and transfer of power to Indians by which the impunity granted to caste-based violence was reinstated in independent India. He says:

"During British times, if a Dalit were beaten, western Church Pastors would come to the village and warn those who perpetrated the violence that it is not permissible. Or they would report them to the Police and undertake legal action. Because of this, village dwellers were afraid to hurt Scheduled Caste persons.

As local government officials, judges and policemen were all Britishers back then (during colonial times) they acted immediately. The police did their job and filed cases against those accused promptly. Courts punished those who were accused of caste violence. But after independence, as everything was ‘Indianized’, why, even ‘Hinduized’, thadi eduththavan ellam

383 While K.M. Jeyaraj does not directly mention the connection between Caste and racial discrimination, partially because he and his work pre-date this particular line of work, this connection in this text, albeit anachronistically, is in line with the mobilization and theorizing of Dalit rights as human rights within the international human rights paradigm. See here for more details: Clifford Bob. ""Dalit Rights are Human Rights": Caste Discrimination, International Activism, and the Construction of a New Human Rights Issue." Human Rights Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2007): 167-193. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed March 14, 2019). 384 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 385 There is a long history of a Dalit perspective on Colonialism going beyond anti-colonialism or Indian nationalism. Beginning with Iyothee Thasar who wrote to the Queen of England about caste based discrimination and the responsibility of the colonial government to rid it, other leaders such as Jyotirao Phule and Periyar did not see colonialism as the primary enemy but Indian caste society itself.

132 thandalkaaran (literally, anyone who picks up a stick becomes a fighter, meaning anyone with a stick could become the keeper of order).386”

K.M. Jeyaraj concludes his historical framing with a solution – demographics-based representation at all levels of government. But his proposal entails thorough representation of oppressed castes, not just at the individual level, but also the selection of individuals to positions of power from within organizations started and run by Scheduled Castes and Tribes. He says:

“Based on India’s population, 30% of all seats in State Legislatures, National Parliament, City Councils, Municipalities, and Collectorates must be reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. These members must only be representatives of organizations or political parties created and run by Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Only such organizations must be permitted to field candidates for these seats.387”

Based on this historical context, K.M. Jeyaraj has identified in his text two axes of discrimination: socio-economic power and political power. Here, untouchability is featured as the bedrock of this oppression. Following this K.M. Jeyaraj asks fundamental questions that challenge the premise of untouchability as a practice:

‘Do we not have the same body, mind and blood?’ ‘Are we not human?388’ he asks.

He goes on show how access to education, or even the setting up of small businesses, even if an improvement in the socio-economic status of Dalits, does not guarantee the ridding of untouchability.

"While those who are uneducated remain subservient to the upper castes, Scheduled community members who have education and jobs, are also forced to remain subservient to the upper castes. Both the educated and uneducated among the Scheduled communities remain guards and servants to the upper castes… Those prestigiously employed as teachers at the local government schools have to be subservient to all those who are superior to them professionally, not due to professional hierarchies but because of caste. We must campaign for our superiors every time they face an election and give them our votes. If we don’t, they will use their official power to transfer us to other schools.389”

386 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 387 ibid 388 ibid 389 ibid

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He moves on to discuss examples of systemic discrimination. He begins with his own experience of having served as a headmaster, the highest possible post in a school.

“In all the villages I have worked in, those of the upper caste, officials and non-officials alike, did not like that I held the highest position in the school.390”

He goes on to question the lack of proportionate representation of Scheduled community members at all levels within local governance. Simultaneously, he argues that government jobs are the only viable option for Dalits and their families to have access to upward socio-economic mobility.

“Without government jobs how might those of the Scheduled communities live? There are no stipulations for how those of the other castes may live. They can and do live however they please. They can set up shops of any kind…which may be small or big and may require as little as 100 rupees as capital. But if a member of the Scheduled community were to set up a tea shop, who is going to go there? Caste based discrimination is everywhere. One such person I know gave up on his small shop within six months … When will this madness end in this country? In this context a Scheduled community person cannot openly declare his caste and set up his own enterprise. Even if they try, those of the upper castes will destroy them. So how may we then live in this society? The uneducated amongst the Scheduled communities are pursuing the traditional occupations of their families. This means that the upper caste educated persons remain the only ones to be part of other professions. This way Scheduled communities remain enslaved to the upper castes. Isn’t that their goal? But is this also the goal of all those who call themselves reformists and are politicians of the ruling classes?391”

He expands further on the occupational restrictions on Dalits in a separate chapter with examples taken from the professions prevalent in Sulur as well as those that served as important symbols of oppression, whether manual scavenging, agricultural work, cotton mills, or even distant tea plantations. One such chapter is called “Who are sanitation workers?”392. Here, he makes a passionate argument for the abolition of the disgraceful practice of manual scavenging. He describes the work that manual scavengers do in detail and asks how they may dream of change towards a better life if they are ‘remain engulfed by the smells of the drain and shit?’393.

390 ibid 391 ibid 392 ibid 393 ibid

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Here, it is important to pause and reflect on these occupational examples. Manual scavenging was performed by the Arundhathiyar caste. Mr. Kittusamy, a sweeper in the Panchayath office, was one among the many in his community who performed this work. Manual scavenging existed in Sulur till the early 1990s and was only abolished after running water arrived in most houses394. However, no one else among my interviewees, other than Mr. Kittusamy himself, mentioned the practice as part of their political thought or action. They did not seem to have even observed its existence. It is important to remember that unlike Mr. Kittusamy, Jeyaraj was not engaged in this work. His professional life as a school teacher and later as a headmaster, along with his caste identity as Paraiyar rather than Arundhathiyar, put him a good distance away from manual scavenging. However, the physical space of his home was serviced by this work, as was that of everyone else who lived in Sulur. In terms of how this practice affected his everyday life, Jeyaraj’s positionality was more aligned with my other (Kallar) interviewees than with Mr. Kittusamy. However, in Jeyaraj’s text, the section that is an exposition of economic oppression propagated by caste and untouchability, prominently begins with this example of manual scavenging. He exposes the indignity of this work and proposes alternatives to it, both in the short and in the long run. He asks why this practice was not banned in the country, even 47 years after independence395. He demands that these workers be given alternative employment right away. He demonstrates how, even when there seemed to be some political will to rehabilitate them in other jobs, it was not executed effectively. For short-term change, he puts forth demands in line with those made by many other activists – of better working conditions including protective gear, sanitation, regular health checkups, fair pay, bonuses, etc396. While he does not go into its specific history in Sulur, the fact that manual scavenging features front and center as an example of how untouchability affects lives, is testament to how important it was in his mindscape and in the overall political analysis that he produces.

Continuing in this thread, the text addresses similar structures of oppression and viable solutions thereof for agricultural and cotton mill workers. Hegemonic labor relations within agriculture are

394 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010), 315 395 http://vikaspedia.in/social-welfare/social-awareness/legal-awareness/law-against-manual-scavenging 396 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017)

135 placed in the context of caste-based land ownership dominated by those of the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes. Hegemony within the mills, he shows, mimics this pattern of land ownership as the mills too are owned by those of the same castes who only employ ‘their own’, thus leaving out Dalits397.

The next group of workers with a significant number of pages dedicated to them in the text are tea plantation workers. He thoroughly outlines, in heart-wrenching language, their working conditions as they made the journey to faraway lands: the illnesses they faced, living conditions in the plantation, the punitive nature of labor laws and practices on the plantation, and the fact that the entire system was based on deceiving workers into believing the system would offer good pay, ‘freedom’ and right to be paid for the journey back to their home countries at the end of their contract in the plantation 398. As the ideal long-term solution, he suggests that plantations be made cooperatives with state governance and that all workers be members of such a cooperative with shared ownership in the enterprise. In the short run, he suggests ensuring proper housing, fair wages, bonuses, educational opportunities, subsidized food, and other such demands for basic needs399. The passion with which he writes when he describes the plight of plantation workers is similar to his discussion of those engaged in manual scavenging. Clearly, for K.M. Jeyaraj, it was imperative to see the connections between the everyday reality that he witnessed and such situations even when they were remote from his immediate surroundings, as all were within the realm of brutality of caste. He identified this brutality as the cause of naturalizing the position of those of the oppressed castes within demeaning, non-lucrative jobs.

397 Chari, Sharad. 2004. "Provincializing Capital: The Work of an Agrarian Past in South Indian Industry." Comparative Studies in Society and History 46 (4): 760-785. doi:10.1017/S0010417504000350. http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/00104175/v46i0004/760_pctwoaapisii. 398 This preoccupation can be placed within a long lineage of plantation workers serving as a framework for un- freedom in the mind of the politically-inclined from early 19th C onwards in Tamilnadu and amongst other thinkers in other parts of India. This preoccupation continued in the 1950s in the Tamil context as the conditions of plantations workers in Ceylon and other places were ever-present to political thinkers. See Sivaraman, Mythily. 2013. Haunted by fire: essays on caste, class, exploitation and emancipation. New Delhi. Leftword. Apart from this, it has also been a field of research amongst historians and others. See for instance: Sharma, Jayeeta. 2012. Empire's garden: Assam and the making of India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black; Mohapatra, Prabhu P. 1995. "Restoring the family": wife murders and the making of a sexual contract for Indian immigrants labour in the British Caribean colonies, 1860-1920. New Delhi: Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library; Visswanathan, E. Sa. 1990. A preliminary study of the Madrasis of Guyana. Turkeyen, Guyana: History Society, University of Guyana. 399 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017)

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Further that within these jobs they could be dehumanized and abused. In that sense, the different jobs, though performed in different places, are all connected as methods by which the brutality of caste is enacted upon the bodies, minds and lives of those of the oppressed castes.

As an idealistic solution for all these concerns, K.M. Jeyaraj proposes the idea of self- determination in the form of separate factories, worker-owned agricultural lands, and plantations. He declares in plain and simple terms that capitalism and foreign investment were unnecessary and only further exacerbated existing inequalities. His position is that there are abundant resources in the world and it is important to distribute them fairly and equally. His identification of the persistence of caste-based hierarchy is so overpowering that the only permanent solution he was able to envision was a complete separation of the oppressed classes to set up institutions for their own employment400.

Within Jeyaraj’s text, a few elements are of utmost significance to this dissertation. Jeyaraj was the only one among my interviewees who employed examples of the plight of those who were most marginalized. His choice of examples illustrates a political position that is grounded in a broader systemic critique that was to emerge from those most marginalized within the caste system, rather than a critique that is primarily grounded in his own subjective position. The marginalized groups he spoke of were not ones he belonged to directly. They included the Arundhathiyars who were manual scavengers and other Dalit castes from other regions who went as indentured workers to the plantations half a century before Jeyaraj was born. He writes with indignation about the fate of these communities. Even though he himself hailed from a severely marginalized section of society, he does not begin his analysis from the plight of his own caste group. Simultaneously, he does not speak in a register of speech where he excludes himself completely from these groups. To the contrary, he marks these examples as the basis of an argument for building a broader fraternity amongst ALL Dalits, including himself. He also maintains a nuanced understanding of this fraternity by making space for differences in oppression against one Dalit group and another.

Nam Naattu Adimaigal is unique as it holds the duality of a fraternity built on shared oppression along with the absence of shared everyday realities between Jeyaraj and the communities he

400 Ibid.

137 describes. This duality continues through specific examples throughout the text. The fraternity thus evoked is defined and described in detail and not left to the realm of undefined broad categories whose contours are assumed to be pre-given. My other interviewees based many of their descriptions of their public political lives in undefined systems of oppression such as the ‘caste system’, ‘Brahminism’ or ‘Indian hegemony’. They did not illustrate the meanings of these terms through concrete examples. In the same vein, they employed undefined identities such as ‘Tamil’, ‘non-Brahmin’, ‘Dravidian’ etc to speak of shared fraternities. Any invocation of concrete examples was of their own oppression – personally, or that of their specific caste group. As an exception to this, a few interviewees, particularly those of Communist leanings, invoked examples of violent caste atrocities against Dalits as part of their political journey. However, these examples were not of the everyday violence that they bore witness to such as that of the indignity in the lives of the manual scavengers who serviced the interviewees’ homes. Instead they were well-known and widely-covered instances of brutality against Dalits in other parts of Tamilnadu. These faraway brutalities were identified as having affected them so deeply as to create massive changes in their political trajectories. However, their distance from observing the everyday caste violence in Sulur was so wide that they would often declare, following descriptions of caste brutalities elsewhere, that this would ‘never happen’ in Sulur401. ‘Sulur-la saathi veriyo kalavaramo nadanthathe illa (Sulur has never seen such caste-hatred or brutality)’ was a common refrain.

Unlike them, K.M. Jeyaraj was not bound by his own identity, caste, region, or social positionality in constructing his political principles and life thereof. He sought to impartially expose the entire system of oppression by highlighting its most brutal parts and by centering the stories of those most assaulted by it. Nam Naattu Adimaigal while maintaining Jeyaraj’s own observations as its starting point, is interspersed with relevant news reports from across the country that highlight Jeyaraj’s arguments. The first set of images in Nam Naattu Adimaigal are of Dalits in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat pulling the plough in a field in place of the cattle that would be otherwise used for this task.

401 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017; Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017; Sinnaiyan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 9th June 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017;

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Figure 9 Report from Thinamalar newspaper, Coimbatore edition, from May 19, 2011, showing Dalit men being made to pull the plough in a village in Maharashtra.402

This practice of evocatively referencing national news of caste oppression is augmented by his quoting of regional and international examples to make his broader arguments. He repeatedly mentions self-determination for Dalits in all realms – nationhood, economy, education and society as a whole. He cites the example of Pakistan for its demand for a Muslim nation, Bangladesh and even Israel403. The text includes many instances of imagining what a separate Dalit nation would look like:

402 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 403 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017)

139

‘There would be Ambedkar statues everywhere that we would respect and decorate without fear and shame404’ he writes. ‘Our people would be doctors, lawyers, scientists, judges, and political leaders’405.

Flowing from this repetitive trope of self-determination and representation, he asks why there was such little representation of Dalits across all political parties. He highlights the discrepancy between Dalits doing the grunt work of campaigning for leaders and parties during elections with the absence of representation in leadership406. Based on this exposition, he makes a case for an All-India Dalit political outfit that should transcend language, region, religion, and class amongst Dalits. He declares that Dalits need a unifying leader and organization to begin thinking about gaining respect, first in the political sphere, and after that, in government ranks407.

With this injustice and an imagination of a path to better representation as the context, the text moves on to tackle concerns closer home in Tamilnadu. This discussion begins with the many ways in which the Tamilnadu government, while speaking the language of anti-caste politics, has in fact, betrayed Dalits repeatedly. Jeyaraj illustrates this through concrete examples. The plight of the Tamilnadu Adi Dravidar Housing and Development Corporation set up in 1956, on the eve of the creation of Tamilnadu state, is one such example. (The Adi Dravidar caste is referred to Scheduled Tribe within state categorization.) Until 1979, the Corporation built houses for Scheduled Tribe community members. After 1979, however, they shifted to providing money to building houses, but those funds were totally inadequate for that task. Along with this, the Corporation reduced the number of houses based on their incorrect analyses of need within the community. This further diminished the number of Adi Dravidar community members who benefitted from the scheme408. The year 1979 was 12 years into Tamilnadu being governed by Dravidian parties, first the DMK and later the ADMK. In that sense, this instance clearly illustrated for K.M. Jeyaraj the discrepancy between Dravidian anti-caste principles and the material realities of how they barely assisted Dalit communities.

404 http://www.thenorthlines.com/periyar-br-ambedkars-statue-defaced-tamil-nadu/ 405 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 406 ibid 407 ibid 408 ibid

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Yet again, it is noteworthy that Jeyaraj’s primary example was of communities not his own. His community, the Paraiyars, are classified as Scheduled Caste communities within government schemes, while the specific one he discussed was for Scheduled Tribes. His highlighting of this specific instance was based on first-hand experience. Coimbatore district, where he traveled in his capacity as government school teacher as well as leader of various political outfits, was home to many Scheduled Tribe communities in the surrounding mountain areas. His discussion of the lack of execution of this scheme and how it affected this community emerged from his observations of their plight.

The second example was of the scheme spearheaded by Karunanidhi, the Periyar Memorial Samathuvapuram (Town of Equality) Scheme of 1997. Its aim was to build housing areas that would be mixed in terms of caste, consisting of 40 Dalit families, 25 Backward Caste families and 10 other families. Jeyaraj argues that that this was a waste of government resources and that it was a sham to simply throw different caste members together in terms of housing while discrimination and systemic oppression continued unabated in education and employment. Without equality in all these spheres, he saw no meaning in such symbolic schemes. Again, his critique was based on concrete examples of inefficiency within the scheme rather than mere rhetoric. He says:

“Samathuvapuram is doomed to fail. Who will pay the everyday expenses of those who live there? At least if a factory had been opened along with the housing scheme it would have been useful. Samathuvapuram is being used now for sitting around and playing cards. The area has a large number of caste conflicts.409”

The rest of the treatise consists of an endless list of caste atrocities, primarily ones from Tamilnadu. While there are some examples from other states, the text constantly returns, not just to Tamilnadu, but to the Coimbatore district. This scaling up and down in terms of place encapsulates what Jeyaraj declared at the start to be his methodology: systemic analyses grounded firmly in local experiential knowledge. This list begins with the Keezhvenmani massacre in Thanjavur district in 1968. The impunity granted to the perpetrators of this violence by the DMK maintaining silence about the atrocity, had demoralized many amongst my

409 ibid

141 interviewees410. Some among them abandoned the DMK for other political parties such as the Communist parties at this time. For many non-Brahmin, non-Dalit DMK supporters, Keezhvenmani destroyed trust in their party.

For Jeyaraj, Keezhvenmani was not an isolated horrifying moment. It was one that fell within a continuum of atrocities. In the text, he barely acknowledges the DMK or any other Dravidianist outfit’s stated anti-caste politics. For him, Keezhvenmani was not an aberration within that politics – it served as the norm rather than the exception. To him, this was the extension of state and socio-legal impunity provided to those who were perpetuating caste-based violence, that his text clearly articulated right at the outset. Jeyaraj saw this continuum as dating back to precolonial times, and as being further affirmed in post-colonial India. Given this understanding, the Keezhvenmani massacre was only a surprise for Dravidianists who believed that Caste hegemony in Tamil society had been ruptured or fundamentally altered by Dravidianism. Jeyaraj held no such opinion of the history of caste hegemony in Tamilnadu and thus was unsurprised by the Keezhvenmani massacre and was able to place it on a much longer continuum of violence411.

In connection with Jeyaraj’s perspective on Dravidianist politics, I asked Jeyaraj about his thoughts on Periyar. For K.M. Jeyaraj, Periyar featured habitually in the list of thinkers who had influenced him, along with Marx, Ingersoll, and Ambedkar412. However, all these other thinkers were faraway intellectual influences who did not inhabit his spaces of everyday public political life. Periyar on the other hand was not only a thinker from Tamilnadu, but also hailed from nearby Erode and visited Sulur often. Given this, I pushed further and asked if he had ever met Periyar. Jeyaraj described the moment when he had indeed encountered Periyar at the Sulur bus stop. This was the very bus stop that lay adjacent to the political epicenter of the Anna Kalai Arangam. It was the stage where many political meetings of Sulur occurred through the 1950s to 1970. Jeyaraj met Periyar through U.Ki.Na. Rasu, a local Kallar landlord, bus company mogul and Dravidianist leader who was among the wealthy Dravidianists of Sulur who organized visits and public meetings with leaders such as Periyar. Jeyaraj, who was in his early twenties, was

410 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017. 411 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 412 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017.

142 taken there by his elders – Paraiyar leaders of the generation before him. Periyar, he said, patted him on the back and asked him to continue his service to society. ‘To have met him and been blessed by him is an honor’ he told me413. His respect for Periyar as a thinker was palpable. Nevertheless, in spite of Periyar’s spatial proximity to the public political sphere inhabited by Jeyaraj, he did not identify him as a significant influence in his political thinking or practice.

Jeyaraj’s Nam Naattu Adimaigal as a treatise on the system of caste oppression provided a larger context to frame his local work in Sulur. He wrote this text in 2014, as a response to existing discourses around caste oppression even as he sought to ground himself in the realities that had shaped his life over decades of his public political work. Within it he traced the intellectual influences that shaped him as a young man: leaders such as Ambedkar and Gandhi, as well as Marxist thought414. The reasons for the absence of Dravidianist influences in this text was further clarified by the description of his own work in the 1950s to 1970. Periyarist thought or Anna’s speeches did not feature in his reflections on his everyday public political life415. For my other interviewees, however, Periyar and Anna’s thoughts formed the core of political influences, decision-making and everyday public political life.

This difference in political and intellectual influence between Jeyaraj and my other interviewees is also reflected spatially. I discovered this when I mapped the everyday spaces where they conducted their public politics, over many decades. While the majority of my other interviewees worked, read newspapers and talked to one another about politics every day in the same spaces that were also frequented by Dravidianist leaders for speeches, Jeyaraj was unable to inhabit those spaces. This was due to the spatial logic of caste that restricted his access to such spaces. This period was still one where Dalit entry into non-Dalit spaces involved struggles and regular confrontations416. This was confirmed by my Sulur interviewees – both Kallar and Dalit417. The

413 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 414 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 415 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 416 Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. 417 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 4th June 2017; Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017.

143 lack of an explicit invitation from Dravidianist leaders to Dalit communities to participate in the spaces that they, the leaders inhabited, meant that the traditional caste-based spatial organization was reaffirmed in the public political sphere. Given this reality, Jeyaraj’s activities took place on the streets and among the people of the Paraiyar enclave. The Dravidian party leaders and their supporters in Sulur, rich and poor alike, did not walk those streets as part of their everyday lives – political or otherwise. This directly influenced how they thought of a leader such as K.M. Jeyaraj. While they may have known of a person who was as publicly visible as Jeyaraj, whether as president of the milk cooperative or as headmaster of the high school, he did not, in their minds and hearts, feature either as a political leader or even as a participant engaged in public political work.

This exclusion of Jeyaraj from Kallar men’s perspectives on public political lives can lead us to assume that there would be nothing in common between Jeyaraj’s public political life and that of my other interviewees. Contrary to such an assumption, Jeyaraj mirrors my other interviews in important ways. First, he shares with them his commitment to his own specific caste-kin in terms of the spatial organization and the constituency he sought to mobilize, in his everyday public political life. For instance, the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam that is discussed below, was housed in the Paraiyar area and primarily saw itself as an organization that worked with and for that community. Second, in ways similar to the invocation of a Dravidian/Tamil fraternity by my other interviewees, Jeyaraj invoked a broader language of fraternity with all Dalits. While these two invocations were different in important ways, the need for such a broad invocation was shared by all my interviewees, including Jeyaraj. Third, Jeyaraj and his associates, like my other interviewees, read and engaged with a wide range of written works – newspapers, magazines and books – containing the words of influential leaders of the time. They all collectively discussed these ideas as part of their everyday public political lives. Events organised by both the Kallar interviewees and Jeyaraj were based on their engagement with these ideas. These three elements indicate an interesting mirroring across two public political spheres that were otherwise seen as separate and unconnected by all those who participated in either.

Along with this mirroring, there were also crucial differences in how these elements were enacted in Jeyaraj’s public political life. First, although my other interviewees shared their public political lives only with their fellow Kallar caste-kin, they did not declare this to be the case.

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Instead, in line with TamilThanmai, they evoked a non-Brahmin identity that was to be more broadly inclusive. However, in effect it also excluded Dalit castes. Jeyaraj and his associates, on the other hand, were very clear that they were working with and for their own specific caste community. Jeyaraj grounded himself in a broader Dalit perspective in his work outside of Sulur and in his book. But in Sulur, just as my interviewees inhabited spaces solely populated by Kallars, Jeyaraj and his colleagues inhabited public political spaces only with their fellow Paraiyars. The crucial difference, however, was that the latter declared this openly as part of their political agenda while the former did not. Second, my other interviewees evoked a Tamil/Dravidian fraternity based on this broad-based non-Brahmin identity. This fraternity, like the identity it was based on, was restricted to those of the Kallar caste even though it was spoken of as being broadly inclusive. The fraternity that Jeyaraj invoked, on the other hand, had a much more concrete basis in the systemic oppression of caste which formed the roots of Dalit solidarity and resulting fraternity. Third, even though both sets of men read and engaged with significant ideologues of that time, there were some differences in which thinkers and leaders they engaged with most regularly. This had an impact on the focus of public events organized at the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam, which were different from events at the Anna Kalai Arangam and other such spaces inhabited by my other interviewees. While the mode of engaging in public political life had much in common across caste, there were crucial differences and they coexisted as completely separate from one another. While Kallar political spaces were recognized as being the default ‘general’ space by my non-Brahmin, non-Dalit interviewees, they were not seen as being so by Jeyaraj.

Public political work in Sulur led by K.M. Jeyaraj

The following section of this chapter is based on the parts of Nam Naattu Adimaigal that outlines K.M. Jeyaraj’s activities along with additional insights gained from my interviews with him. In his text, Jeyaraj’s summary of his work in Sulur focuses on two organizations, as did a large part of his conversation with me. They were the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam and the Depressed Classes League. Having started his engagement in public political work as a teenager, by 1965, when he was 33, he had already been in the public life for 18 years. He was an office bearer for both these groups between 1952 and 1965 – at the local, taluk and district level. These two organizations indicate the different levels at which K.M. Jeyaraj was engaged in public political

145 life. While the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam is a resolutely Sulur-based space that involved participants from those who lived in the Paraiyar area, the Depressed Classes League on the other hand is a much larger national level organization of which K.M. Jeyaraj was a district level leader. The Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam grounded him in the Paraiyar area of Sulur while the Depressed Classes League enabled him to travel extensively amongst Dalit communities in many parts of Coimbatore District418.

After 1965, Jeyaraj’s affiliations to different political groups was more complicated. He searched through available options and affiliated with different leaders at different times. He spoke repeatedly about this difference between the two phases – before and after 1965 – in his life. He declared that ‘like Jesus’ he too saw a lot of success in many of his efforts before he was thirty- three419. After this period, he ‘settled down into a domestic life’, via marriage and children while being less consistent in his affiliations to groups. As with my other interviewees, he echoed a refrain of change in his public political life after marriage420. His high regard and respect for his wife did not alter the perspective on this widely held refrain amongst all men of his generation in Sulur. This perspective was not altered even by the fact that his wife too, as a Dalit woman, endured similar challenges in her professional life, as she too qualified and worked as a teacher in government schools.

The first phase of life that Jeyaraj identified for himself as being one of passion and leadership (1952 to 1965) in both Nam Naattu Adimaigal and my interviews with him, falls within the period under study in this dissertation. What follows is a detailed description of his public political life during this period.

Before delving deeper into the specifics of Jeyaraj’s public political life, a caveat is essential about how he framed ‘the community’, in both his text and in his interviews with me. The ‘community’ in his vocabulary is the Thazhththappattor – ‘the oppressed castes’ or ‘Scheduled

418 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 419 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 420 See pages 117 and 175

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Caste and Scheduled Tribes421’. However, upon closer examination, it is clear that in the context of the Thaakur Vaalibar Sangam, Thazhththappattor concretely referred to those of the Paraiyar Dalit caste in Sulur. Even though his work with other groups and his textual analysis involves communities that are not Paraiyar, his grounded-ness in the specific spatial and community bounds of the Paraiyar caste are of relevance.

This specificity is relevant from the perspective of patterns of Dalit political participation in Sulur. The Paraiyar community affiliated themselves to the landlords of Sulur who were in the Congress Party and thus by extension to the party itself. The Pallars on the other hand were marginal in such an affiliation and by the 1960s affiliated themselves to Dravidian parties422. The Arundhathiyars, as mentioned in the interviews with Mr. Kittusamy and Mr. Maakali, did not have clear party affiliations and were careful to stay loyal to whoever was in power and was likely to provide for their basic needs.

Jeyaraj’s evocation of the Thazhththappattor must be understood in this context. Much like the broader evocations of the Dravidianists, he invoked a broader category even as he engaged primarily with one specific Dalit caste – his own community of the Paraiyars. Alongside, in both his written text and in conversation, he focused on the work of manual scavenging involving the Arundhathiyar Dalit caste and the indignities of it. Thus, while he had in common the evocation of a general category, of Thazhththappattor, even while working with a specific community, the Paraiyar, his political register involved a much more careful piecing together of shared oppressions across communities than that of the Dravidianists. This register enabled the creation of a fraternity that was much more concrete than the one evoked within TamilThanmai. This carefully constructed fraternity was evoked in the term Thazhththappattor.

It is important to acknowledge here that the specificity of community within Jeyaraj’s work was not just a result of his political priorities but was also influenced by the spatial segregation that is at the core of caste society. This spatial segregation was a hindrance to everyday public political work across castes. Jeyaraj’s response to such segregation and the seemingly insurmountable

421 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 422 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

147 hindrance it creates for everyday shared solidarities, was, in the least, to invoke the shared oppressions and construct a broader fraternity in his writing and in his work beyond Sulur. In that sense, Jeyaraj’s invocation of the Thazhththappattor was a living political practice that acknowledged, contended with and responded to caste-based oppression, hierarchy and division. It is different from the category of the Dravidian or Tamil invoked by his Kallar contemporaries. While Dravidian/Tamil too is general in rhetoric but specific in terms of everyday political work, that specificity to the Kallar community and the reasons for it are not acknowledged. This lack of acknowledgement, made possible by TamilThanmai’s imagined pre-formed Tamil unity and egalitarianism, left no space for acknowledging differences, hierarchies and divisions within.

Although this key difference sets Jeyaraj apart from my other interviewees it is a fact that he shared the co-existence of specificity in everyday political work and the generalization of identity and fraternity with the other interviewees. Interestingly, this was because the evocation of a broad-based identity and fraternity was the primary mode of legible political speech and writing within the context of TamilThanmai. In spite of being influenced by this ethos of TamilThanmai, by virtue of being Dalit, he was also, simultaneously excluded from the public sphere imagined by my other interviewees in Sulur. Two main reasons can be ascertained for this. First, his everyday life as a Dalit challenged TamilThanmai’s imagination of a pre-formed unity or egalitarianism across caste identities in Tamil society. This imagination did not hold true for Jeyaraj and his caste kin even as the need to evoke a generalized category was unavoidable for them. Similarly, the practice of evoking a generalized category in a register that did not allow for recognizing differences and hierarchies was not adequately useful for Jeyaraj’s political thinking and work. Thus, he was left with the task of invoking the general category of Thazhththappattor even as he constantly highlighted the differences among Dalit castes. It is from this that he argued for the need to unite and form a shared Dalit fraternity. Second, the emancipatory potential of the legible political register that required a general category (in this case, Thazhththappattor) for a Dalit leader such as K.M. Jeyaraj was only realized through actively working on building fraternity. Such a fraternity was not available to him as a pre- formed entity in his political register. By contrast, for his Kallar counterparts, TamilThanmai’s imagined pre-formed unity and egalitarianism provided a pre-given fraternity that was available to them in the very essence of their public political life and did not require them to work towards it. The oppressor in this framework was a distant external entity, be they the Brahmin or the

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Indian. Given this context, TamilThanmai provided them a language to highlight their own oppression within the caste structure as a premise for justified self-affirmation to counter Brahmin/Indian hegemony. Simultaneously, the pre-formed imagined unity of Tamil society provided them with a language that did not require them to acknowledge the ways in which they too enact caste oppression upon others within the same structure that oppressed them. In that sense the everyday reality of Thazhththappattor - both the people it is referring to and the political register that grew from such a register - challenges the reach of TamilThanmai, a reach that is otherwise assumed as all-inclusive by my other interviewees.

As a result of this crucial difference between the imagined Dravidian and the real Thazhththappattor, we are left with Jeyaraj’s exponentially more descriptive category of the Thazhththappattor. This category, in its essence, needed to acknowledge differences, hierarchy and conflict within it. I will use this category extensively in the description below as this was Jeyaraj’s own chosen category. The context for this term as outlined above must be kept in mind as we encounter this category in the following sections.

10.1 The Thakur Valibar Sangam (Tagore Youth Organization)

As the Secretary of the Thakur Valibar Sangam from 1952 to 1961, Jeyaraj’s work was structured along a few different political axes. The first axis was that of organizing to provide basic needs for the Paraiyar community: whether obtaining an electricity connection for the youths’ reading room423; inspiring older students to assist younger ones with school work424; or building a hostel for poor students425. Bringing electricity to the reading room was one of Jeyaraj’s first priorities, and even years later, when I met him, it has remained a source of much pride426. The establishment of a hostel for poor students came to fruition only after many decades of work427. The recurrent droughts in the area between the 1950s and 1970 were a main

423 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 424 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 425 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 426 Ibid 427 The construction of the hostel was a rare cross-community mobilization in Sulur. Even today it is inhabited by poor students across caste backgrounds. This effort was made possible under Jeyaraj’s leadership.

149 agenda item in multiple meetings of the Thakur Valibar Sangam428. Demands ranged from asking that their taluk be listed as a drought-affected area to asking politicians to make provisions for school fees to be waived and for schools to provide afternoon meals to children from drought-affected families429.

The second axis was to represent the Paraiyar community within Sulur and encourage a sustained engagement in broader public activities. This included organizing discussions on contemporary political thought through public discussions on specific thinkers. Such events occurred parallel to similar activities within the Kallar community which sought to represent their own community and their politics in the public political sphere. These activities of the Thakur Valibar Sangam, spatially located within the Paraiyar area, mostly involving participation from within that community, still mirrored their Kallar counterparts in their evocation of a general category. While that category for the Kallars was Dravidian, it was Thazhththappattor for members of this Sangam.

Such public meetings organised by the Thakur Valibar Sangam took many different forms. In some instances, they were condolence meetings for deceased public individuals of significance, from local level leaders to thinkers and ideologues at the national level, such as Ambedkar430. At other times, they functioned as ‘welcome meetings’ for leaders who visited Sulur. This included local leaders such as MP Arumugam of their own community, who was Member of the National Parliament and later of the state Legislative Assembly. Given the affiliation to the Congress of the Thakur Valibar Sangam and its members, there was a meeting held to welcome Kamaraj Nadar, the state level Congress leader and later Chief Minister of Tamilnadu431. This is of note as Kamaraj is not of a Dalit caste and other non-Dalit leaders did not have welcome meetings at the Thakur Valibar Sangam. It also held meetings in solidarity with struggles elsewhere that were linked to the Congress Party, such as the Goan independence movement against Portuguese rule that continued well into the early 1970s432. While partly a mirroring of the agenda set forth

428 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 429 Ibid. 430 ibid 431 ibid 432 ibid

150 by the ‘mother party’ – the Congress, it also echoed Jeyaraj’s own thoughts and fascination with ‘secession’ and ‘separate nationhood’ as strategies to fight caste oppression. The brief report from the meeting on Goan independence, as reported by him, consisted of him and other local leaders in the group asserting the importance of self-determination by the Thazhththappattor, with the struggle in Goa as an example and inspiration. These public meetings were an important forum for Jeyaraj and his colleagues to expose the Paraiyar community to a range of politics while also creating a Paraiyar presence in the realm of public politics in Sulur.

Meetings of the Thakur Valibar Sangam publicly marked birthdays, death anniversaries and centenaries of political thinkers and leaders by reflecting and commenting on their ideas. These thinkers and leaders included Subramania Bharathi – an early 20th Century nationalist Tamil poet who challenged caste through means different from that of the Congress or the Dravidianists; the Dalit leader, thinker and the architect of the Constitution of India Dr. B.R. Ambedkar; Thiru. Vi. Kalyanasundaram - celebrated in Tamilnadu as a significant Tamil literary thinker and ideologue from the early 20th C across the political spectrum, who later associated himself with the Congress Party; and Bal Gangadhar Tilak - late 19th to early 20th Century North Indian nationalist leader and thinker433. These choices of leaders and thinkers were shared across the Dalit and Kallar political spaces.

Even as some of the thinkers were engaged with across castes, others were not shared. Non-Dalit organizations did not engage with Ambedkar’s ideas at all from the 1950s to 1970, although he was an influential thinker and leader during this time. On the other hand, Jeyaraj and his compatriots did not engage with the thoughts or works of Periyar, and later, Anna, both of whom were significant influences on their Kallar counterparts through their writing and in person, given the frequent public gatherings they addressed in Sulur and other areas.

Differences in party affiliations could be one reason for this varied list of leaders engaged with in the two public political spaces. But this reason is inadequate. During this period Ambedkar was not seen as affiliated with or even supportive of the Congress government. The Scheduled Caste Federation (SCF), an independent political party started by Ambedkar, was taking root in many parts of the country among Dalit communities, posing a small threat to Congress political power

433 Ibid

151 in Tamilnadu and other states. While Jeyaraj and his friends did not ever officially affiliate with the SCF, Ambedkar’s thoughts and life were being closely followed by them434. Similarly, members of the Anjaneya Gym, even while affiliated to the Congress, still viewed Anna’s speeches as a significant aspect of their public political life435. Hence, party affiliation could not have been a crucial factor in the choice of leaders engaged with in the two public political spaces.

Another explanation for the differences in the leaders that featured in the two different public political spaces could be their differing perspectives on the Indian nation-state. It is possible to understand Jeyaraj and his colleagues’ exclusion of Anna and Periyar from their list of leaders as being an effect of the Dravidianists’ shunning of the newly-independent Indian nation-state. During the 1950s, the Congress investment in the new nation-state was in sharp contrast to the shunning of it by Periyar436 and his followers, including Anna. Support for the nation-state on the other hand, was a prerequisite of membership in the Congress party. However, it is striking that Jeyaraj and his supporters, not once in their work of over 13 years, directly commented on the Indian nation-state with any sense of pride/acceptance or of critique/resistance. They simply do not address it at all. It is as if the nation-state, its colonization, or its independence was irrelevant to them, much like it was for Mr. Maakali. Thus, their perspectives on the nation-state do not serve as an explanation for their exclusion of Anna’s and Periyar’s thoughts.

Contrary to any sort of Indian nationalism, Jeyaraj, in Nam Naattu Adimaigal articulates a critique of ‘Indianization’ and ‘Hinduization’ that, according to him, occurred at independence. In his text, he argues that it reaffirmed impunity for caste violence. This was in line with the Dravidianist critique of the Indian nation that they saw as one that reaffirmed Brahmin, north Indian hegemony over the Dravidians437. In the Dravidianist discourse, this critique of the Indian nation was fundamental to identifying the oppressive Brahmin/north Indian ‘other’ and to make an argument, first for a separate nation-state and later for federalism438, as the only way to

434 Ibid 435 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 436 https://kafila.online/2011/01/06/periyar-on-independence/ 437 ibid 438 https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/karunanidhi-unsung-contributions-indian-federalism

152 affirm non-Brahmin Tamil identity. For Jeyaraj, this critique and its essential identification of the ‘other’ was not fundamental to his political discourse or everyday political work. Instead, it features in his text as an important but distant historical context for caste oppression. For Jeyaraj, anyone who was not part of the Thazhththappattor was an oppressor in caste society. The Indian nation then, was one among many institutions that upheld the structures of caste. His political thought and everyday work was not so much about the construction of a self and the other as much as identifying the structures of oppression and imagining and enacting strategies for emancipation439 from them.

What place did the newly-independent Indian nation state have in Sulur public political space? Non-Dalit Congress members/leaders celebrated Independence Day as an important event both at the eve of independence and in the years that followed. Jeyaraj and his colleagues may have taken part in such events as they were Congress members. But there is no confirmation of this440. It is clear, however, that the Thakur Valibar Sangam did not prioritize organizing events solely to mark Indian independence. While many of their meetings ended with the singing of the national anthem or the hoisting of the flag, Jeyaraj dismissed them in our conversation as being ritualistic practices that were devoid of any political meaning. It is clear that the Indian nation- state, either as an entity of belonging or of oppression, was not a priority in thought, language or action for Jeyaraj and his colleagues. This set them apart from both other Congress members and the Dravidianists of the 1950s-1970.

This shows that the absence of some thinkers from the activities of the Thakur Valibar Sangam, even as they featured centrally in the work of other groups in Sulur, was connected to their caste identity. It was not so much about party affiliation or about a differing relationship to the nation- state. The thoughts and actions of Kallar contemporaries – Congress members, Communist and Dravidianist, did not actively include in thought, physical space or action those of Jeyaraj’s and other Dalit communities. This meant that Jeyaraj and his colleagues viewed the thinkers who were central to these spaces (that excluded them) as being irrelevant to their everyday lives and the public political work that emerged from such a life. In short, Jeyaraj and his colleagues did

439 Gandhi-Ambedkar debate read with Periyar’s independence speech 440 I asked Jeyaraj repeatedly. As for other Congress members, Kamakshi and Naatrayan, they never mentioned any participation of Dalits in any of their events.

153 not view these thinkers as contributing to the change they envisioned for themselves as Thazhththappattor.

Jeyaraj did indicate a deep respect for Periyar, both for his writing and when he narrated the incident where he met him in person. In spite of this respect, Jeyaraj did not view Periyar as an important anti-caste thinker. In his interview with me, this respect evoked the ritualized and habitual respect for Periyar as the leader of ‘the people’ which was constituted in the period after 1970441. It is in this period that the process of him becoming the generic ‘father of Tamil people’ began, which has since been thoroughly established by successive Dravidianist governments. It was only after much prodding that Jeyaraj even spoke of Periyar, even in this limited register. In his text and in his interview with me Jeyaraj, kept silent on Periyar’s anti-caste politics or the overall politics of Self Respect or Dravidianism.

In terms of the sharing of political agenda in line with the priorities foregrounded within TamilThanmai, a fleeting moment of affiliation between the Thakur Valibar Sangam and Dravidianist groups in Sulur is worth mentioning. This group, like other groups in Sulur, called a meeting to create and submit a demand to change the name of Madras Presidency to Tamilnadu in 1956442. These demands were the precursor to the passing of the Linguistic Reorganisation of

States Act in 1956, thus forming Tamilnadu443. No further information on this incident is available. Jeyaraj was not able to recall any more details about it during our interview. In the context of the rest of Jeyaraj’s text, read along with his conversation with me, some preliminary observations can be made. It can be surmised that participation in a process such as this was a result of both the effort to place themselves (the Thakur Valibar Sangam as well as the Paraiyar community in general) in the broader public political sphere, along with an affiliation, however limited and complex, to Tamil language as an organizing category for governance.

It is worth noting that despite vast differences in political influences and priorities that are best explained by differing caste identities, Jeyaraj and his colleagues, albeit momentarily, participate resolutely in the registers made default by TamilThanmai. This can be observed in the

441 http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/56866 442 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 443 https://indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/1680/1/195637.pdf

154 institutionalized respect of Periyar as the ‘father of Tamil people’ and in their participating in the struggle to place the Tamil language as the organizing principle in the newly formed governmental category of Tamilnadu. These fleeting moments of shared everyday public political lives across caste are testament to the default need to invoke a sense of self and a way of being through a generalized category as with TamilThanmai. Except, the Thanmai, the essence/nature/elements of the Thazhththappattor, unlike the Dravidian or Tamil categories, was an arena of constant acknowledgement of internal differences within the category and the active work towards building fraternity444 therein. This nature of Thazhththappattor was made palpable in the everyday public political work of the Thakur Valibar Sangam and its leader K.M. Jeyaraj.

10.2 Thazhththappattor League: The Depressed Classes League

The Depressed Classes League was the other organization that K.M. Jeyaraj led between 1956 and 1965, first at the taluk level and then the Coimbatore district level445. It involved public life of a very different scale from that within Sulur with the Thakur Valibar Sangam. ‘The League’, as it was commonly known, was a national level organization founded in 1935 by Babu Jagjivan Ram, a Dalit leader and Congress politician from Bihar in North India446. While a comprehensive history of the organization in Tamilnadu is yet to be written, it had a presence in Tamilnadu during and after colonialism through the 1930s to the 1960s.447. Immanuel Gnanasekaran, the Dalit leader whose killing became the context for the Mudukulathur caste violence of 1956, was associated with this organization448. Thus, although the presence of this group in Tamilnadu is palpable, its broader history in the state remains unavailable to us.

444 This difference in turn reminds one of the earlier iterations of Dravidian thought through the Self Respect movement, even if not broad-based political action, from the 1920s-1940s, which precisely insisted on such an acknowledgement of difference and hierarchy and the need to build fraternity rather than assume it as pre-formed. 445 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 446 Kanhaiyalal Chanchreek. 1978. Jagjivan Ram's crusade for democracy. New Delhi: S. Chand. 447 This presence has been noted by scholars working on histories and ethnographies of Dalit communities in Tamilnadu Moffatt, Michael. “Untouchables and the Caste System: A Tamil Case Study.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 9, no. 1 (January 1975): 111–22. doi:10.1177/006996677500900105. 448 Parthasarathy, Muthukaruppan. "Paramakudi Violence: Against Dalits, Against Politics." Economic and Political Weekly 46, no. 44/45 (2011): 14-17.

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K.M. Jeyaraj oversaw the formation of new chapters of the League in villages and conducted executive elections at various levels449. The first conference of the League in Coimbatore district was organised in 1961 under his leadership450. As soon as Jeyaraj was elected to the League’s leadership, he recruited manual scavengers to join its membership451. This was a visible sign of his persistent interest and commitment to their lives and rights. In assessing Jeyaraj’s life work, it becomes clear that the common theme between his work for the Thakur Valibar Sangam and the League was his overarching focus on the need for unity and self-determination among Dalits along with broad demands made to the state for better working conditions, abolition of indignity to Dalit workers, the fundamental right to education, livelihood, and decent conditions of life for Dalits.

The League’s activities were supported by a few members of non-Dalit castes in Sulur who were members of the Congress Party452. This support was in the form of providing material resources like venues for holding meetings. Beyond that, there is no evidence to show that other caste members, with shared political party affiliation or otherwise, stood with Jeyaraj and his colleagues on campaigns led under the banner of the League.

The demands related to the drought brought forth by the Thakur Valibar Sangam were taken up at the taluk and district level by the League. The reasons for lack of support for these demands from rich Kallar political actors in Sulur was rather apparent. Further on in this dissertation we will see how many major landlords in Sulur were complicit in perpetrating injustice upon the poorest and the lower castes by hoarding grain during the droughts. Government aid was hard to come by as that too was mediated by the same rich Kallars. Within the limited government aid that reached the poorest, the lower castes were further marginalized and only received what was left after the poor Kallars received their share. Given this reality, it was impossible for those of the Kallar caste to lobby the government in public to address the exigencies of the drought. Poorer Kallars were making do with that which they could acquire from their richer Kallar

449 Jeyaraj, K. M. யக எம் பஜயராஜ், Nam Nattu Adimaikal நம் நாட்翁 அ羿மமகள் [Slaves of our Nation] (Sulur: unpublished 2017) 450 ibid 451 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 452 Ibid

156 compatriots and thus could not antagonize them in his regard. Meanwhile, rich Kallars were making a profit from the plight of the poor of ALL castes during the droughts. Given this context in Sulur, this issue, taken up by Jeyaraj and his compatriots both through the Sangam and the League, at local and district levels respectively, was perhaps the one that directly, even if unstated, concretely took on the material effects of caste hegemony upon their community.

In both the text and my interview, Jeyaraj’s descriptions of his work with the League is much less than that of the Thakur Valibar Sangam. At the same time, with regards to non-local organizational affiliation, Jeyaraj highlighted his work with the League as being of much depth, enabling him to travel widely in the Coimbatore district and acquire experiential knowledge of Dalit realities453. For the thus far absent comprehensive history of the Depressed Classes League in Tamilnadu, the work of Jeyaraj serves as a significant starting point.

Jeyaraj’s public political work: Bringing together the different strands

Interesting observations can be discerned from the discrepancies between Jeyaraj’s narrative of his public political life in his interview with me and the written manuscript of Nam Naattu Adimaigal. When I asked him about his early work, he listed certain campaigns such as the refusal by Dalits of doing work or engaging in ritual practices traditionally attributed to them – of clearing dead cow carcasses and consuming beef; and of playing the traditional drums at death and temple ceremonies454. He also mentioned campaigns for equal access to public spaces such as shops and restaurants as well as to wells and other resources that were segregated based on the codes of untouchability. He noted that by his early 30s these campaigns were ‘a success’455. This list of campaigns was uncannily like those taken forward by Ambedkar’s Scheduled Caste Federation (SCF). These were taken up to a considerable extent in certain districts of Tamilnadu as well456. There was not much record of this work in Sulur except for this interview with

453 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 454 K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 455 ibid 456 A complete mapping and analysis of the Scheduled Caste Federation and the early Republican Party in Tamilnadu is yet to be done. My early fieldwork in districts of Tamilnadu such as Ambur and Arakkonam yielded wealth of information on how both these organizations were present in their regions. The Dalit writer Azhagiya Periyanvan while speaking of his native village Peranaampattu in Ambur District told me of its many important

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Jeyaraj and my interview with Mr. Dhanraj457. Thus, it is not possible to corroborate his narrative. They could either be campaigns that he did indeed lead, or inaccurate descriptions of such campaigns. The descriptions being heavily borrowed from Ambedkarite politics during this period, along with Jeyaraj’s failing mental health, lead to questions of credibility. But these questions are only with regards to the exact details of the campaign. The socio-spatial conditions against which these campaigns were fought were undisputedly rampant in Sulur.

Spatial segregation and the resultant segregation of resources was the most visible marker of caste-based discrimination in Sulur, as with Tamilnadu in general. The existence of separate wells according to caste are rampant in the Tamil landscape, even today. Specific evidence of this is available from my interviews with those of the Kallar caste who referred to such a separation458. Further, Sulur Varalaaru’s listing of water resources mentions names of wells and all of these names are caste-based459. Spatial segregations as mentioned repeatedly were more than apparent from textual and oral evidence in Sulur. The mapping of shops historically as well as in contemporary Sulur further reaffirmed the persistence of this segregation. For instance, the pork and beef shops were all in the Paraiyar and Arundhathiyar areas.

The denial of entry by Dalits to tea shops and other restaurants on the main road was part of the narrative of all the Dalits whom I interviewed. Mr. Kittusamy and the sweepers while speaking of their everyday work as manual scavengers gave the example of how tea shops would not serve them460. This made it impossible for them to find any refreshments during their work day even though they passed by many tea shops along the way. These shops were on the main roads that they walked on carrying human waste in baskets on top of their heads through the town, before disposing it at the designated dump – a piece of land at the edge of the town. Mr. Kittusamy, contributions to Dalit presence in the public sphere, such as it having the largest number of Ambedkar statues in the district and perhaps in the state, its banning of Dalit practices of Parai drumming, clearing cow carcasses and eating beef etc as part of their participation in the Scheduled Caste Federation’s goals etc. The Federation also stood in the first elections of independent India in 1952 and won many seats from Peranampattu. This is documented in his most recent novel. Other elders of Dalit movements in Ambur and Arakkonam also spoke of their lifelong commitment to the Republican Party although it is unrecognizable today in Tamilnadu when compared to its inception as they joined the Scheduled Caste Federation in the 1940s from which the Republican Party emerged. 457 Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. 458 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 459 Gowthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995) 460 Kittusamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 10th June 2017.

158 however, did not frame it as untouchability but more as a norm that they took for granted which further hardened their work days. Other Dalits such as Mr. Maakali mentioned the lack of access to public spaces such as tea stalls as a symbol of caste oppression461. Irrespective of whether it was identified as caste-based oppression or not by the Dalit interviewees, untouchability in public spaces was commonplace in Sulur during this period.

This theme was corroborated by the narratives of Kallar men, such as Palanisamy, who was of a poor background and whose family migrated for work after the demise of betel leaf farming. He was a DMK and later ADMK member and cultural performer. He declared in passing, as a matter of fact in his interview with me, that ‘it was only after the 1990s that they (Dalits) had begun coming into the ur (the traditional term for parts of a village in the Tamil context that are non-Dalit enclaves) and going to the temples, shops, etc462’. Given that the spatial segregation persists even today, read along with the narratives of educated Dalit men such as Jeyaraj of the 1950-1960s, it was possible that this spatial segregation was noticed and challenged by this new generation of educated Dalits who may have seen themselves as relatively more equal to their Kallar counterparts.

As for the campaign centered on Dalits refusing to engage in traditional ritual practices such as eating beef or playing the drums, there is inadequate evidence of its occurrence, specifically in Sulur. Nevertheless, it urges us to question the relationship between Congress-affiliated Dalits and Ambedkar’s ideas, campaigns and related political outfits such as the Scheduled Caste Federation. Such a connection is either denied or usually assumed to be absent463. Jeyaraj’s life narrative shows clearly that he and his colleagues received inspiration from, engaged with, and promoted Ambedkar and his thoughts, even if they never officially associated with the political party led by him. Jeyaraj’s speeches and his imagination for an alternative world for Dalits included following and celebrating Ambedkar’s political ideas. Thus, while different political parties representing Dalits at state and national levels saw themselves as different unconnected

461 Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. 462 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 463 http://www.india-seminar.com/2012/633/633_anand_teltumbde.htm

159 entities, Dalit political thought and public politics led by Jeyaraj in Sulur was very much influenced by varied political thoughts that were not bound by party affiliations464.

Following from this, it is important to go back to the beginning of this chapter where Jeyaraj, his work, the groups and the fellow Paraiyars he was affiliated with were all silenced in narratives of public politics, both by my interviewees and by Sulur Varalaaru. While addressing this silencing of Dalit participation, it is important to remember that Dalit public political history cannot be framed by the boundaries put forth by political party-based affiliations. In other words, this silence cannot be explained away by the general silencing of Congress party history as being inadequately Tamil within the registers of TamilThanmai. The limits of this argument in general notwithstanding, this explanation would be inadequate in this instance, as the realm of thought and action in the Dalit public political sphere was as diversely inspired as was the public political sphere inhabited by the Kallars. The history of Jeyaraj and his colleagues shows beyond a doubt that they were not bound in thought or action by the Congress or any other party.

My account of the life and work of K.M. Jeyaraj and all the groups, communities and people associated with him and all those he addressed, both those in his physical vicinity and those who were of distant communities, places on record the limits of the imagination of ‘public politics’ by my other interviewees. This, I argue, is aligned with TamilThanmai, which simultaneously provides a register of speech and analysis to Kallar men that enables them to not take cognizance of Dalit lives, realities or political presence even as they place themselves within anti-caste politics.

How does such a TamilThanmai manifest (or not) in the addressing (or lack thereof) of caste- based or Dalit realities in the narratives of my other interviewees of the Kallar caste? What follows is an exploration of both speech and silence that will form a response to this question.

Dalits in public: A survey of language, tone, body language and silence

K.M. Jeyaraj’s absence from the narratives of public politics that I collected was striking, especially given the modalities and stature of his role as a political thinker and leader. I see this

464ibid

160 as indicative of a broader lack of acknowledgement of the existence of Dalits within public political life. Aside from the Dalits who had been mobilized to build Sulur’s church and school, there were many others who had conducted public lives in many capacities. Individual Dalits had been members of the Panchayath from different wards. Many of them were affiliated to one party or another, but it was party members of the Kallar caste who monopolized decision-making powers. I did discern fleeting indications of a few exceptions, but they faced obstacles when they sought active political engagement.

Pattakkarar Sankaran, an elder of the Arundhathiyar caste, was part of many Panchayath Boards from the seat reserved for Dalits. His party affiliations oscillated over the years but largely remained outside of Dravidianist outfits465. When I asked him about his experience in local governance, he spoke of sitting on the floor at the Panchayath office during board meetings. As per caste rule, Dalits were not allowed to sit on chairs in front of Kallars466. In spite of him having acquired a seat, as it were, at the Panchayath Board by virtue of reservations in local elections, traditional caste hierarchy denied him an equal footing. Through his many terms as member of the Panchayath, he said he solely focused on getting drains laid along the streets of Mathiazhagan Nagar where he and other Dalits lived. He was able to achieve this one goal. But beyond that, he did not see the Panchayath Board as a space where he could ensure personal or collective self-affirmation and respect467.

Appan Balasubramaniam, the oldest of all my interviewees, spoke of two candidates who had been independent candidates in the 1965 Sulur Panchayath election for the reserved Scheduled Caste seats468. He casually mentioned that they were ‘taken care of’ by particular persons – whom he named469 – who were from the Kallar caste. Exactly what he meant by ‘taken care of’ was not clarified in the course of the interview. It was evident, however that over several decades, there were barely any independent Scheduled Caste candidates who stood for such

465 Sankaran. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 466 Emmanuel Gnanasekaran sat on a chair in front of Muthuramalinga Thevar – cited as reason for Thevar attacks in Mudukulathur 467 Sankaran. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 468 Balasubramaniam, Appan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, May 29th, 2017. 469 That he could name them in itself indicates impunity. I will refrain from naming them here as I would rather not enter the realm of crimes committed and the accused thereof

161 elections470. The two candidates whom he mentioned seemed to have been intimidated into withdrawing their candidatures. The intimidation was by members of powerful Kallar families, affiliated both with the DMK and the Congress, who were in the habit of marrying into each other’s families471.

Of all the SC candidates backed by Kallar caste politicians from different political parties, MP Arumugam was the one person all my non-Dalit interviewees mentioned as an important leader. He was also duly acknowledged in Sulur Varalaaru. However, this Congress leader who held many posts at state and national level governments, and who had been celebrated by the Kallars, did not receive those same accolades from his own community or family. Simultaneously, the Kallar interviewees who praised his public political life did not deny his subservient relationship to SVL, the Congress leader and Kallar landlord. None of my interviewees could say much about his political thoughts, interests or actions, independent of SVL, except for fleeting references to MP Arumugam’s Gandhian ideals. Even as MP Arumugam serves as the only exception to the general invisibility of Dalits in Sulur’s history of public political life, it is almost impossible to discern what constituted his political beliefs, way of being or sense of self. All the evidence I have indicates only that he was a token Dalit figure/leader who remained within the hierarchies of caste even as he engaged in public life at the highest echelons of governance in the country.

As I wrote this chapter, I searched through my interviews for clues to map Dalit presence within Sulur’s public politics. I listened carefully to the words and silences of my interviewees. I read my field notes on body language and my own immediate responses during and right after the interviews. Unsurprisingly, there was an overwhelming sense of the presence of caste. It was inescapable, much like the air we breathed. Simultaneously, it was hard to trace the specifics of the presence or even the absence of Dalit bodies in the public political sphere. The reasons for this deserve a closer investigation.

But before that, a quick reiteration of the broad context within which my interviewees lived their own public political lives is in order. These men of the Kallar caste were mostly of working-class

470 This mention by Appan was one example. Pattakkarar Sankaran also implied that the only way to stand for the SC/ST seat was to affiliate to one or the other political party 471 Balasubramaniam, Appan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, May 29th, 2017.

162 backgrounds. They worked in the textile mills in the area or owned small shops – provision stores or other small businesses. Many began in their late teens or early twenties as temporary workers living on minimal wages. By the time I met them, they had either retired from employment as permanent mill workers or were still running small businesses. The retired mill workers subsisted on meagre pensions. During their working lives, they had fulfilled their responsibilities to children by making sure they had some small amount of property – land, house or other assets. They had married off those offspring, mostly to those of the same caste, with a few exceptions. Their everyday lives, from the 1950s to when they retired in the 1990s, was broadly as follows: Almost all of them bicycled about 10 kilometers to get to work every day. After finishing their shift around 4pm they did paper work or attended meetings at party- affiliated union offices. They left the neighborhood of the mill around 5pm and reached home within the next hour. After a quick wash and a cup of tea, many would make their way to the Anjaneya Gym, and after 1964, the Jeyamaruthi Gym. It is important to reiterate how important the gym was as a site for political mobilization, and for generating deep, everlasting affective ties: a space where they made their sense of selves.472 After spending a few hours at the gym, they would go home, have dinner and often return to sleep at the gym. If they slept at home at night, they returned to the gym at about 5 or 6am. So went their days. In all these spaces – the gym, tea shops, shops run by their compatriots, reading rooms – they read newspapers, discussed politics and organized themselves for election work or other political activities. All my interviewees of the Kallar caste followed such a routine everyday of their lives for close to 40 years. I felt their commitment to public politics and the deep value it held for them in my interviews. They had immense faith in the principles espoused by the political formations to which they were committed, whether the Congress, the Dravidian movement, or Communism. They thoughtfully chose which political strand to follow based on extensive reading, conversations with peers, and their life experiences.

Iyyasamy, who began as a beedi worker, now runs a small corner shop and was the first to open an automobile repair shop in Sulur. He described his early public political life as follows:

“We read newspapers – all of them. I read it all. We would debate. We may not have read (advanced theorization) Marx or Engels. But this (decision to be Communist) is based on my

472 The gym as a site for public political history is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.

163 conscience. I would do wall writing. Dance. Sing. Act. Go to jail. I have accepted Communism from within my heart. No other principle touched me… as the character in the Malayalam film Chemmeen473 says, “saahumvarai Communist” I will remain a communist till I die.474”

Iyyasamy was from a poor family. His education ended in the 6th grade because of an eye injury which his family could not afford to treat. While acutely aware of his lack of formal education, he was simultaneously proud of the sense of self produced by his choice to be engaged in public politics475. All my interviews were filled with anecdotes such as this one. I heard of the winds of change that political principles brought to them, whether from Dravidianist leaders, or for some, via Communism. Similarly, the affective ties they built with one another to embody this political life, every single day of their lives, was a significant part of their identities and existences.

It is from this larger context that the absence of Dalit persons, spaces and issues in such political imaginations must be understood. I see TamilThanmai as involving such a sharp contrast: the absence of Dalit lives and politics; along with inspired public political lives that were based on anti-caste politics that provided potential for self-affirmation, against the ongoing realities of caste as the fundamental structure within which they lived and breathed, as non-Dalit, non- Brahmin men. This contradiction leads me to ask: where is the place that caste, as a structural entity which places Kallar men as oppressed by Brahmins and oppressive of Dalits, is located within TamilThanmai? What about the place for Dalits, their realities and the resultant public political lives, within TamilThanmai?

To begin with, none of my interviewees mentioned Dalit persons, issues or spaces within Sulur unless I explicitly asked them. Their political lives in entirety were spatially based around the areas that I mapped in and around the present day Panchayath Office. It was within that circumference of 5 kilometers or so that the gym, reading rooms, Anna Kalai Arangam, the Panchayath Office and other political spaces were placed. These were all built on streets that were traditionally inhabited by Kallars and Sulur’s other non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes. This spatiality lay at the very crux of the caste-based boundedness of the public politics of Sulur.

473 Chemmeen is an iconic film that put forth political ideals of the Communist party in Malayalam, the language spoken in the neighboring state of Kerala, which has always been a Communist stronghold. 474 Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017. 475 ibid

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What was striking to me was that despite the clear presence of these boundaries, my interviewees seemed to barely notice them. In our conversations, they barely commented on them. This was not surprising. Such a lack of acknowledgement of these spatial boundaries of Sulur’s public politics serves as an extension of the idea of ‘ur’ and ‘cheri’ that defined the caste-based spatiality of society at large476. The ‘ur’ was where Brahmin and non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes lived. Dalit enclaves – the cheri – were segregated spaces meant only for Dalit castes. They were often separated by main roads as in Sulur. Following from this caste segregation that defined the character of public political spaces, the Thakur Valibar Sangam building never featured in the list of public political institutions that my interviewees mentioned. Nor did it appear in Sulur Varalaaru. The public political lives of my Kallar interviewees were spatially and mentally bound by the demarcation of the ‘ur’. The cheri was invisible in this imagination. So much so that there was not even an explicit attempt to actively exclude it. The cheri, its people and their politics simply did not exist for those of the Kallar caste.

As with space, with language, the caste system was all pervasive. Sinnaiyan spoke of Mr. Kittusamy, his contemporary in age, if not older, in the singular, informal register – a clear linguistic marker of disrespect477. Such wording was common practice among almost all my interviewees. Pechchumuthu was one of the few amongst the Kallar men who had actively worked amidst the Arundhathiyar to mobilize them into Communist and union politics. Nevertheless, his language too was infantilizing and patronizing of the members of the Arundhathiyar caste478. Comrade Valluvarasan and Thalaivar Thangavelu were the only two interviewees of the Kallar caste who did not use such ways of speaking. Ongoing engagement with contemporary political processes seems to have sensitized them to the need for avoiding such disrespectful language. However, they too did not show any explicit awareness of the caste- bounded nature of how they viewed their public political life. Such linguistic practices meant that my interviewees were enacting oppressive caste roles even as they held a deep affective tie to the registers of Dravidian anti-caste political language.

476 Mines, Diane. P. 2010. “Lost and Found: Villages between Anthropology and History." In Village Matters: Relocating Villages in the Contemporary Anthropology of India, edited by Nicolas Yazgi and Diane P. Mines. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 477 Sinnaiyan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 9th June 2017. 478 Pechchumuthu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 14th March 2017.

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Sinnaiyan, a longstanding member of the DMK and a member elected to multiple Sulur Panchayaths over the years, epitomized the caste-kin boundedness of the DMK’s local mobilization. He spoke with pride of the family connections, sometimes extending even across party lines, amongst Kallar families in Sulur as a way to illustrate the extent of political mobilization479. Sinnaiyan’s interview was the most blatant exposition and celebration of the deep rootedness in caste and kin networks of the acknowledged public politics of Sulur. He placed himself within his caste networks with pride, and as the default location for his political self.

Thalaivar Thangavelu spoke of how the erstwhile Panchayath Chairman and Kallar landlord Karupanna Thevar acted as an efficient leader using traditional caste practices of corporal punishment such as whipping, and other forms of intimidation, to punish anyone who defied him or caused trouble480. In his interpretation, Karupanna Thevar acted as a key member of the hegemonic caste to assure ‘good governance’. This helped to establish Dravidian politics and eventually, the DMK, as the one party that stood for such principles of honesty and good governance. Karupanna Thevar’s actions, ostensibly aimed to advance the ‘public good’ by raising money to build extra wards at the local government hospital, routinely used traditional modes of Kallar landlord power, for instance, the imposition of cess on farmers at the weekly market481. Sulur’s lore abounds of Karupanna Thevar and other leading Kallar families, who had Congress and DMK affiliations, riding around on horseback to collect money from the market vendors482. Yet again, even for a person as conscious as Thalaivar Thangavelu, this celebration of traditional caste practices within the realm of public politics, by those who espoused Dravidianist anti-caste principles, was a symbol of pride rather than a contradiction.

Returning to my search for Dalit persons within the narratives of public politics in Sulur, I found silence. This silence has engulfed the expansive public life of a person such as K.M. Jeyaraj or a process such as the community mobilization to build the church. My Kallar interviewees’ descriptions of a public political life that was clearly bound, limited, and defined by caste,

479 Sinnaiyan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 9th June 2017. 480 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 481 ibid 482 ibid

166 proceeded alongside such a silence about other spaces and people in Sulur. One important exception to this is the repeated mention of the sweepers employed by the Panchayath and the history of the struggle to ensure their essential needs in Sulur Varalaaru483. The Kallar Panchayath presidents who contributed to that as part of their mandate within local governance are celebrated in the text484. This is and another instance of how the relationship between Kallar Panchayath leaders and the Arundhathiyar sweepers reproduced traditional caste relationships and hierarchies within the new formations of local governmentality.

It is important to juxtapose such a silence about Dalit people and their politics in Sulur’s Kallar narratives, with the ways in which Dalit narratives speak of Kallar political spaces and formations. The Congress party did see the participation of some Dalits from Sulur. On the other hand, the Sulur DMK did not have such an involvement. Dalits in Sulur did not become members of the party, frequent its reading rooms, gyms, or any of the other spaces I have described. While the Congress party and its leaders do feature in Dalit narratives, the DMK and its leaders, regional and local, feature at best as a process that the Dalits bore witness to from outside, from the cheri. While Periyar and his principles garnered some marginal respect among Dalit interviewees, this did not extend to Anna or Karunanidhi, the main Dravidianist leaders of the 1950s-1970 era.

Nonetheless, it is significant that with the exception of MP Arumugam, the Congress party itself did not seem to inspire loyalty amongst the Dalits. At best it is spoken of as a context within which they found some space to speak or act within public politics. As was clear from K.M. Jeyaraj’s life, Ambedkar garnered the type of respect that his Congress contemporaries Gandhi and Nehru did not. Even the minimal distant respect that such national Congress leaders garnered did not extend to local Congress leaders such as SVL, nor even the prominent non-Brahmin, non-Dalit Congress leader and erstwhile Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, K. Kamaraj. Even though the silence isn’t unidirectional, the effects of this mutual silence must be understood within the

483 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010) 484 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010)

167 context of the two groups – Kallars and Dalits – being organized hierarchically in caste society rather than it being a lateral organization.

In the context of this overwhelming silence along with the extant profound contradictions within the imaginations of the public political sphere, putting on record K.M. Jeyaraj’s life history is of enormous significance. His complex relationship, both shared and distinct, with the elements of TamilThanmai, adds enormous depth to our understanding of the concept.

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Chapter 4 Com. Valluvarasan and Su.Ra. Subramaniam: Writing the history of public politics in and through friendship

‘Agamum puramum pirikka mudiyuma thozhar?’

(Can we separate the interior and exterior lives, comrade?)

This chapter explores a deep and lasting friendship between Comrade Valluvarasan and Su.Ra. Subramaniam and the layers it adds to our understanding of TamilThanmai. These two Kallar men from poor backgrounds had a friendship encompassing decades and many of life’s twists and turns for both. During my time in Sulur, Su.Ra., a significant figure in the local DMK, died. An event of great sadness for many in Sulur, in and out of the party. He remained a member of the party till the day he died.

On May 8, 2016, a memorial meeting to remember Su. Ra and to commemorate his life was organised by his dear friend, Comrade Valluvarasan, the one radical left communist of that generation. Comrade Valluvarasan owned a shoe shop that he appeared to run with no discernable interest in profit-making. It was located in the Thangam Shopping Complex, opposite the bus stop, on the Trichy Highway485. My days in Sulur began with a cup of tea at Com. Valluvarasan’s shop. There we discussed the interviews of the previous day and those that I was to do that day. Every day, Valluvarasan and I discussed this research as well as contemporary political questions about Tamilnadu and elsewhere. We debated at length about philosophical ideas related to Marxism and how they connected to the Tamil context. The shoe shop existed as a space for political conversations rather than as a business enterprise for most people in Sulur, as it did for me.

Com. Valluvarasan is the only person I interviewed in Sulur whom I referred to as thozhar, the Tamil word for Comrade. He preferred thozhar, unlike everyone else, whom I called ‘ayya’ – a

485 Figure 2

169 less professional, familiar, and familial rendition of the English term ‘sir.’ He in turn called me thozhar, following the convention in Communist circles486.

Com. Valluvarasan is an anomaly in Sulur. He was never financially successful despite owning a business. He rode a run-down motorbike and his children are not as well-placed economically compared to those of some other interviewees. These circumstances relate to the unique relationship he had to his political principles and to the nature of his participation in the public political sphere. Since he left the DMK in the late 1960s he has been affiliated with Communist political outfits487. While many in Sulur saw him as part of a broader pattern of DMK politicization in the 1950-1960s, they were cautiously respectful of his move to the extreme left.

In this dissertation, the public political life of Com. Valluvarasan helps me understand better the persistence of TamilThanmai across party lines and through the changes in the public political lives of his generation. Simultaneously, his fringe status vis-a-vis Sulur’s current mainstream political networks (by virtue of his Communist affiliation), allowed for much more open conversations about the Dravidianist public sphere than conversations with interviewees still linked to the DMK or the ADMK. While his responses with regards to caste or class-based perspectives were not radically different from that of my other interviewees, the fact that he had been disillusioned by the DMK, causing big shifts in his public political life, made for a freer space for conversations around such issues. Com. Valluvarasan’s warm, friendly demeanor and the sheer routine of my everyday contact with him created a trusted relationship that further expanded our space to have open and critical conversations.

The shoe shop as a space for political conversation needs to be historically contextualized in line with the spatial approach that is core to this dissertation. The Thangam Shopping Complex, where the shop is located, is part of the cluster of buildings including the bus stop, Anna Kalai Arangam, and the Panchayath Office, which I have discussed as key spaces from which I trace

486 The use of the term ‘comrade’ changes the dynamic between Com. Valluvarasan and I. It embodies at least a potential for equality despite gender, caste, and age differences. In the Tamil context, in a space like Sulur, this alone is revolutionary and inspired in me a fondness and comfort that made Com.Valluvarasan and his shop a trusted anchor to my fieldwork experience. 487 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017.

170 the history of Sulur’s public political lives488. Meeting and speaking with Com. Valluvarasan and others at the shoe shop provided a profound sense of historical continuity. They would simply point to areas across the street or next to the shopping complex while we attempted to map Sulur’s public political life.

Com. Valluvarasan’s shop was also aligned with the mapping of caste and class hierarchies that formed a key context to understand the nature of public politics in Sulur. Thangam Shopping Complex was owned by U.Ki.Na. Rasu and his family, who also owned a bus company of the same name. This company possessed the largest government contract to run public buses between Sulur and other places in Tamilnadu. The Rasu family has been one among Sulur’s many significant actors in the DMK since the 1960s. U.Ki.Na. Rasu featured briefly in Chapter 3 of this dissertation as the Dravidianist leader who organized one of the many trips that Periyar made to Sulur, one of which was the occasion when the young K.M. Jeyaraj met the leader. The Rasu family had provided this shoe shop, a lucrative rental property given its prime location, at a discounted rent and with a relative ease of renter-landlord relationship, to Com. Valluvarasan489. This was part of a long-standing tradition of many forms of patronage by wealthier DMK members of those from their own Kallar caste who were from poorer backgrounds and were fellow party members. Thus, Com. Valluvarasan, in spite of having left the DMK, continued to participate in the spatial and material structures that were available to ease one’s life and livelihood, via caste identity.

Com. Valluvarasan himself mentioned Su.Ra. Subramaniam to me. He told me that Su.Ra. was his friend and close confidante and an important part of his life490. Even then, I did not realize the depth of their friendship until Su.Ra’s death. It was only as I bore witness to Com. Valluvarasan’s grief and how he sought to memorialize his friend that I was able to understand the depth and pervasiveness of this relationship in the lives of both men.

Com. Valluvarasan, in my interview with him after Su.Ra’s death, he referred to his relationship with Su.Ra as ‘deiveega uravu’ – a sacred relationship491. Com. Valluvarasan and Su.Ra had

488 Figure 2 489 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017. 490 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 491 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

171 known each other their entire lives. Both men belonged to poor Kallar families and had been wage workers from a very young age. Like their fathers and mothers before them, they had worked on fields and farms as children. These belonged mostly to richer Kallars, but some also belonged to other non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes such as Gounders, Naidus and Nayakkars. They were daily wage workers who earned as little as 1.5 annas a day during the 1950s492.

As with every person with a similar class and caste background that I interviewed, Com. Valluvarasan began his narrative speaking of the trials and tribulations he and his family faced during the droughts and famines that plagued Sulur at different points throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He described camping outside the Panchayath Office all night for grain when the famine hit in 1956. As young men in their late teens or early twenties in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he and his friend, along with others, moved into jobs in provision stores owned by local wealthy Kallars such as SRS – the older brother of Thalaivar Thangavelu and erstwhile Panchayath President. In those shops their wages were 1.50 rupees a day, a step up from the measly daily wages earned from agricultural work. As shop workers, Com. Valluvarasan told me of their pioneering role in the formation of the first Provision Store Workers Union in Sulur493.

The next big change in their work lives involved brief stints as workers in the various textile mills in the area, but they, unlike some of my other interviewees, did not last in those jobs. Com. Valluvarasan had told me how his commitment to the DMK from the early 1960s onwards made him a bad millworker – in his own words, he was uninterested and a trouble-maker494. Being a committed and passionate party member at that time meant that they often missed work or came late to work as a result of participating in Party related activities. As a result, mill managers and owners alike shunned him. A parallel to this narrative is that of his friend Su.Ra. Throughout the early 1960s, as they consolidated their deep commitment and carried out their everyday service to the DMK, they were identified as imprudent workers and as perennial trouble-makers in the mills495.

492 From Naatrayan interview – wage rates for minors at that time in Sulur 493 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017. 494 ibid 495 ibid

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They both returned to work in provision stores till both men set up their own businesses in the early 1970s. While Su.Ra became a successful businessman, Com. Valluvarasan never quite desired or achieved financial success. Meanwhile, Su.Ra rose through the ranks of the DMK as a celebrated singer, dancer and orator496, and Com. Valluvarasan left the party and became a

Communist497.

Before his death, I first heard of Su.Ra. as one of the many names that Com. Valluvarasan mentioned as being his compatriots in the DMK during the 1950s to 1970498. It did appear to me, from his narrative and tone, that they shared a special relationship as party members. He spoke solemnly of them having been inseparable as young men in the DMK499. I did not then have enough evidence to understand the depth of this relationship, or any specific reason, from the perspective of my research, to prod him further on this particular friendship. Su.Ra himself was too ill to speak with me. Nevertheless, I was keen on mapping Su.Ra’s life as he was of the same generation as my other interviewees, seemed to be an important figure in Com. Valluvarasan’s life, and based on the narratives of many of my other interviewees500, undoubtedly played a key role in DMK cultural productions and propaganda, from the 1950s to 1970.

To advance my goal of mapping Su.Ra’s life and political trajectory, Com. Valluvarasan suggested Su.Ra’s son, Tamizharasan, as a possible lead501. Tamizharasan was not, however, too keen on speaking with me about his father. The son had moved across parties many times. At the time of my fieldwork, he was a member of the Tamilnadu Congress Party. By profession, he was a lawyer, active in the Bar Association at the Coimbatore High Court. Com. Valluvarasan and others whom I met of Su. Ra’ generation viewed Tamizharasan’s changing political affiliations as corrupt, especially when they viewed those as political choices of the son of a respected father such as Su.Ra. They conveyed a sense that the son had brought shame to his father’s ‘pure’ and

496Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க. ힿன் கலைஞர் ஒ뾿லாட் ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown). 497 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017. 498 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 499 ibid 500 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. And Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017. 501 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

173 consistent political ideals. When I did, eventually, engage Tamizharasan for an interview, Su.Ra had already died. The son’s grief did not make for the right circumstances in which I could interview him about his father’s life. Just when I had almost given up on finding sources to piece together Su.Ra’s life, I found Su.Ra’s autobiography which was woven through a book of DMK songs that he had compiled. This book was a significant source for my research, the only one that brought Su.Ra’s voice into this narrative.

Su.Ra’s death and Com.Valluvarasan’s role in his remembrance was the moment that illustrated to me the enormous significance of this relationship to both men as well as to those connected to them by kin, party affiliation, and other ties. After the memorial to Su.Ra was over, I began asking Com. Valluvarasan specific questions about his friend and their friendship. From those exchanges, I pieced together more aspects of Su.Ra’s life502. Other interviewees, across political parties, spoke of how Su.Ra was the chief singer in many party campaigns; how he had a beautiful voice that could energize a crowd503. His role in DMK cultural productions and propaganda from the late 1950s onwards – first as a student and then as a leader and teacher – was rooted in Sulur’s public political spaces but reached widely across Tamilnadu504. It was that central place that Su.Ra inhabited which caused his death to reverberate among many of his generation. The memorial organized by Com.Valluvarasan consolidated this public impact upon present-day Sulur.

This chapter is based on four main sources: the many hours of interviews with Com. Valluvarasan, information gathered about Su.Ra from other interviews, Su.Ra’s autobiography and the materials gathered at the memorial – visual, textual and oral

A key focus for this chapter is what we learn from these sources about TamilThanmai from the relationship between these two men, Su.Ra and Com.Valluvarasan. First, the persistence of its various elements across party lines – DMK, Congress or Communist. We will also explore how the persistence of their friendship exposes an important element of TamilThanmai, so far largely unaddressed. It reveals the ways in which such a friendship can blur the boundaries between

502 ibid 503 Recording of speeches at Su. Ra. Memorial Meeting. Sulur. May 8th. 2017. 504 Thangavelu, Su. Ra. 毂. ர. தங்கயவ쯁, Sulur Ullatchchi Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் உள்ளாட்殿 வரலா쟁 [History of Local Governance in Sulur] (Sulur: Makkal Nala Arrakkattalai, 2010)

174 private and public realms. While for the most part my interviewees kept their private realm outside of the realm of ‘politics’, this friendship tells a different story.

Apart from seeking to keep the private realm separate and resolutely unrelated to their public political lives, my interviewees spoke of ‘settling down’ into domestic lives as the beginning of the end of their sustained public political life – the end of the ‘passionate’ period as it were. The private realm evoked in those interviews comprised their wives and children and other extended family. This unit played a vital role in maintaining the practices of caste and kin at home, in contrast to the public realm where my interviewees spoke of how they evolved a sense of self and way of being that challenged those very norms.

The story of Su.Ra and Com. Valluvarasan’s friendship, however, is one that overtly blurs these boundaries. Su.Ra’s children refer to Com. Valluvarasan as periyappa – father’s elder brother. I observed that they did so at the memorial event505. This is very significant as this kin-relation is one of enormous weight in Tamil society. The periyappa is the oldest patriarch after the father and the one who presides over all rituals in the family. This is different from and outranks the relationship with a mama – mother’s younger brother – the usual term to feature amongst families that are involved in friendships made through political participation. The mama does not have the same level of power within the kin hierarchy. It was Com. Valluvarasan’s position as a fictive periyappa, bestowed upon him by Su.Ra, that allowed the former to hold sway over how Su.Ra was memorialized.

This kin position that Com. Valluvarasan held in Su.Ra’s family is not surprising when we examine how Valluvarasan described their friendship in terms of the public and private realms. ‘Agamum puramum pirikka mudiyuma thozhar?’ (‘Can we separate the interior and exterior lives, comrade?’) Com. Valluvarasan asked me one day506. The words, agam and puram in another context, can be just as easily translated into private and public respectively in English. However, Valluvarasan did not use the everyday terms in modern Tamil to refer to the private life, ‘thani vazhkkai’ and public life, ‘podhu vazhkkai’. Instead he used the terms derived from the fundamental classification of ancient Tamil literature.

505 Field work notes at Su. Ra. Memorial Meeting. Sulur. May 8th. 2017. 506 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

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This classification of agam and puram and its relevance to understanding ancient Tamil economy, society, and politics has been studied and debated extensively507. To provide the full context of the terms Valluvarasan used, an explanation of it by the scholar Burton Stein is useful:

“Classical Tamil poetry has rightly been characterized as rich in social and cultural detail. In its two principal forms-the "interior," lyrical akam form (from which "Tamilakam") and the "exterior," courtly puram form-a self-conscious Tamil culture is depicted. Variations within a single, general culture are not only acknowledged but also poetically exploited by reference to five conventionalized physiographical contexts, or poetic situations (tinai), of the Tamils-five "landscapes," each possessing a profuse assemblage of floral and faunal symbols upon which the imagery of the poetry depends. These categories (which are set forth in the major early text of Tamil poetics, the Tolkcappiyam) possess a quality of verisimilitude, as if referring to actual and particular physical settings in the southern peninsula; but it is not their purpose to have real-place specificity. Rather, these are the natural contexts of love relationships, which are the subject of akam poems508”

The question of to what extent agam and puram connote ‘real-place specificity’ is a matter of much debate509. But what is relevant to our understanding here is the consensus that the spatial classification of Sangam literature510 (of works from 2nd C BC to 2nd C AD), both the tinai (landscapes) and the agam and puram – are all the ‘natural context’ for love relationships. To further elucidate the relationship between the agam and puram, it is useful to quote from Leonard Nathan’s summary of the conventions around the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ and the corresponding ‘human response’ and ‘objective world’ in Sangam poetry. In his review of the classic translation and analysis of Sangam literature by A. K. Ramanujam called The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, Nathan says:

“The very conventionality of Cankam suggests that concern with the objective world was insignificant, whereas concern with the world of human response was central. The outer world serves the inner world, lending it the tools to communicate the passions and nuances of feeling possible to the kind of love that the poets’ value511”

507 Stein, Burton. "Circulation and the Historical Geography of Tamil Country." The Journal of Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (1977): 7-26. 508 ibid 509 ibid 510 Ramanujan, A. K. 1994. The interior landscape: love poems from a classical Tamil anthology. Delhi [u.a.]: Oxford University Press. 511 Nathan, Leonard. "A NEW PASSAGE TO INDIA." Mahfil 4, no. 3/4 (1968): 113-18.

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Almost as a direct personalization of these conventions of Sangam poetry, Com. Valluvarasan’s words were, ‘puraththula valarndha natpu agathukku poi vazhndhuvaruthu’ – ‘a friendship that began in the ‘puram’ (public/exterior/objective), moved into the ‘agam’ (private/interior/human emotion), and lives on there512’. This form of expression is an established mode through which a Tamil person with knowledge and love of the language and its literature would describe their deep emotional space. It is also common within the literary conventions of public speech that are more emotive in the performative sense, bred particularly within the Dravidianist public sphere513.

To clarify further the background for Valluvarasan’s mode of speaking and his use of agam and puram, it is also important to understand the context of my interview with him in which he spoke this way. Our interview was, by this point, a trusted space, bordering the ‘interior’ while resolutely in the ‘exterior’. We sat at the shoe shop as he told me this, visibly grieving his friend even as he held himself together. He spoke with the sense of urgency that sets in when documenting lives and history at moments of death. The depth of this friendship as communicated through the literary register that Valluvarasan employed, made it imperative that I paused to understand the interior and exterior of TamilThanmai. It went much beyond the simple separation of realms that my other interviewees had sought to convey.

The translation of agam and puram in tandem with their literary context provided an analysis that marked space for a nuanced reading of the private and public realms, the boundaries between the two and the blurring of such boundaries. For those outside of this friendship, this relationship – not bound by blood, with divergent political paths and with a steadily growing economic divide – appeared to be iconic. It was unique for having survived political differences and for temporally persisting beyond the youthful, pre-marriage affinities that my interviewees described.

Spatially, as with all my interviewees, this friendship had begun in the public political space of the provision store. It had taken root on the shared class realities of poor Kallar men. But where

512 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 513 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

177 it departed from the narratives of my other interviewees was through its persistence in the ‘interior’ even as the ‘exterior’ faced numerous divergences. The two men’s friendship emerged out of the shared economic and political context of most of my interviewees. However, its persistence through life and death was unique, and was recognized as such by all. The dance of the interior and exterior within the friendship and the recognition and celebration of this dance by others will be the methodological core of this chapter. This is its main contribution to our overall understanding of TamilThanmai.

This chapter seeks to conduct an exploration of Com. Valluvarasan’s public political life based primarily on extensive interviews and daily interactions. The second section moves on to examine Su.Ra’s public political life – as I mentioned earlier, the sources here are fewer, primarily his autobiography and the evidence gathered at and after the memorial. Throughout both these sections, the interspersing and blurring of the agam and puram will be highlighted. Further, based on these two histories, the nature of their friendship and its contribution to our understanding of TamilThanmai will be highlighted in the last section of the chapter.

Com. Valluvarasan

In my very first interview with Com. Valluvarasan, he narrated an anecdote that marked a watershed moment in his public political life. It began with Anna’s Thambikku Kaditham (Letter to my younger brother), the text that was a potent evocation within the Dravidian public sphere in this period. Com. Valluvarasan was one among many young men of the Dravidianist persuasion in the 1960s who read it and was inspired to act. As part of his commitment to following the call of his leader, Anna, he wrote a letter to the highest police officer in the district exposing the corruption within rice sales and hoarding during the 1967 famine. He witnessed that corruption as an employee at the provision store. The letter exposed the complicity of the powerful Kallar landlords who owned the stores. Further, it exposed the complicity of the government officials in Sulur, who were from the same caste, class and often family as the store owners514.

514 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017.

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These dominant members of Sulur society were also the local leaders of the DMK. They interrogated Valluvarasan about this letter, which they saw as a betrayal of his caste and party affiliation. He replied earnestly, quoting his leader Anna515. Anna, after taking charge as Chief Minister following the DMK’s first electoral victory in 1967, had in his text Thambikku Kaditham invited the thambi (younger brother)516 to be more vigilant than ever before. He warned that if there was to be any corruption now, ‘it would not be actions we can blame on others but that we would be responsible for ourselves, as we are in power.517’ Taking this call to heart, young Valluvarasan had written the letter. In it he exposed the practices of the store owners secretly sending rice to the District Collector – the top-most government official for the district – and other government officials518. This was at a time when the people of Sulur, particularly the poorest among them, were starving and were dependent on government-issued rations to stay alive.

Valluvarasan, in his youthful exuberance, believed that at least some sections of the local DMK leadership would celebrate him for this act. He assumed that his diligence in following Anna’s call would be of some value. If not a local party member, he thought that at least someone in the government would appreciate him for being a whistle-blower. ‘Medal kuduppangannu nenachen, pedal eduthuttaanga’(I thought they would give me a medal, but they unleashed violence upon me instead) he said519. In Tamil, this sentence is one of dark humor about the threat as well as actual intimidation and violence that he endured as a result of his actions. Even at the moment of intimidation, armed with integrity and a proud sense of self that the Dravidian public sphere as embodied in Anna’s words had given him, he declared his intentions proudly. Those who were enacting violence upon him were fellow DMK members and his caste kin. To them, he said he was doing his duty as a committed thambi to their leader Anna. The local DMK leaders, however, dismissed and ridiculed his loyalty to Anna’s words. They intimidated him into writing a letter rescinding his complaint. Valluvarasan succumbed to the pressure. He knew that if he did

515 ibid 516 Arignar Anna. அ잿ஞர் அண்ணா, Thambikku Annavin Kadithankal தம்ꮿக்埁 அண்ணாힿன் க羿தங்கள் [Letters from an Older Brother to his Younger Brother] (Chennai: Perumaai Puthakalayam, 2010) 517 ibid 518 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017. 519 ibid

179 not do so he would be out of a job and would have to live in fear. His family too, afraid for his life and safety, pleaded with him to drop the matter and write an apology letter520.

For Valluvarasan, it was clear at this moment that his beloved DMK was, in effect, the party of the local landlords and leaders. It was not the party of the ‘people’ and the ‘thambi’ as had been proclaimed in the writings and oratory of the Dravidian movement521. He saw that the values of ‘standing by the downtrodden’ or ‘holding up high the Tamil language, its people and its pre- formed just and egalitarian Dravidian society’ were all subject to mediation by the DMK leaders, Sulur’s elite. The lived reality of a poor Kallar man, with all the marginalization he endured and the connected class hierarchy that he observed, was not eradicated by the sense of self, way of being and the potential for self-affirmation that was provided by the Dravidian movement. To the contrary, his way of being and sense of self were a threat to those who held power within the Dravidian public sphere both in the DMK and within the local government.

Valluvarasan would leave the DMK in a few years after this incident. The massacre of Dalits in Keezhvenmani in 1968522, while the DMK held state power, he told me, was yet another significant moment in his political life, especially with regards to his affiliation to the DMK. He vividly described the moment when he read the news of the massacre. He said it ‘hit him like a bolt of lightning’. It changed him irrevocably. This and the reaction to his letter were the turning points of his public political life. But his official transition across political parties was slower and more complicated.

Here, a caveat about Com. Valluvarasan’s relationship or lack thereof to Dalit communities and their public politics is essential. Com. Valluvarasan was among the few of my interviewees who, in his register of speech, refrained from using the disrespectful singular while referring to Dalits. However, in his public political life, just like almost all the others, he had not engaged with Dalit communities. The hindrances to such a cross-caste involvement within public politics – spatial, social and affective – have already been established. It is important to note here that it is

520 ibid 521 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 522 Kanagasabai, Nithila, The Din of Silence - Reconstructing the Keezhvenmani Dalit Massacre of 1968 in SubVersions, Vol.2, Issue.1, (2014), 105- 130.

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TamilThanmai and its anti-caste register that allowed Valluvarasan to feel indignant about the horrors of faraway Keezhvenmani. Simultaneously, it enabled him to leave unchallenged the lack of engagement with caste hierarchies in his immediate vicinity and everyday life.

Chronologically, Com. Valluvarasan’s political transitions are non-linear. In his interviews with me, he mentioned reading about the story of Chitti Babu523, the DMK leader who lost his life after having endured violence in prison during the 21 months of Emergency Rule enforced by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. During this time all civil rights were suspended, and any dissent was brutally suppressed524. Chitti Babu was among many DMK leaders who were imprisoned and subjected to violent repression. This was because of the DMK’s role as a vocal party holding power at the state level that defied the Prime Minister’s ‘emergency rule’.

During the Emergency, the Communist Party, which had endured many splits by then, was reeling from the internal chaos. This caused it to have varied reactions to the declaration of Emergency Rule. For Com. Valluvarasan, the brave defiance by DMK leaders against a blatant violation of democratic rights served as an inspiration, even if his commitment to the party itself had been shaken. The DMK defiance of emergency rule was narrativized in the Tamil context, not just as being part of their defense of democratic rights, but of being in the continuum of opposing that which was imposed upon Tamilnadu by the Indian government. Chitti Babu’s story then, in line with TamilThanmai, is iconic as ‘Tamil’ defiance of ‘Indian’ rule, just as the anti-Hindi agitations from previous decades were. The DMK resistance to Emergency Rule is not to be taken lightly. Simultaneously, the meanings of such a resistance in the everyday public political life of men such as Valluvarasan can be understood from the perspective of TamilThanmai. It is apparent that in spite of the faith in the DMK and Dravidianism as a whole being shaken irrevocably, Valluvarasan still held dear any defiance from within the Tamil public sphere against an action that was an imposition from ‘India’. It was the defiance against ‘India’ that was of importance to him, and not the defense of democracy.

Just as with the DMK, Com. Valluvarasan’s engagement with Communism too, did not fall within a linear timeline. Com. Valluvarasan’s exposure to Communist ideas partially coincided

523 சி翍羿 பாꯁவின் சிலற லடரி [Chitti Babu’s Prison Dairy], (Self-published. 1976). 524 http://patwardhan.com/?page_id=222

181 with his time as a member of the DMK. It began with the men he encountered at the provision store who belonged to the two different Communist parties – Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) – that arose after the party split in 1964. As the provision stores functioned as one among the many public spaces which enabled political discussion, Valluvarasan met men of differing political persuasions there.

The specific context of Valluvarasan’s engagement with these Comrades was to learn Tamil from them525. Com. Valluvarasan, like Su.Ra and others of their class backgrounds, had studied only till the 5th grade, after which their families had pulled them out of school. There were no schools in Sulur to study in the higher grades, during the 1950s. Besides, they were considered old enough to work and contribute towards the survival of their poverty-ridden families. As a young man, Com. Valluvarasan wrote university-run examinations that would have enabled him to study further even without completing all the grades at school. He failed in these exams given the lack of support for his learning from within his family and community at large. However, he was adamant about wanting to read and write Tamil. His lack of education and its adverse effects on his knowledge of his mother-tongue was a matter of much despair526. Here again, it is important to note that it is not so much education as a whole that was being sought, or a desire for literacy in general. It was the specific desire to have a grasp over the Tamil language that served as his driving force. This, as we know, is a significant affective aspect of TamilThanmai.

His thirst for Tamil led Valluvarasan to learn the language from the Communist party members who regularly visited the provision store. Even though they hailed from the nearby village of Rasipalayam, the central location of the shop and its proximity to the cluster of spaces that were the hub of political lives in Sulur made such a relationship possible. The store, apart from being a space for conversations, also had subscriptions to political magazines that were then read collectively. The Comrades taught Com. Valluvarasan to read Tamil using magazines published by their respective parties. Through this process they challenged Valluvarasan’s ideas that had emerged from the discourses of Dravidianists leaders, ideas including Tamil antiquity and its pre-formed egalitarianism and unity. They challenged these ideas using examples that Com. Valluvarasan referred to as nadaimurai seythigal – practical/ongoing/everyday realities. These

525 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 526 ibid

182 realities, his Communist Tamil teachers argued, ran counter to the promises of the past and present being evoked by DMK leaders527. The learning of Tamil being the vehicle for Com. Valluvarasan’s exposure to Communism had its own impact and meaning. Along with the Communists’ nadaimurai seythigal’s challenge to DMK promises and imagination, the love of Tamil and pride in it were reaffirmed by Dravidianist as well as Communist influences upon Valluvarasan. For both political strands, Tamil language learning and pride in it are an essential element of public political life. In line with TamilThanmai, the differences in political standpoints across parties did not undo this shared affective relationship to the Tamil language.

Com. Valluvarasan’s process of learning Tamil coincided with his everyday life as a loyal DMK member. He explained the details of this life in our conversations. Many from his class and caste background were, what he referred to as a DMK thondar – a term for a believer or loyal follower, one who was more than a simple party-member. This life of being a thondar to the DMK, he described as coming from a place of veri, the Tamil word for irrational madness. He described his veri repeatedly, for the party and its leaders. He always wore a veshti – the traditional clothing of Tamil men that involves fabric being wrapped around the waist, covering the bottom half of the body (this piece of clothing is common, albeit worn slight differently, among many other communities in different parts of South Asia). His veshti had the DMK colors at its border528.

In stark contrast to this loyalty to the DMK, Com. Valluvarasan illustrated his disinterest in the Congress and his lack of exposure to the party with another anecdote. He narrated an incident where he could not tell the difference between the Indian flag and the Congress Party flag. After the DMK won the elections in 1967, he had seen a government car with the Indian flag on its bonnet, as per official conventions. He was confused as he mistook that flag for the Congress Party flag and wondered why a politician from his party (DMK) was flying a Congress flag!529

As part of being a committed thondar, Su.Ra, Valluvarasan and others went to every DMK meeting in Sulur and tried to attend as many meetings as possible elsewhere. Anna and

527 ibid 528 ibid 529 ibid

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Karunanidhi, he said, were habitually late to every meeting. They waited patiently and with an ‘enormous amount of love for the leaders’, he went on to describe. After turning up, sometimes five to six hours late, Anna, MGR and other leaders made speeches that would include rhythmic alliterations such as ‘maathamo siththirai, neengalo niththirai, poduveer vakku Udayasuriyan muththirai’. This sentence that would inspire loud applause means: It is the month of siththirai (Tamil month from mid-April), you are asleep, and you shall vote for the DMK symbol (the rising sun). The listeners, including himself, he said, lost themselves in the entertaining rhythm, immersed enough to not notice the hollow political content. In another instance, the meeting organizers had requested Karunanidhi, who had turned up many hours late, to regale them with one of his much-coveted speeches. Karunanidhi then publicly asked the large crowd if ‘he should listen to his doctor and not strain himself by speaking too much or if he should die making the speech. You (the people) give me the order and I shall obey.’ Needless to say, the people declared unanimously that he must not speak. The organizers then made sure he safely returned to the local landlord’s lavish home where he and other leaders stayed when they visited Sulur530.

Given the context of this critical voice with which Valluvarasan described his everyday life as a DMK thondar, I asked him why then, on hindsight, does he think he joined the DMK. ‘In my generation, any child born after 1940s here would have been born DMK,’ he declared resolutely. Given the pre-existing influence of the Dravidian Movement in Sulur through the Justice Party, joining its successor party – the DMK – was the default for Valluvarasan’s generation. This default was further reaffirmed by the hours spent in the myriad public political spaces of Sulur: they expressed this commitment by spending nights attending meetings; sticking posters and campaigning during elections; and following instructions from local DMK leaders531. On hindsight, Valluvarasan described this commitment as follows:

‘It wasn’t based on a reasoned belief in the political principles that the DMK stood for. It came from emotions (unarchi)…when emotions (unarchi) get foregrounded, reasonable thought (arivu) gets pushed back.532’

530 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 531 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 532 ibid

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Valluvarasan’s differentiating between unarchi and arivu, from the perspective of TamilThanmai, presents a space for deeper understanding of such public political lives. Valluvarasan did not dismiss this unarchi in the many hours of talk we had. He was aware that it was unarchi that provided the space for self-affirmation for a poor Kallar young man such as himself, who may have otherwise ONLY focused on making ends meet for himself and his family to avoid languishing in the life of poverty that he was born into. This potential and the real consequences of self-affirmation for non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men has been established as a key aspect of TamilThanmai. This must not be underestimated as it was a significant historical process that challenged Brahmin hegemony. For Valluvarasan, a few elements from within Dravidianist politics still inspire unarchi even after all these years and after much turbulence in his political beliefs and actions. The love and pride for the Tamil language is resolutely at the core of his unarchi that began with the DMK and has persisted since. His decision to learn Tamil, even if not otherwise educated, was an indicator of how integral the Tamil language was to his sense of self. His continuing existence as a thinking political subject was deeply tied to this knowledge and grasp of the language. It was not however a simple practical choice of using language as a tool to gain knowledge. It arose from a place of deep affinity and pride as it was presented to him by Dravidianist politics. Further, Valluvarasan, like others in Sulur, is a proponent of the pure Tamil speech inspired by the Paavendar Bharathidasan-led iteration of the Pure Tamil movement of the late 19th Century533. On the whole, it is apparent that in the midst of myriad disillusionments with the Dravidian movement what remains is the love and pride about the Tamil language. This love, it is apparent, is core to his way of being and sense of self, irrespective of his political affiliations and beliefs.

Yet another aspect of Dravidian politics that Com. Valluvarasan returned to repeatedly was its anti-caste principles. Here, it is important to note that he acknowledged the caste-boundedness of the evocations of ‘thambi’ articulated by party leaders and the related gathering of the ‘thondar’ of the DMK. When I asked about Dalits in the public political sphere, he resignedly accepted that he knew of none (except MP Arumugam). He showed awareness of the fact that the evocations of the DMK were addressed primarily to him and others like him - a non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men. Further, he clearly stated that the thondar in Sulur were entirely of the Kallar caste.

533 Kailasapathy, K. 1979. "The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-Evaluation". Social Scientist. 7 (10): 23.

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Simultaneously, he did not seem to think that this caste-boundedness was contradictory to Dravidianist and thus his own anti-caste politics534. TamilThanmai enabled this register of anti- caste language that at once provides a potent critique of caste hegemony while also leaving unnoticed the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit caste-boundedness of everyday public political lives.

In this chapter, such boundedness blurs the boundaries of public and private, interior and exterior, or more accurately the agam and puram. This enables us to understand better the contours of Com. Valluvarasan’s deep held affinity to his anti-caste self. This blurring is connected to another crucial differentiation that Valluvarasan identified between the different political influences in his life. This differentiation was between the celebration of ‘individual achievements’ in Dravidian politics, as opposed to the arasiyal (politics) of living as a munmaadiri (an example), that the Communists taught him. Valluvarasan spoke of how the DMK did not require its members or even its leaders to live as munmaadiris535. To think through how politics was reflected in private lives and marriages, specifically inter-caste marriages, generated succinctly and symbolically useful sites for Com. Valluvarasan to observe this lack of living as an example. He gave the example of inter-caste marriages in families of DMK members – one of the most celebrated symbols of the anti-caste politics of the Dravidian movement536 in general and a matter of much pride in Sulur. He said, some members of the DMK and/or their children, including his own son, married across caste. The major leaders of the Sulur DMK, on the other hand, starting from before the 1950s, and continuing till date, he pointed out, did not do so. Reflecting back on this local history he concluded that his and other ordinary members’ decisions to defy caste in marriage did not have the same political effect that an inter-caste marriage amongst party leaders may have had537. The munmaadiri and ‘individual achievement’ differentiation is as much about the public as it is about the private realms. As a result, a reading of these two comments by Com. Valluvarasan together, enables an analysis of how the agam and puram may interact with this complex nature of TamilThanmai’s anti-caste-ness.

534 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 535 ibid 536 http://abahlali.org/files/story-marriage.pdf 537 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

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Here, it is useful to address the realities and histories of inter-caste marriages in Sulur. Many of my interviewees declared with much pride that inter-caste marriages were very common. I spent my very first day in Sulur at a reception for one such marriage where a DMK party member, a well-to-do banker of the 1980s generation, was celebrating the marriage of his daughter to a groom from the Paraiyar Dalit caste. He himself, a Kallar man, had married across caste albeit to someone of the same status laterally within caste hierarchy. He hosted his daughter’s reception while the groom’s family boycotted the event and the marriage itself. The groom and bride were both employees in an IT company and had met at their workplace. As per Sulur’s traditions, the groom would move to the bride’s side of the town538. Thus, the Dalit groom was to move to the Kallar part of Sulur and they were to live in the manner of any other middle-class couple of their generation, employed in desirable, well-paid, private sector jobs.

My interviewees took great pride in the number of inter-caste couples in Sulur, which involved many of my generation - couples born in the years between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Such couples had had relatively similar educational and employment opportunities, especially in private jobs, irrespective of their caste backgrounds. This made it possible for those young men and women to meet and interact with each other across caste lines, and even marry across those lines. Here it is important to note that it is precisely the DMK-led emphasis on education for those of non-Brahmin castes that made possible the emergence of so many Kallar and Dalit educated individuals who then went on to acquire these secure middle-class jobs. It would however be a misrepresentation if I did not note here that such marriages are far from commonplace in contemporary Tamilnadu. Many such couples have met with brutal ends, especially in the Coimbatore district of which Sulur is a part539. The same is true of other areas where the

538 In a largely patrilineal society, the brides usually move to the groom’s village or home in many Tamil regions. In that context this is unique as it is a reversal of this practice. This could be due to the fact that the Kallars of Sulur are migrants from another region (Thanjavur) and thus their ancestral lands are not in Sulur but in Thanjavur. Many grooms move even from Thanjavur district to Sulur after marriage. They then enjoy rights over lands belonging to the bride and her family that is given as the dowry to the groom. 539 See here for a broad map of casteism in the Coimbatore area, including but not limited to inter-caste marriages: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/kongu-region-a-hotbed-of-casteism/article7401141.ece The most well-reported case of violence upon an intercaste couple has been that of Sankar and Kausalya. Kausalya who survived the brutality has now committed to being a crusader against casteism in the Coimbatore region. See: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/from-victim-to-crusader/article21570772.ece At the forefront of this onslaught is the Kongu Vellala Gounder Peravai, a party committed to committing atrocities against inter- caste couples and spreading fear in the region amongst anyone who may defy caste norms. See

187 majority are Kallars, such as the Thanjavur and Madurai districts540. Thus, the ease of acceptance and celebration of this marriage in Sulur, involving members of the Kallar caste, is not to be underestimated. The celebration of this marriage was made possible because of the century of Dravidian politics that lay at the core of Sulur’s public lives and the effects those had on private lives.

Such Sulur marriages – between people who were economically, educationally, and socially compatible - did not automatically create a ground upon which to build radical departures from traditional ways of living in terms of caste541. This generation partakes in Dravidian practices such as relatively non-ritualized, non-traditional wedding ceremonies542 and a semblance of gender equality where the groom and bride sit on chairs543 as equals on a stage rather than the constant affirmations of male hegemony that are part of traditional marriage ceremonies. Com. Valluvarasan explained how such seemingly radical practices lacked a commitment to deeper change of caste structures and have instead became rituals in and of themselves. He saw it as a contradiction that this younger generation couple, like their elders before them, partook of worship at the temple patronized by the Kallar bride’s kin/caste group. This he saw as affirmative of the upper caste brides’ caste identity and inherent practices. Besides, in terms of economic class, Com. Valluvarasan observed that there was very little that symbolized a critique of excess spending that were common at weddings. Any frugality that could be seen was relative – it was only frugal when compared to the usual enormous pomp and show of middle- and upper-middle-class weddings. Com. Valluvarasan confirmed my own observations that such

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Tamil-Nadu-groups-campaign-hard-against-inter-caste- weddings/articleshow/13461591.cms 540 Ibid 541 As I lived in Sulur I was able to visit temples, one of the key spaces where the institution of caste is symbolized. The organization of temples by caste groups, the construction of temples as er the dictums of caste practices and the names of donors being mentioned with caste names intact were all important evidence of no major shift in the institutions that are the stronghold of caste society. Even more than that, the complete lack of open defiance of caste within public institutions and groups in Sulur, and to the contrary the spread of caste based, caste-ist groups in town are of enormous importance is assessing the ongoing realities of a lack of critique with regards to caste in Sulur. 542 While I was witness to one inter-caste wedding ceremony discussed in detail here, I also came upon a large number of small booklets published as souvenirs for wedding ceremonies. Many of these booklets used texts- both ancient and Dravidianist- to declare the commitment of the couple to a critique of caste hierarchy and to the love of Tamil. Their rehearsing of Dravidianist ideals in these booklets read along with what I saw of life in Sulur made it amply clear that it was but a theoretical habitual exercise devoid of the strength of the radical critique of caste in earlier iterations of Dravidianist politics. 543 Ibid

188 ceremonies were not of the kind proposed by Periyar-inspired Dravidian practices544. Marriages in the Periyarist traditions were meant to embody simplicity and a radical reordering of society where it was an equal partnership rather than being an institution that reaffirmed caste, class and gender hierarchy. Reminiscent of TamilThanmai, these ideals were at the crux of all speeches made by contemporary Dravidianist thinkers in Sulur545 at this wedding even though they were not accurate descriptions of how everyday life was lived.

Com. Valluvarasan contrasted this experience to that of the marriage of his own son. This took place after he was a full-time member of one of the radical left Communist parties. His son fell in love with a Dalit girl and wanted to marry her. Com. Valluvarasan admitted to having asked his son to wait until his sister was married, as it may have been a challenge to find her a groom with a Dalit daughter-in-law in the family. He was realistic about the impact of the social taboo on his family, irrespective of his own political beliefs. His son, however, could not wait, as his lover’s family hastily threatened to marry her off to someone within their own caste. Com. Valluvarasan then succumbed and stood by his son, and ‘brought the daughter-in-law home.’ His daughter, after some struggle, was also married off as per the conventions of arranged marriage, within the Kallar caste. Com. Valluvarasan emotionally relayed to me the response of the Communist party of that time to his son’s marriage. He was reprimanded by the leadership for too lavish a wedding546. This lavishness is a choice often made in Tamilnadu for inter-caste marriages, as if to make up for or proudly declare the social norms that were being flouted. The Communist party leaders thought that the marriage being inter-caste was not adequate for it to be considered radical. They asked if it was in line with ‘proletariat values’ to host such a lavish wedding. Com. Valluvarasan said he concurred with the party and it broke his heart that he had let his ideals slide547.

It is from this anecdote that Com. Valluvarasan returned to the analysis of what he saw as the crucial difference between unarchi and arivu and how it interacted with the Communist arasiyal (politics) and the expectation to live as a munmaadiri. DMK politics he saw as being based on

544 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 545 ibid 546 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 547 ibid

189 constructions of the cults of individuals and mobilizing unarchi for those individuals, and thus by extension the party. These mobilizations of unarchi are well-documented in scholarship and is a common critique by Communists of the DMK548. Com. Valluvarasan’s narrative of this, however, is a historically grounded one of how this unarchi lived and moved through him and those around him in Sulur, and in complex ways. This serves as an interesting addition to our exploration of TamilThanmai.

An important element of unarchi in everyday life was the veri – passionate faith, which was key to the beginning of their participation in DMK politics. While it began for many of them as veri, he explained that it became a habit or ritual in later years549. Com. Valluvarasan was not the only one of my interviewees who pointed out this ritualizing of the values held dear within DMK politics. Almost all of my interviewees had a refrain of this ritualizing which they saw as a depoliticizing of those values. They did not, however, present this observation as one of self- reflection or systemic analyses. They explained it as a process of political values undergoing ‘corruption’, making them steer far away from the ‘pure ideals’ of yesteryears. In effect their veri, according to them, was pure and it was the corruption of the veri that led to the ritualization of this politics. The purity of the veri in how it upheld the Dravidianist ideals was unquestioned by my interviewees. This corrupt period, for my interviewees, is often associated with the period after the DMK acquired state power in 1967 and the soon-to-follow split of the party to form the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK) under the leadership of M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), and later the most recent Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, the late. J. Jayalalithaa.

I asked Com.Valluvarasan what his analysis was of when and how the veri turned into ritual. Com.Valluvarasan’s narrative provided slight differences, ones that contribute important nuances to the argument being made here. He traced this political shift through an analysis of power and economic progress. After the DMK came to power, he said supporters of the party were able to access resources such as government bank loans and schemes much more easily than before. This, according to him, is not necessarily ‘corruption’ as much as DMK’s own commitment to

548 Sumathi Ramaswamy for a rendition of this unarchi that delegitimizes any of its political significance. Marguerite Ross Barnett of one of the earlier grappling of this phenomenon. Bate for a methodical unpacking of how such unarchi was mobilized through oratory to create a Dravidian public. Books on MGR – Theodore Baskaran, Pandian. 549 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

190 intentionally encourage local business 550. Su.Ra and his success as a businessman was also part of this process551. It became apparent to me that Com.Valluvarasan’s own lack of economic success was due to his lack of adequate participation in this new-found access to power, including socio-economic power, although he too partook in it for his livelihood through renting a shop on subsidized rates from a family with power within the Sulur DMK. Here again, it is important to remember that this access to power was previously available only to the cream of society, who were already privileged in land ownership, namely the non-Brahmin, non-Dalits who took over land ownership from the Brahmins in the early 20th Century. The sharing of such privilege through vertical class hierarchy and laterally across caste was possible because of the influence of Dravidian politics upon non-Brahmin, non-Dalit landed elite.

While this access was mediated through a few socio-economically and politically powerful Kallar families, it has led to considerable upward mobility – educationally and economically – within generations of poorer Kallars in Sulur that cannot be underestimated. It was only since the late 1960s, for the first time since Indian independence, that this access went beyond being the reserve of members of the Congress Party and of those remaining families of landowning Brahmins. This was possible through the reservation system in education and employment for those of non-Brahmin castes put in place by the DMK. But for these policies to translate into realities in the local context, it was crucial to have the support of the local non-Brahmin, non- Dalit, landowning elite. In Sulur, this translated into changes in economic relations of power by enabling the growth of small businesses. To a lesser extent it meant access to landownership for erstwhile non-landowning Kallar families. This shift in class status, by virtue of being mediated locally by already privileged families, further reaffirmed and expanded their economic power552. Viewed from the perspective of TamilThanmai, it is possible to observe that Dravidian politics and its register of fraternity, provided practices, policies and language to enable economic growth laterally within non-Brahmin, non-Dalit caste groups, thus breaking through class hierarchies to a degree unimaginable before.

550 Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 551 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 552 For the elite constitution of early Dravidianist politics see Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Simultaneously, this very element of TamilThanmai enabled keeping in place existing class hierarchies within the Kallar caste by having the privileged mediate and control the process of this imagined change becoming a reality. As with many aspects of TamilThanmai, except for the occasional policy, like with Mathiazhagan Nagar where all landless families were granted small parcels of land, Dalits are largely outside the realm of this economic change. Their only route for economic mobility remained education, which in turn was encouraged by Dravidianist reservation policies even if in limited ways.

For tracing the history of TamilThanmai, the combination of the potential for changing class relations within Kallars along with the reaffirmation of the existing power of the Kallar elite by requiring them to be the vehicles for such a change is important. Most importantly for our focus here, this process put in place a way of being and sense of self amongst the DMK thondar that did not enable questioning, reflection or self-criticism that could have led towards a radical reordering of caste and class society in Sulur. In contrast, this new-found access to power amongst those of poorer background, Com. Valluvarasan described, contributed to the ritualizing of Dravidian politics amongst them553.

The economic mobility and comfort, Valluvarasan said, enabled them to settle into a cushioned private life that was contradictory to the everyday political involvement that involved the veri of their younger and poorer days554. And yet, TamilThanmai enables us to see that the registers of speech, in this case that of fraternity and equality, provided a language of radicalism, and thus to speak this language in a ritualized manner in and of itself became adequate politics. The requirement of being a munmaadiri then was not relevant in this context.

Com. Valluvarasan did, however, connect the treatment of class and caste hierarchies within Dravidianist politics through the slipping and sliding between the agam and the puram. Having established the context of how class relations were modified by the DMK in Sulur, he returned to his analysis of anti-caste politics as he saw it reflected in the lives of DMK members of his generation with marriage as the indicator. The lack of a requirement to be a munmaadiri combined with the upward class mobility amongst DMK members, he said, enabled the

553 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 554 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

192 ritualizing of Dravidian politics. It is this very ritualizing that he saw reflected in anti-caste politics.

He spoke in detail of one more of his early disillusionments with local DMK leadership. Even in the absence of caste-based radicalism in marriage, at least at a bare minimum thondar of the DMK expected party loyalty in marriage. This was a widespread practice among the thondar of his generation. In this context he spoke of the decision in the SRS family – of which the late Thalaivar Thangavelu was a member – that held DMK leadership from the late 1960s onwards, to give their daughter in marriage to the SVL family – of Congress affiliated leadership in Sulur555. Marital connections between the elite Congress loyalists (the SVL family) and rich Kallar families of the Sulur DMK predate this particular marriage. Chairman Karupanna Thevar of the Justice Party and later the DMK, and many times Panchayath President through the 1950s, and SVL himself, the face of the Congress in Sulur, married each other’s sisters in the 1940s556. The SRS family took on the mantle of power within the DMK from the Karupanna Thevar family in the 1960s. Com. Valluvarasan explained how he and other DMK thondar felt profoundly betrayed by this family’s decision with regards to this marriage in the early 1970s. This decision being seen as a betrayal came from the deep default hatred for those of the Congress, held by him and other DMK thondar of his generation. He said, ‘even though I am so far from my DMK roots, I still can’t stand a Congress guy.557’ In this context, for the SRS family to marry their daughter to the main Congress family was too big a betrayal for them to not express their dissent. And so, they did. This had no impact on the families’ decisions. The union was predictable and practical in terms of class privilege. For Com. Valluvarasan, this marriage, reminiscent of the inter-caste marriages, was a symbol of the lack of living as munmaadiri amongst party leaders and the connected ritualization of all politics within the DMK558. In sum, for Com. Valluvarasan, the ritualization of politics was caused among other things by upward class mobility. This, along with the lack of expectation of living as a munmaadiri was illustrated potently within marriages in general and more specifically within inter-caste marriages. His use of marriages to illustrate his comment on the history of DMK politics illuminates his use of the

555 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 556 Kumaravel, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 15th July 2017. 557 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 558 ibid

193 agam-puram frame of the blurred boundaries between interior and exterior realms. This in turn provides a vibrant analytical frame with which to map the history of and through TamilThanmai. Through these interspersing analytical frames that Com.Valluvarasan used to narrativize his public political life, he provided space to historicize various elements TamilThanmai. This space was created through all that he said, acknowledged and commented upon; and all that he did not.

Com. Valluvarasan, by the time of our interview, was rather resigned to this shift from passion to ritual. It had been in place for close to four decades by the time we met. He used words such as ‘bothai’ (intoxication) and ‘mayai’ (magical illusion) to refer to the lure of DMK politics for him and others like him559. This is a common way of commenting upon the DMK by Communists560. From the perspective of TamilThanmai, however, it is possible to observe that Com. Valluvarasan’s modes of speech and language use while articulating this critique of the DMK is in itself constructed by those very oratory and textual practices made popular by the DMK561. Even though he narrated this trajectory to me in a resigned tone, he still held on to a disappointment in Sulur’s public political world for not living up to its potential for ‘pagutharivu562’, by which he meant rational thought against caste hierarchy and radical social change in this regard; and ‘Tamizh patru’ – the love of and passion for Tamil563. To him, based on his Dravidian roots, the two went hand in hand. His disappointment stemmed from his own lived experience of being moved by and holding dear these values. However aware he was of the critiques of these values he never lost sight of their meaning to him and held a profound nostalgia for how they transformed him. This nostalgia was based on the recognition of the fact that it was this language and space that gave him, and others like him, the potential for self- affirmation as a way of being and sense of self.

559 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 560 Pg. 143, discussion of arunan. Cody, Francis. The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2013. http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/10.7591/j.ctt32b5k9. 561 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 562 The articulation of this being at the core of Dravidian politics goes back to Periyar. 563 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

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Com. Valluvarasan’s discussion of unarchi versus arivu, munmaadiri versus the ritualization of politics, are all seen reflected in the interiority and intimacy of agam, symbolized by marriage in his narrative. It is not surprising then that in describing his relationship with Su.Ra, it is this unarchi of the puram that the two men shared, that shaped the agam of their friendship. That which grew from the puram lived on so deeply in the agam even as their paths, priorities and lives changed drastically in the puram. This complex relationship between the agam and the puram and the blurred boundaries between the two are an integral part of TamilThanmai.

Just as Com. Valluvarasan’s life story presented a range of different ways of understanding TamilThanmai, so does the life of Su.Ra, albeit differently. What follows is a gathering of all possible sources to piece together Su.Ra’s life in order to observe the ways in which the elements of TamilThanmai thus far identified take shape in his life. This then will leave us with the information required to look closely at the friendship between the two men and what it shows about the relationship between the agam and the puram in shaping TamilThanmai.

Su.Ra. Subramaniam

A good place to begin mapping Su.Ra’s life is in the renditions of it by many fellow Sulur residents at the memorial held for him at a local temple hall after his passing. Many of these renditions were centered on his friendship with Com. Valluvarasan. Su.Ra and Com. Valluvarasan, as they entered their twenties in the 1960s, were integral to each other’s life choices. Com. Valluvarasan described the story of how he went to speak with the parents of the woman Su.Ra became interested in, to ask for her hand in marriage. Su.Ra did the same for him564. This story, repeated at his memorial by Com. Valluvarasan, was a symbol of the depth of their relationship. Both their wives, the persons integral to their private lives, recognized this friendship and brought it within the realm of kin by acknowledging their friendship as a brotherhood. And thus, Com. Valluvarasan was periyappa (father’s elder brother) to Su.Ra’s children.

564 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

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Figure 10: Picture of Su.Ra. and Valluvarasan from 1968. The title reads: “Me and my long-time friend, revolutionary and scholar A. Valluvarasan565”

Many of the pictures and all the speeches at the memorial were of Su.Ra’s life after the late 1960s and 1970s. There were few pictures of his early life, the everyday life he had shared intricately with Valluvarasan. It is safe to assume that as a ground-level party thondar, Su.Ra., Valluvarasan and others would not have been photographed at public events. It is only afterwards, when Su.Ra. became the face of the party through his music, that his public presence was documented. The picture above from 1968 may be one of the few existing of them together from an earlier period. The composition and framing of the picture suggest a conscious effort on their part to visit the photo studio, spend money and have a picture taken. This picture of Su.Ra. and Com. Valluvarasan was not on the walls of the temple hall during the memorial, even though Valluvarasan organized the event. It is possible that it is precisely because he organized it that he kept this picture away from the public eye that day. Perhaps he viewed that picture as one that was private, at this time of public grief.

From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, as they settled into their married domestic lives, in their work life, the two friends moved, albeit slowly, towards owning their own small businesses.

565 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 11

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Com. Valluvarasan came to own his shoe shop, and Su.Ra. his own provision store. Su.Ra. saw much more success in business. In his own words, he acknowledges with gratitude in his autobiography the help provided to him by the local elite, his employers who were also Sulur DMK leaders. They helped him acquire a motorbike to supply provisions to shops across many villages. This was the beginning of his own independent provisioning venture, later a store. They provided financial help personally as well as through institutions they controlled, such as the cooperative bank where they made sure Su.Ra. was granted a loan566. The palpable connection between success in small businesses and DMK membership was reflected in that way in Su.Ra’s life. Su.Ra., a life-long committed DMK member, found success in business. Meanwhile Valluvarasan, the disillusioned and rebellious erstwhile DMK member, while marginally benefitting from the business assistance from richer DMK members, saw little economic success or upward mobility.

The picture below, that was on the wall of the temple hall, is one of the few from Su.Ra’s boyhood. Dated 1956, this is from when he and others worked at the “SAP peanut shop” in 1956. There are, however, no other details on which of the boys is Su.Ra. or who the others are.

Figure 11 Picture of Su. Ra. And others in 1956 during the period when they worked in the SAP provision store

566 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 7

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Yet again, this picture, like the earlier one, was consciously arranged and taken in a photo studio. In those days, to take a picture in a studio was expensive and special. It would have been even more so for someone of Su.Ra’s economic background. He made the effort to have this picture taken in the job he held longest in his boyhood. From this shop he moved to work at various provision stores owned by local landlords and DMK leaders. He then did his last job at the provision store owned by SRS, the most significant DMK leader through the late 1960s-1970s. It is through the bank owned by the SRS family that Su.Ra. received the initial financial capital to set up his own business567.

Figure 12: Cover of Su.Ra’s song book and autobiography titled ‘The Kalaignar (Karunanidhi’s title) Oyilattam songs (the name given to the song-dance form practiced by Su.Ra. and others) of the Sulur DMK’. Top left: Su.Ra. L-R: Anna, Karunanidhi, Periyar. The building is the Sulur Local Governance building built during Ponmudi’s (SRS’s son) tenure as Panchayath President.

567 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 7

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In complete contrast to Com.Valluvarasan’s critical perspective of the wealthy DMK families, Su.Ra. expressed his gratitude and celebrated them till the very end. The title page of his autobiography shown above, apart from images of major state-level DMK leaders, also contains text that reads as follows:

“Chairman Karupanna Thevar family’s 25-year rule; SRS’s family’s 50-year golden rule; Su.Su. Ponmudi’s (SRS’s son and erstwhile Panchayath President) valiant effort that led to the construction of the new building for Sulur’s Town Panchayath headquarters568”

This cover page caption along with other such statements/captions scattered throughout the book clearly indicates the deep loyalty that Su.Ra. held towards these families. He saw them as representatives, in Sulur, of the party in whose service he had spent his entire life. His gratitude towards the SRS family was for both their ‘public service’ and their assistance in his own personal economic growth569. In the book, both these actions are seen as being on the same continuum. There is no evidence, within my archives, that indicates that Su.Ra. evolved any systemic critique of this class hegemony. Unlike Valluvarasan, he shared with many of my other interviewees the taken for granted-ness of the intertwined nature of economic power, party power and power within local governance. Following from this hierarchy, they took it for granted that elite Kallar DMK leaders would extend patronage to working-class caste-kin who were DMK thondar. In the earlier period, till about the late 1960s, this took the form of jobs in local businesses. Later it was through assistance to set up their own small businesses. In this way, for Sulur DMK, both the leadership and its members accepted as a norm, the reflection of their hierarchical economic relationship across class and within caste.

Within this broader default understanding, men such as Su.Ra. made specific choices in how they lived their public political lives. Su.Ra. never served as a member of the Panchayath, unlike many other working-class, upwardly-mobile Kallar DMK thondar of his generation. He was drawn to and remained in his role as an ordinary thondar who specialized in cultural propaganda for the party – song, dance, and oratory. His autobiography makes it very clear that he

568 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 7 569 Ibid. 8

199 consciously chose this role and took pride in it570. As a result, he remained an ordinary thondar his entire life and did not garner any power for himself. At the memorial, the speeches made by many, across party lines, from his generation, commented on this choice. They viewed it as a symbol of his integrity and political ‘purity.571’ This choice also had the effect of restricting his accumulation of wealth. Clearly, he held himself aside from the wealth that he could have accessed had he obtained more power within the party and in local governance. The only available explanation for this is his genuine draw to the arts and his deep faith in its potential as a tool for spreading the message of the party. This cultural work fell within the ambit of what Com. Valluvarasan critically described as unarchi – irrational feelings towards individual leaders. For Su.Ra. himself and in the way he was remembered by others, this work, and the choices he made that enabled him to continue this work, was a sign of his sense of self and way of being.

For Su.Ra., the veri with which he grew into and worked for the DMK, along with Com. Valluvarasan and others gave him a context from which to participate in public politics. He began in Sulur and later worked across Tamilnadu. Su.Ra’s public political life began, as with many others, in the spaces within which such politics lived, in his case, the provision store where he worked. Specifically, for Su.Ra’s journey, his participation in the performing arts is at the crux of his public political life. This took him to other spaces in Sulur.

570 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown) 571 Field work notes at Su. Ra. Memorial Meeting. Sulur. May 8th. 2017.

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Figure 13 Su. Ra. And others during a DMK campaign that used the Oyilattam dance form and songs 572

This undated picture is of the dance form ‘oyilattam’, traditionally performed by men in this region during temple festivals and other ritual celebrations573. The DMK used this form, declared in this picture to be the ‘Dravidian movement’s cultural form’ to spread its ideas574. In my interview with Palanisamy, another member of the oyilattam group, the DMK dancing and singing group, he mentioned Su.Ra. as the rising star of their generation575. Su.Ra. was, by all accounts, the most significant singer of the Sulur DMK in his time. In his autobiography, Su.Ra. describes the beginnings of his involvement in oyilattam as a young boy. In the midst of the cluster of spaces that were significant to the history of Sulur’s public political life, Su.Ra. and other boys learnt the form from a teacher who lived on that street. This cluster included a barbershop owned by DMK member Ramu, the Navamani (Nine Gems) bicycle shop set up by nine DMK members including Ramu, and the Anjaneya Gym576. Su.Ra. in his autobiography describes the bicycle shop as a ‘kodi kattaatha DMK kilai’ – a de facto DMK branch office, short

572 Pictures taken at Su. Ra. Memorial Meeting. Sulur. May 8th. 2017. 573 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 574 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown) 575 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 576 Figure 2

201 of flying the party flag. Apart from oyilattam, Su.Ra. also pursued training in singing577. ‘Amongst ridicule from friends, I began playing the ‘tape’ (a term referring to a small round drum with a synthetic center) and singing songs,578’ he writes. This gave him the nick name ‘tape Subramaniam.’ This training in music and dance in the 1950s was consolidated into the Oyil Kummi group that Palanisamy was also a part of579. This group was later renamed

Kalaignar Oyilatta Kuzhu – Kalaignar Oyilattam Group580. While Kalaignar is the honorary title for DMK leader Karunanidhi, it also means an artist. This made the name an apt one for this performance troupe.

Su.Ra., in his autobiography, has documented the breadth of his involvement in political activities as a singer, dancer and orator. He has written about being invited to many meetings to gather bigger audience with dancing, singing and oratory. He has recorded the first time his name appeared on a poster as a speaker581. This moment is undated in the book. It is possible, however, to glean from other circumstantial evidence, that it was in the second half of the 1960s. By this time, Su.Ra. was the official party orator. The significance of this role within Dravidianist spaces is well-documented582. Interestingly, his participation in political spaces as an actor, singer, and speaker occasionally crossed party lines. He has recorded being invited to perform at a program to welcome the Communist leader from Kerala, E.M.S. Namboodiripad583. The program, however, was organised by S.R.S’s brother and then Communist party member Thangavelu – later Thalaivar Thangavelu. Given Su.Ra’s self-declared loyalty to the SRS family, it is possible to conclude he may have crossed party lines momentarily in order to fulfill a

577 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 62 578 Ibid. 62 579 Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. 580 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 63 581 Ibid. 63 582 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 583 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 63.

202 request from one of them. On the whole, it is clear that he was a coveted crowd puller at public meetings, in Sulur and elsewhere.

Su.Ra’s public political life, like that of everyone else in Sulur whom I interviewed, was deeply spatialized. Many speakers at the memorial mentioned this spatial dimension of Su.Ra’s everyday political life. They spoke of how they will always remember Su.Ra’s voice and song as it echoes through the streets and public stages of Sulur584. His autobiography includes a mapping in text of all the spaces where he performed and later taught singing and dancing to the next generation of artists585. It is this centrality of oratory and song that explains his choice of weaving his autobiography through a book of DMK songs. This book was the first of what was to be a series of five books that he intended to self-publish as an autobiographical record. Only this book was completed before his death586. The others may or may not be forthcoming. While this text is a significant archive of his life, it is far from adequate. It does, however, place the songs in the crux of Su.Ra’s public political life. It serves also to spatialize his art and oratory in Sulur.

Beyond his own political work, there are indicators of Su.Ra. bringing his political beliefs into the realm of his home and family. As a potent symbol of his commitment to DMK politics, he chose to educate his son and daughter to become lawyers. The legal profession has been seen as a significant way of ‘serving society’ in many parts of India. Tamilnadu, and within that Sulur, was no exception. He could have just as easily chosen to professionally involve them in the business he had built. Instead, in his autobiography, at the very bottom of a page, is a declaratory announcement about this choice. The statement can be translated as follows:

“My son Su.Su. Tamizharasan is training to be a lawyer. ‘The law is a dark room, and the lawyer’s arguments are a lamp,’ Anna said. Following this dictum, I would like to declare with

584Field notes from Su. Ra Memorial meeting. Sulur. 8th May 2017. 585 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 63. 586 Vaathiyar Subramanyam "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017.

203 gratitude that I am performing my duty as a son of this soil and providing service to the good- hearted people of the villages of my land.587”

The announcement is Su.Ra’s public introduction of his son Su.Su. Tamizharasan. This is followed by Tamizharasan’s pledge to perform his ‘duty’ and provide ‘service’ to the people of his land588. It is no wonder then, that Su.Ra. made sure he ‘gave’ his children to the service of the land and its people through their work as lawyers. This also explains the elders’ judgment of Tamizharasan’s present-day political affiliations as being ‘impure’ and an insult to his father’s legacy. Thus, although Su.Ra’s children did not directly follow in his footsteps and become DMK thondar, he had made important attempts to bring his political loyalty to his home through the profession he chose for his children.

Com.Valluvarasan’s central involvement in his memorializing of Su.Ra. is important in how he interpreted his sense of self and way of being. His intervention also allows us to analyze the ways in which both men and their friendship were constructed by TamilThanmai. An important aspect of this was to make sure that the memorial did not involve any religious rituals or customs dictated by his caste identity. I gathered from my conversations with Com. Valluvarasan that this was not an easy intervention to make. “If not for me, they (family members) would have done all the rituals and Su.Ra. would have hated that,” he said589. It seemed as if while Su.Ra’s immediate family did not actively support Com. Valluvarasan in his intervention, they did not resist it either. The extended family it seemed was opposed to this form of memorializing but held their dissent to themselves as the immediate family was to have the final say in these decisions.

This is significant for many reasons but particularly from the perspective of TamilThanmai. First, it is important to note the effects of Su.Ra’s bringing of his politics into his private life by steering his children in professional directions that reflected the Dravidian idea of ‘service to the people’. However, his children did not display a commitment to these values when it came to

587 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 9. 588 Ibid, 9 589 Personal exchange with Com.Valluvarasan. Sulur. 8th May 2017.

204 decisions about their father’s death rituals or memorializing. The most they did was to not stand in the way of their father’s friend who was committed to these values and chose to organize the memorial as per these principles590.

Second, the person in his intimate life who did emerge as the one to uphold these values, and thus his legacy, was his friend. The change in political affiliation that took Com. Valluvarasan away from his friend’s public political life did not undo his commitment to upholding their shared sense of self and way of being. This stands testament to the significance of how TamilThanmai remained at the core of both these individuals and was central to their lifelong friendship.

Third, this TamilThanmai as it lived on in their friendship was re-centered resolutely even as one of them passed on. This was acknowledged and celebrated by all men with similar journeys of their generation publicly across party lines. Com.Valluvarasan, the Communist, was the master of ceremonies. Thalaivar Thangavelu, who was by then committed to a broader politics of local level civic rights for all, was present and spoke both of Su.Ra. and this friendship. Congress Party member Kamakshi was yet another speaker who reiterated these same elements. The event was attended by many more across all the major political parties in Sulur from the past and present591. The friendship that enabled Com. Valluvarasan’s central presence at the memorial, in itself became a testament to the ways in which TamilThanmai manifested in Su.Ra’s everyday life. What follows is a description of Su.Ra’s public political life as it can be discerned from the visual, oral and observational material collected at his memorial.

The memorial ‘Even as I struggle in hunger, and am destroyed by my plight Even as I am unable to move as my limbs are rotten Even if life is destroyed and ill luck has engulfed me, Would I ever forget to sing the praise of the Tamil language that raised me with her blood’?

A powerful moment in the memorial was when Su.Su. Tamizharasan, lawyer and Su.Ra’s son, sang one of the many songs he had learnt from his father. He showed how his father would sing

590 Field notes from Su. Ra Memorial meeting. Sulur. May 8th, 2017 591 Ibid.

205 the same song in two different ways – one version with sadness and another as a rallying cry. He told the story of asking his father about these different versions of the song while Su.Ra. was considerably ill, and how he still sang it with profound faith and conviction. The words above are the translation of this song592.

The song, a typical DMK song, held in a nutshell the veri that Su.Ra. had for the party and its discourse. The many expressions of this commitment to the party in Su.Ra’s life took the form of a visual photographic exhibition during his memorial. The venue for the memorial, a hall attached to a local temple in Sulur, was adorned with these photographs. In contemporary Sulur, the main places for larger public events are halls attached to temples, or marriage halls, of which there are many. Many of these pictures were also those he had chosen for his autobiography. There were a considerable number of pictures and many of them, just as in the text, were undated and had general descriptions. Nevertheless, the pictures provided evidence of the public institutions that Su.Ra. had been part of and his meetings with significant Dravidian leaders of his generation. In Sulur, for someone like Su.Ra., a celebration of his life became synonymous with a celebration of his public political life.

The photographs in the memorial and the autobiography from the 1970s onwards document the role of Su.Ra. as a small entrepreneur who used his resources and spare time to take forward the ethos and principles of the DMK. He did so by forming organizations and by organizing public meetings. There is reference to what were known as ‘Training Institutes’ for children. These institutes were named after Anna and Periyar. This was one of the most common activities undertaken with the patronage of those of Su.Ra’s caste, class and political party background through the 1980s and 1990s. It continues even today. These institutes were a small space that regularly aided children with their school work. The focus was on serving underprivileged children. In present day Sulur, ‘underprivileged’ has come to mean to children from Dalit backgrounds. In Su.Ra’s generation, circumstantial evidence suggests that it would have primarily catered to poorer Kallar children, born into families much like the one Su.Ra. himself hailed from. This is primarily because the relative breaking down of the invisible and ever- present spatial caste boundaries can be traced back only to the 1990s and not earlier. As a result,

592 Tamizharasan. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017.

206 the institutes Su.Ra. patronized are of an era where these spatial boundaries were very much intact. The training centers, such as the ones Su.Ra. patronized, were in line with the DMK’s commitment to providing opportunity to non-Brahmin, non-Dalits to be able to access education and the resultant success in their professional life in order to ensure upward class mobility.

The primary forum through which Su.Ra. organized public political meetings was through groups formed for the explicit purpose of engaging in political thought. There is mention of such a Sinthanaiyaalar Mandram (Thinkers’ Group) in the photographs, that invited speakers from within and beyond Sulur. Connected to this and perhaps other such groups, there were pictures that record the moments when Su.Ra. met leaders of various Dravidian parties, small and big. Much of this, however, seems to have been when he was 40 to 50 years old and thus was from the 1980s and after. One picture (Figure 14), shown below, with the DMK leader Karunanidhi, is the only one that seems to have been when he was in his 30s. This, along with the other picture with Com. Valluvarasan (Figure 10 ) allows for the closest peek into how he may have looked while the two of them roamed the streets of Sulur as DMK thondars.

Figure 14 Su. Ra. with Kalaignar Karunanidhi

Another significant element of the memorial was the many speeches. Every person of Su.Ra’s generation who was involved in public politics made a speech. Many of my interviewees were present and were amongst the speakers. They attended and spoke irrespective of party lines and generational divides. One of them, Kamakshi, the Congress party member, spoke of Su.Ra. as

207 being a principled man who lived by his ideals till the very end593. There were others who spoke who had known him intimately after the late 1960s. Vaathiyar Subramaniyam (Teacher Subramaniyam) was one such person. He spoke about how Su.Ra. thought through his public stances carefully before he acted upon them. His speech made visible the quiet and poised internal self from which Su.Ra’s politics had emerged594.

His children also made speeches. Tamizharasan, as mentioned earlier, sang the song and made a quick speech about his father’s ideals and values595. His daughter, Tamizharasi, on the other hand, made a much more pointed speech. She turned our attention to the posters that were plastered all over Sulur and neighboring villages announcing Su.Ra’s death596. As a general practice, in Tamilnadu, black and white posters are printed with the person’s name and sometimes the names of family members who sponsored the posters. There were two visible posters in Sulur. His family printed one of them and this may have involved Com. Valluvarasan. The Sulur DMK printed the other. The latter was outside the 100-year-old Panchayath Office building, in between the Anna Kalai Arangam and the bus stop. This spot is reserved for displaying posters upon the death of respected local leaders in Sulur. Su.Ra. was given this honor by the Sulur DMK. In her speech, Su.Ra’s daughter mentioned another poster issued by one of the smaller groups Su.Ra. had been involved with. She did not mention the name of the group, in order to avoid any distasteful public shaming. I could not locate the poster. It is, however, safe to assume that it would have been of Dravidianist persuasion, given Su.Ra’s political beliefs. This poster, she said, only mentions his male progeny as those he is ‘survived by.’ As testament to Su.Ra’s upbringing, his daughter took much offense to this and placed her disagreement on public record firmly, with poise597.

Com. Valluvarasan’s short closing speech at the memorial was a poignant reminder of the agam and puram in which this friendship lived, thus blurring the boundaries between the two. He expressed his gratitude towards being able to perform his friend’s memorial in line with their

593 Kamakshi. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. 594 Vaathiyar Subramaniam. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. 595 Tamizharasan."Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. 596 Tamizharasi. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. 597 Ibid

208 shared principles, i.e., without any of the customary rituals598. He did not however harp on this too much. He was careful to not offend any members of the larger family who clearly had tolerated this lack of ritual but did not support it. To make sure that his friend’s wishes were duly fulfilled, Com. Valluvarasan carefully negotiated family dynamics, thus avoiding the traditional rituals which would have otherwise been part of Su.Ra’s memorial and would have made it non- representative of Su.Ra’s principles.

Just as with Com. Valluvarasan’s public political life, in Su.Ra’s life too, the narrative is one that provides space to see the interspersing and blurring of the agam and puram. His own words in the autobiography, his daughter’s intervention at the memorial and Com. Valluvarasan’s structuring of the memorial all stood testament to the entangled relationship between akam and puram that was crucial to Su.Ra. and Com. Valluvarasan’s public political lives.

Lives lived together: parallels and intersections

After the memorial, I tried to discern from Com. Valluvarasan more details about the ways in which the two men shared everyday lives. I asked him how they each responded to incidents in each other’s lives. For instance, when the young Com. Valluvarasan wrote the letter about rice smuggling and chose to put himself in physical danger, what was Su.Ra’s response? Did Su.Ra. antagonize the rich DMK leaders and stand by his friend despite being a young, poor, shop worker himself? Was he worried privately even if not taking a stand in public? I could not ask Com. Valluvarasan these questions directly given the emotional weight of his grief. I asked him indirectly if he was alone in his attempt to expose the rice smuggling. He unequivocally said that he was, indeed, alone599. Su.Ra. during this time continued to be an employee at the provision store and a thondar of the Sulur DMK. There is no other evidence of Su.Ra’s response to this event.

A different strategy through which it is possible to discern the details of their shared everyday life is to spatialize their political lives to see if Su.Ra. and Com. Valluvarasan’s inhabiting of these spaces had any experiences in common. For instance, there is no record of any interaction

598 Valluvarasan. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. 599 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017.

209 between Su.Ra. and the Communists who influenced Com.Valluvarasan, in spite of the fact that both men were at the shop frequented by the Communists. Su.Ra’s move outside of his employee status and the launching of his own economic enterprise had important spatial ramifications. Su.Ra. launched his business a few years before Com. Valluvarasan – in the early 1970s600. After this time, he was no longer regularly present at the shop that enabled political exposure. Instead, he drove to many villages on his bike selling provisions with little interaction with anyone beyond that which was connected to the business. In his autobiography, he mentions going to sixty villages, every week, to sell the provisions601. This meant that his work life no longer involved spending long hours in one place, a key means to transforming provision stores into political spaces.

Connected to this is the divergence in the economic paths that the two men pursued. As Com. Valluvarasan was struggling with the contradiction between the words and actions of the DMK and was experiencing the churnings created in him by the Keezhvenmani massacre in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Su.Ra. was consolidating his economic status, even as he was rising through ranks as the ‘voice’ of the party. While speaking of this divergence, Com. Valluvarasan made sure to recognize Su.Ra’s hard work that facilitated his upward mobility602. The economic benefits of being a DMK thondar notwithstanding, Su.Ra’s substantial leap in economic status within one generation, it is clear, was no easy task.

After paying due respect to Su.Ra’s hard work, Com. Valluvarasan did articulate the important connections between political principles and economic paths. He said, ‘There is a difference between how a poor man sees the poor and the perspective of a rich man’603. Su.Ra., like other Dravidianists, held dear and truly believed that he, like others, lived true to the language and ideals of staying rooted among ‘the people’. In terms of material reality, however, he functioned as a rich man. Com. Valluvarasan stated that in the absence of the political check that Communism had provided to him (Valluvarasan), Su.Ra’s perspective on economy, poverty and

600 Subramaniyam, Su. Ra. 毂. ரா. 毁ெ்ꮿரமணியம், Sulur Nakara Thi. Mu. Ka. vin Kalaignar Oyilatta Paattu 毂쯂ர் நகர 鎿.믁.க.ힿன் கமலஞர் ஒ뾿லாட்ட ொட்翁 [Sulur branch DMK`s Kalaignar Oyillatum songs], (Self Published in Sulur, year unknown), 63 601 Ibid, 63 602 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 603 Ibid.

210 class had changed, without him even noticing. Further, he explained: ‘Su.Ra. went from seeing the world as a young working-class man who was born into and lived in abject poverty, to a businessman with all the basic comforts. He, in turn, used such comforts to speak, and to some extent, act in ways that address poverty and class hierarchy’604. TamilThanmai, just as with caste, also with class, provided Su.Ra. a language and a sense of self that was seen and felt as continuing to remain grounded in the ‘land and its people’. This could persist in spite of the change in his own class status and the resultant changes in his perspective on the world around him. Com.Valluvarasan believed that his friend took the ‘capitalist path’. He showed with conviction that the DMK not only allowed but in fact encouraged this amongst their thondar605. In sum, Com. Valluvarasan recognized the changes in perspective in his friend that were rooted in his changed economic status while also simultaneously recognizing why his friend did not acknowledge or critique such a change. He was able to do the latter as he too had access to TamilThanmai the way Su.Ra. did. The various circumstances and influences in Com. Valluvarasan’s life may have taken him down a different economic and political path. But the knowledge of what the DMK could provide as opportunities and the related perspective on upward class mobility was well known to him. This was perhaps the most important one amidst the many divergences that were part of this friendship.

In continuation of this exchange about the difference in their class perspectives, I asked Com. Valluvarasan about Su.Ra’s response, over the years, to his Communist leanings. I specifically asked about the years after the mid-1970s when Com. Valluvarasan was under constant surveillance and was arrested frequently. He said Su.Ra. would ‘lovingly reprimand’ him and say, ‘you will never fix your ways.’ He in turn responded with ‘I am not the one who needs fixing. I will remain who I am.606’ Along with these exchanges was the reality of intertwined family lives. They had arranged each other’s marriages and were involved in every major landmark in each other’s lives. Their families too were known and close to each another, much like blood kin would be. As a result, when Com. Valluvarasan was arrested and needed to make bail, his family would turn to Su.Ra. for assistance and they did the needful607. The ‘loving

604 ibid 605 ibid 606 ibid 607 ibid

211 reprimand’ was, in good measure, also one that involved sustained loving support. Beyond this, from Com. Valluvarasan’s narrative, there does not seem to have been any other regular exchange between the two men about their political affiliations.

It is in this context that Com. Valluvarasan spoke of the many times when Su.Ra. helped him financially. I asked Com. Valluvarasan, very carefully, at the risk of sounding insulting, but trusting in the relationship I had built with him over many months, the following question: what was the difference between Su.Ra. helping him during times of need, and the assistance by richer DMK members to fellow party members and caste kin such as Su.Ra. himself? Com. Valluvarasan answered this question patiently. His answer in turn provided a significant general perspective on these relationships. This analysis must be viewed in the context of the evocation and register of an egalitarian Tamil identity608 which is an essential part of TamilThanmai. Com. Valluvarasan outlined the difference between these relationships when it was between poor thondar, even if they, like Su.Ra., acquire upward mobility, as opposed to when it was between richer party members amongst themselves as well as with the poorer DMK thondar. As part of this context for this analysis, it is important to remember that the shared party membership also implies a shared caste identity of being Kallar. Com. Valluvarasan did not mention this explicitly, neither did he indicate any conscious awareness of this. Given his own rootedness in TamilThanmai, in spite of all criticality, the shared caste membership is an element he too would assume as default and leave unnoticed, and thus unacknowledged.

Richer members of the DMK, he explained, referred to one another as ‘mama, machan’ – non- sibling male kin relations, primarily formed by marriage. While some were literally mama or machan, the words encompassed varying depths of relationships, all seen as being part of a broader Dravidian fictive kinship609. All such relationships, however, Com. Valluvarasan explained, were mediated by shared class status. Often, such relationships translated into employment of fellow caste and party members in businesses and providing assistance when

608 Nambi Arooran, Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism 609 Nambi Arooran, Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism; Geetha.V. "How might a Sociology of Fraternity look like?" Lecture given as part of the Ghurye Memorial Lecture Series, Department of Sociology, University of Bombay, Bombay, October 9th, 2015; Irschick, Eugene F. 1969. Politics and social conflict in South India; the non- Brahman movement and Tamil separatism, 1916-1929. Berkeley: University of California Press; Sivathamby, Karthigesu. 1986. Literary history in Tamil: a historiographical analysis. Thanjavur: Tamil University.

212 such members built their own enterprises. Irrespective of such support, actual kin relations remained the main form by which class status was perpetuated. Land and businesses were owned by specific families and passed down from one generation to another over many decades without much interruption. This existing class privilege was shared outside of those families only through marriages that involved combining the resources of two wealthy families. Although the language of mama, machan was evoked in Dravidian circles as a register that could promote a broader fraternity, at least within the Kallars, for the most part it did not move beyond literal relationships of blood and marriage610.

In the rare occasion that a deeper relationship was built outside of blood relations and within the party (and caste), Com. Valluvarasan explained, it did not disrupt or challenge existing class hierarchies. Even such caste and party loyalty within employment and business assistance, he said, thawed in later years611. As Sulur grew into a bigger town from the 1980s onwards, its labor base expanded to involve migrant workers from other parts of Tamilnadu and even other states of India612. The ultimate evidence for the lack of challenge to class hierarchy in the evocation of a broader fictive kinship, for Com. Valluvarasan, seemed to be the absence of change in marriage practices. He explained that any amount of mama, machan declarations ‘has not changed the fact that they will not marry across class lines.’ Any change to whatever degree in marriage practices that broke through class status, would have indicated that the linguistic register of Dravidian fraternity did indeed translate into material reality. But Com. Valluvarasan observed no such change613.

In comparison to this broader context, his relationship to Su.Ra. and the financial assistance that was based on their intimacy, he said, had as its foundations a deep emotional trust. This trust he said came from early memories of shared class status and the challenges thereof, along with their shared journey of coming into a sense of self and way of being in everyday public politics. ‘When we went to work together, we shared our poverty, sadness and joy,’ he said. It is from that position of being poor workers that they became DMK thondar. Su.Ra’s financial assistance to

610 Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. 611 ibid 612 Chari, Sharad. 2004. Fraternal capital: peasant-workers, self-made men, and globalization in provincial India. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press 613 ibid

213 him emerged from this depth of love and shared life experiences. The assistance provided by DMK members who were rich landlords and business owners, he said, required in return a blind loyalty and subservience to them and the party. Su.Ra. and Valluvarasan, on the other hand, were two friends who saw themselves as equal to each other irrespective of the shifts in their class statuses. Their loyalty was to each other and their friendship614.

Throughout our conversations on the many political divergences between the two men, Com. Valluvarasan in his tone and in his silences expressed the deep love that held the two men together. He honored their political differences with the respect that was made possible through a deep personal fondness. In his quiet reserve, laced with grief, Comrade Valluvarasan made sure his friend, the famed DMK singer of Sulur Su.Ra. Subramaniam, had the one thing he would have wanted upon his death – an upholding of the principles he sought to live by. ‘Periya vetringa adhu’ (it’s a huge victory)615, Valluvarasan told me many times. This victory was of their friendship. This friendship was made possible by the shared Dravidian public sphere which left them with the sense of self and way of being put forth by TamilThanmai. Their friendship in turn provides space to explore elements of TamilThanmai in the ways that it moved between the interior and exterior realms.

Moving from the emotive aspect as is made apparent by the story of this friendship, the next chapter will delve into what we can learn about TamilThanmai from the Anjaneya Gym. This gym served as a key public political space where the minds and bodies of many of my interviewees were sculpted through physical training over many decades.

614 ibid 615 ibid

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Chapter 5 TamilThanmai of the Body: The story of the Anjaneya Gym

In the Anjaneya Deha Payirchi Salai (Anjaneya Gym), a significant space for public politics in Sulur, a generation of men born in the early 1930s began physical training from a young age, between eight and ten. By the time they were in their teens, the gym was an everyday part of their lives. The literal translation of Deha Payirchi Salai would be gymnasium – or gym. A gym is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a room or building equipped for gymnastics, games, and other physical exercises616’. But such a literal translation becomes a slight misnomer. The space was a coming together of a few different disciplines of physical training that was common in many parts of India in the 20th Century617. These disciplines included traditional wrestling and performance-based martial art forms, as well as yoga, gymnastics, etc. But for lack of a better word, the Deha Payirchi Salai will be referred to as a gym.

616 Oxford English Dictionary 617 Alter, Joseph S. 2000. "Subaltern bodies and nationalist physiques: Gama the Great and the heroics of Indian wrestling". Body & [and] Society; Alter, Joseph S. 2004. "Indian clubs and colonialism: Hindu masculinity and muscular christianity". Comparative Studies in Society and History : an International Quarterly; Alter, Joseph S. 2006. "Yoga at the Fin de Siècle: Muscular Christianity with a ‘Hindu’ Twist". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 23 (5): 759-776; Alter, Joseph S. 2007. "Physical education, sport and the intersection and articulation of ‘modernities’: The Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 24 (9): 1156-1171; Alter, Joseph S. 2010. Yoga in modern India: the body between science and philosophy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press; Balaji, Murali, and Khadeem Hughson. 2014. "(Re)producing borders and bodies masculinity and nationalism in Indian cultural texts". Asian Journal of Communication. 24; Chapman, David L. 2006. Sandow the magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the beginnings of bodybuilding. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; Dimeo, P. 2002. "Colonial Bodies, Colonial Sport: 'Martial' Punjabis, 'Effeminate' Bengalis and the Development of Indian Football". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 19 (1): 72-90; Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice; Majumdar, Boria. 2003. "The Vernacular in Sports History". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 20 (1): 107-125; Majumdar, Boria. 2004. "Imperial Tool 'For' Nationalist Resistance: The 'Games Ethic' in Indian History". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 21 (Supplement): 384-401; Peabody, N. 2009. "Disciplining the Body, Disciplining the Body-Politic: Physical Culture and Social Violence among North Indian Wrestlers". Comparative Studies In Society And History. 51 (2): 372-400; Rosselli, John. 1980. The self-image of effeteness: physical education and nationalism in nineteenth-century Bengal. Oxford: Past and Present Society; Singleton, Mark, and Ellen Goldberg. 2014. Gurus of modern yoga; Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga body: the origins of modern posture practice; Srinivas, Smriti. 1999. "Hot Bodies and Cooling Substances Rituals of Sport in a Science City". Journal of Sport and Social Issues. 23 (1): 24-40; Todd, Jan. 2003. "The Strength Builders: A History of Barbells, Dumbbells and Indian Clubs". The International Journal of the History of Sport. 20 (1): 65-90.

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When I began this research, I did not realize the gym’s significance as a public political space. On the surface it lacked the elements that I saw as conducive to political conversations, such as the circulation of newspapers or the presence of party members, both of which I found at spaces such as Comrade Valluvarasan’s provision store. Neither was the gym an overt political space as was the Anna Kalai Arangam. There were also other reasons why the history of the gym did not yet engage me. First, the Anjaneya Gym was a Congress-affiliated space. This made me assume that it could not have played a major role in the broader political fabric of Sulur from the 1950 to the 1970s, when the DMK influence had grown exponentially. Second, historiography of Tamilnadu on public politics in the 20th Century, except for some exceptions, has an element of dependence on the written618, formal spoken word619 and the all-important medium in Tamil political history – cinema620 . While this dissertation has moved away from this tendency by giving a central place to oral histories and historical ethnography, I still remained largely blind to the embodiment621 of everyday622 public politics. An analysis of silence and body language presented itself as key to tracing the place of caste earlier on in this dissertation. But beyond that any embodiment did not receive serious consideration. To use embodiment as an analytic, and as a methodology to map histories of everyday public political lives, is relatively unexplored in the

618 Arnold, David. 1977. The Congress in Tamilnad: nationalist politics in South India, 1919-1937. New Delhi: Manohar; Baker, Christopher John. 1976. The politics of South India, 1920-1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The politics of cultural nationalism in south India. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Geetha.V and /Rajadurai S.V.R^. 1998. Towards a non-Brahmin millennium: from Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Calcutta: Samya; Geetha.V, /Rajadurai S.V.R^, "End of Dravidian Era in Tamil Nadu". 1999. Economic and Political Weekly. 34 (24): 1483-1488; Hardgrave, Robert L. 1965. The Dravidian Movement. Bombay: Popular Prakashan; Irschick, Eugene F. 1969. Politics and social conflict in South India; the non-Brahman movement and Tamil separatism, 1916-1929. Berkeley: University of California Press; More, J.B. P 2004. Muslim Identity, Print Culture And The Dravidian Factor In Tamil Nadu. Hyderabad. Orient Longman; Nambi Arooran, Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism; /Pandian, M. S. S.^ 2006. Brahmin and non-Brahmin: genealogies of the Tamil political present. Delhi: Permanent Black; Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 1997. Passions of the tongue language devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. Berkeley: University of California Press; Ryerson, Charles A. 1988. Regionalism and religion: the Tamil renaissance and popular Hinduism. Madras: Published for Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, Bangalore, by Christian Literature Society; S M Abdul Khader Fakhri, Dravidian Sahibs and Brahmin Maulanas: The Politics of the Muslims of Tamil Nadu, 1930-67, Manohar 619 Bate, Bernard. 2011. Tamil oratory and the Dravidian aesthetic: democratic practice in south India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 620 Baskaran, S. Theodore. 2013. The eye of the serpent: an introduction to Tamil cinema. Chennai: Tranquebar Press; /Pandian, M. S. S.^ 2015. Image Trap. SAGE Publications. Vasudevan, Ravi. 2002. Making meaning in Indian cinema. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; Hughes, Stephen Putnam. 2010. "What is Tamil about Tamil cinema?" South Asian Popular Culture. 8 (3): 213-229. 621 Turner, Bryan S. 2017. Routledge handbook of body studies. 622 Das, Veena. 2008. Life and words: violence and the descent into the ordinary. Berkeley, Calif: Univ. of California Press.

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Tamil context623. However, for TamilThanmai, as discussed in the introduction, the analysis of the everyday is hinged on a careful consideration of the embodiment of politics. As with all elements of TamilThanmai, this history of the making of a sense of self and way of being, is rooted in the individual as much as it is in the collective. What follows is the history of the Anjaneya Gym as a site in which bodies were sculpted, literally, and the interaction of this process with the everyday lives of those engaged in public politics from the 1950s to 1970.

As my research in the field took shape, the gym made itself known, in interview after interview. After a certain point, its persistent presence in such narratives made it impossible for me to ignore the political significance of this space. It was clear that the history of the public political lives of Kallar624 proletariat men in the 1950s to 1970 in Sulur cannot be written without seriously considering the Anjaneya Gym. Named after the monkey god Hanuman, also known as Anjaneya, who worshipped and served the Hindu mythical god Ram, such a name evoked strength, morality, commitment, virtuousness, and loyalty. All these values were read onto the resolutely masculine ethos that the god Anjaneya represented within the realm of physical training practices in 20th Century India625.

What follows is a description of a typical day for my interviewees, who as young men in the 1940s to 1960s, went to the gym every day. Incidentally, everyone I spoke to who went to the gym worked at one of the many textile mills in the area. They began work in their late teens, first as temporary workers and then in the permanent workforce.

“Before many of us were married, at any given time, around ten of us would sleep in the gym. We would be up around 5:00 a.m. and did ‘ground exercises’ (exercises that did not use the gym

623 The importance exceptions to the emphasis on the written word is the analysis of cinema viewing in Tamilnadu in Jacob, Preminda. 2010. Celluloid deities: the visual culture of cinema and politics in South India. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan; And the analysis of oratory and the act of listening to it as part of participating in public politics in Bate, Bernard. 2013. "“To persuade them into speech and action”: Oratory and the Tamil Political, Madras, 1905– 1919". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 55 (01): 142-166. 624 While in more recent years, the currently functioning gym has become a place where men, Dalit and Kallar, train and are able to secure jobs in govt depts, such as the railway, through the sports quota, and even win major competitions, early on, the gym was an all Kallar space. It is only after the 1990s that a few stray Dalit men begin to frequent the gym and train there. 625 Alter, Joseph S. 2004. "Indian clubs and colonialism: Hindu masculinity and muscular christianity". Comparative Studies in Society and History : an International Quarterly.

217 equipment meant for climbing and weightlifting). We would then go home, finish all our morning duties (by which they meant ablutions and breakfast) and head to work in the mill. Let’s say I have a shift that ends at 1:30/2:00 am, I would go home to sleep a few hours and be back at the gym at 8:00 am to begin training. Just as there were work shifts in the mills, there were corresponding shifts at the gym.626”

This daily routine was narrated by ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy627, but was followed by all the gym regulars. After marriage, they stopped sleeping at the gym, but visited it every morning and evening, before and after work. Getting to work usually involved a bicycle trip across town, which was a 10-15 km distance each way. Those men, even in their mid- to late-80s, remained incredibly healthy, probably due to that prolonged physical training. Mariappan, a lifelong gym member, now 85, demonstrated push-ups to illustrate his strength during our interview628. I realized that the gym had been a significant part of the sense of self and way of being that my interviewees developed, even before they were exposed to other elements that contributed to this process, such as written text or oratory. The sheer routine of being in this space every day, honing one’s own body alongside one’s peers, made this space extremely meaningful. They fought to keep the space going with enormous commitment against all odds. Their efforts resulted in the gym continuing to exist until the mid-1990s. After this time, its activities slowly dwindled till the doors of the gym closed permanently in 2008629.

All my interviewees who feature in this chapter are working class men. ‘Police’ Kandasamy630, a gym member from its early years, and now local ADMK leader and elected government official at the Sulur Panchayath, made it clear that the gym was a space for poor young (Kallar) men. ‘Panakkaara veettu chellapillaiyellam varamaataanga,’ he said, i.e., the spoiled boys of

626 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 627 It’s a common practice to give honorifics such as ‘Weightlift’ to men based on their achievements It may be scholarly or in other fields such as the arts or in this case, physical training. Kandasamy was a champion in weightlift competitions in his younger days and received this honorific from there. 628 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 629 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 630 Similar to Weightlift Kandasamy Police Kandasamy received this name from being selected in the police force. This also helps differentiate between different people with the same name, especially when such names are as common as Kandasamy is, in the Tamil context.

218 rich households did not come to the gym631. I interviewed everyone still alive who had frequented the gym over those decades. This included sportsmen who had led the gym and its activities into fame and respect. I also collected any material I could find – certificates from competitions, pictures of equipment, and photographs of the gym and its members, from every possible source. Based on these interviews and the textual and visual material, this chapter explores this gym as a significant space for public political life. A range of portraits of individual men, their sense of self, their choices with regards to political beliefs and the role of the gym in it all is palpable through this history. Simultaneously, a history of the relationship between physical training/discipline and public politics becomes visible.

In the previous chapter, we explored an affective relationship that had a profound impact on the construction and history of TamilThanmai. My chapter on that friendship between two men analyzed the expressions in the exterior, puram, of a relationship that was sustained by the interior – agam, which therefore blurred lines between both those realms. This chapter will delve deeper into the process of my interviewees seeing, growing into and getting involved in politics within the space of the gym while simultaneously honing their individual bodies. They were involved in these parallel processes not just as individuals but as part of the collective identity that the gym provided for them. Simultaneously, such trained and sculpted bodies became symbols of the very politics into which they were growing. Although collective political beliefs and resultant affiliations were right at the center of those gym narratives, their own sense of self and way of being as they evolved through the physical training were deeply influential for each of them as individuals, and in shaping their relationships to one another and to the gym itself. Together, this narrative that traces the place of the Anjaneya Gym in the history of public politics in Sulur places before us the element of embodiment, of or as part of everyday public political lives, and what that meant to DravidaThanmai. This is a significant point as in spite of being constructed upon and through very specific bodies of male, non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men, to the exclusion of all others, discussions of Dravidian politics tend not to consider the terrain of the body. This added layer to DravidaThanmai being mapped here through the Anjaneya Gym will provide a methodology and a perspective to look for elements of embodiment while tracing the history of public politics.

631 ‘Police’ Kandasamy at Group Discussion by Author. Digital Recording. Jeyamaruthi Gym Sulur, 19th June 2017

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A caveat about an important moment in the history of the Anjaneya Gym will help explain better this public political significance. The one remaining gym in contemporary Sulur, the Jeyamaruthi (also a name for Hanuman -Victorious Hanuman) Gym, is a break away from the Anjaneya Gym. The story of this split is significant. My interviewees’ descriptions made clear that the sculpting of the body and mind at the gym left a mark on them that was much deeper than any other attempt at shaping of minds and hearts by public political spaces such as political party propaganda in the form of words – written or spoken. The split was described to me as the hurt that was caused by the breaking of a fraternal bond amongst the men. On the surface it was simply a split between the Congress members of the gym and the recently mobilized DMK members of the gym, that took place in 1964. The impact of it, as I could discern from my interviews, was not about either of the political parties at all, but the breaking of a much deeper bond. All the interviewees who spoke of the split remained deeply affected by it more than 50 years later. Given this, there was no room for brash upholding of party identities in their narrative. In a somber tone they told me of the split and were visibly moved while relating the story. Outside of individual relationships, the gym was the only other place about which my interviewees felt so strongly. The emotive reactions that one may expect to see in the context of formal party politics and related public political life in Sulur, I heard, saw, and felt only in the context of the Anjaneya gym. As a final testament to the influence of this gym, the lineage of building this bond as gym members continues even today in the Jeyamaruthi Gym.

Spatially, the Anjaneya Gym was part of a cluster of spaces that were significant to public politics in Sulur. The present-day Jeyamaruthi Gym is located in the relatively newer ‘Pon Vizha Arangam’ – the 50th year anniversary complex. It consists of a stage, playground and the gym, which has two rooms and smaller training grounds of its own. Jeyamaruthi Gym only received this piece of land from the Panchayath in the late 1990s when the land was cleared for building structures to commemorate 50 years of the DMK. This area is inset and away from many of the spaces that were significant to public political lives in the 1950s to 1970 period.

In comparison to this, the Anjaneya Gym was located in the space commonly known as anna madam, the food distribution center. Here, the poor and unsupported could get food donations every day. This center was part of the complex of an old temple to a goddess called Sooraththamman. The temple complex was next door to the Navamani (nine pearls) cycle stand,

220 a business started and run by nine loyal members of the DMK. Across the street (in this case, the Trichy Highway) from the cycle stand and temple was the DMK reading room. This cluster also included other small shops such as the barber shop belonging to Ramu, one of the nine DMK members who ran the cycle shop. Su.Ra. Subramaniyam learnt the oyilattam performance form as a young boy on a street in the same area. The Anjaneya Gym was located in one corner of the temple complex632. Its members had a small room to keep all their equipment, safe from the elements. Otherwise they trained in the open, next to the small temple, in the shade of trees. Today, the gym no longer exists and even Sooraththamman herself has been sidelined to make space for another god. This gym was one amongst the many spaces that made up the everyday bustle of public political life. Further, it was conveniently located on the Trichy Highway and thus en route to and from work for all of the gym members as they traveled everyday by bullock cart, bus, or bicycle. It was also close to the bungalow of the major patron of the gym, the local Congress leader SVL. Thus, the spatial location of the gym made it conducive to becoming integral to everyday public politics.

The gym for my interviewees was a space for everyday physical training, and alongside, for everyday political practice. Meanwhile, the gym was mobilized in the discourse of the Dravidianist public sphere as a symbol of a virile and strong Tamil masculinity. What follows is a mapping of the claiming of the gym and its members as a symbol uniquely of Tamil-ness, by the political leaders, juxtaposed with the origins and history of the diverse origins of the different forms of physical practice that were part of the gym’s everyday routine. The next section of the chapter will move away from the symbolic claiming of the gym to the details of the meaning of the gym for my interviewees in forming their sense of self and way of being. Considering both these elements, the final section of the chapter will present the picture that emerges, when layering TamilThanmai with a history of embodiment of politics through the history of the gym and its members.

632 Figure 2

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The gym as a training ground for ‘Tamil Bulls’

In 1967, a pamphlet/souvenir was published on the occasion of the Coimbatore district-level weightlifting competitions organized by Malar Weightlift Association (one association of many in the Coimbatore district) where several members of the Anjaneya Gym participated and won. The first page of this publication reads as follows 633(Translation by own)

C. N . Annadurai

Chief Minister of Tamilnadu

To do exercises regularly in order to sculpt strong bodies that can be the powerful bulls that strengthen the Tamil nation is an important need. I am very happy that this need is being emphasized amongst our young men by competitions such as this one. My very best wishes for achievements in the weightlifting competitions and success in the bodybuilding competitions where the most attractively sculpted body will be chosen. I am glad that information on such competitions will circulate among more young men through publications such as this one. s/d Annadurai

The evocation that conflates male strength with national strength is a common practice in many different contexts634. The Tamil context is by no means unique in this regard. Furthermore, the history of the forms practiced at the Anjaneya Gym are not restricted to the Tamil context. To the contrary, these practices emerge from diverse origins and are practices that were shared across many different regions beyond Tamilnadu. The details of this will become clearer later in this chapter. In the above quote, the ‘Tamil nation’ that is evoked as the origin of those participating in these practices and the practices themselves, is the spatial category of Tamilnadu635. In short, the practices that sculpted the ‘strong Tamil bulls’ who were being called upon by the Chief

633 Malar Weightlift Association Souvenir Publication (Coimbatore, 1967) 634 Chapman, David L. 2006. Sandow the magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the beginnings of bodybuilding. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 635 While the term ‘Tamil nation’ is a common usage, through the 1950s and 1960s, the literal bounds of that category changed over this period. After the formation of Tamilnadu in 1957, it largely referred to Tamilnadu. This spatial bounds got further solidified upon the DMK’s first electoral victory in 1967.

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Minister of Tamilnadu and DMK leader Anna to protect the ‘Tamil nation’, in fact, had origins and influences that spanned across the subcontinent – with both native and colonial elements636.

As with most practices in the subcontinent, all these physical practices and the gyms had specific regional caste connotations. In the context of Tamilnadu, the implied reference, in terms of caste, although completely unstated, is that the men being referred to are non-Brahmin/non- Dalit men637. The association of bulls with agriculture and the owning and taming of bulls, all being associated with non-Brahmin, non-Dalits, meant that the evocation of the Tamil bull is a call to non-Brahmin, non-Dalit Tamil men638.

The Anjaneya Gym has to be located along this multifaceted and fascinating historical trajectory of male physical training in the Indian subcontinent. There were three main strands of physical training that were practiced: yoga, bodybuilding, and wrestling. There were two other forms of physical training practiced which have since shrunk in significance in the competitive realm. First, ‘gymnastic’ exercises that emerged from the colonial state’s introduction of compulsory physical training in schools639. This culture of physical training involved disciplined marching and basic stretches and strengthening practices. In its advanced form it involved gymnastic feats which were part of the everyday physical training as well as performances by gym members, many of whom were employed as physical training teachers in colonial schools640. Following from this extensive spread of physical training, the practice made its way into other physical training spaces such as the Anjaneya Gym641. These practices are still part of everyday training in the Jeyamaruthi Gym. But gymnastic feats unlike an earlier era, no longer hold the pride of

636Alter, Joseph S. 2004. "Indian clubs and colonialism: Hindu masculinity and muscular christianity". Comparative Studies in Society and History : an International Quarterly 637 This has been established in the Introduction of this dissertation. 638 The most recent example of this is the debates about the banning of the bull taming sport of Jallikattu in Tamilnadu. Much of the debate has directly or indirectly invoked protection of ‘tamil culture’ as the primary rationale but this invocation employs images of masculinity, both of the bull and the men taming it. These men are, in this case as well, primarily of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes. See: https://thewire.in/politics/jallikattu-protest- casteism-patriarchy 639 Fischer-Tiné, Harald. 2019. "Fitness for Modernity? The YMCA and physical-education schemes in late-colonial South Asia ( circa 1900–40)". Modern Asian Studies. 53 (2): 512-559. 640 ibid 641 While the spread of institutionalized physical training from colonial schools to private gyms has not been studied in detail, for this chapter the connection is clarified through narratives of various persons in the narrative mentioning Physical Training teachers in colonial schools who were involved in these gyms.

223 place in the public exhibition of skills by gym members. The demonstrations by gym members are no longer a major attraction at temple festivals and other public occasions642. Most gym routines now are geared towards the competitive realm and are focused on yoga, weightlifting and bodybuilding.

Along with these three forms of yoga, bodybuilding and wrestling, the learning and performing of traditional folk forms was the other significant part of the training at the Anjaneya Gym. In Sulur, this included Silambam (a martial art involving footwork and sticks) and Puliyattam (a dance form often performed in temple festivals where the performers are dressed as tigers)643. These practices have been passed on from teachers who traditionally held the position of performing these forms in temple and other festivals in villages644.

Yet another traditional form of sport at the gym was wrestling. Wrestling in this gym can be placed within the larger historiography of traditional wrestling practices and their modern journeys that has been written about by scholars such as Joseph Alter for regions in North India645. This scholarship establishes a complex, sometimes direct and at other times symbolic connection between wrestling in the subcontinent in the 20th Century, and Indian nationhood. While the story of wrestling in Sulur may be connected to similar analyses in other parts of the subcontinent, what is of interest to us is the specific construction and history of wrestling as a practice in the Anjaneya Gym.

17.1 Wrestling

Wrestling in the Anjaneya Gym was, like all traditional wrestling in the subcontinent, focused on building morality, strength, discipline and righteousness of individual men646. In that sense, the practice of wrestling is an important place from which to understand the embodiment of politics, individual and collective, that we are mapping here. In Sulur, beyond this individual meaning,

642 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 643 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017; Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017; Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 644 ibid 645 Alter, Joseph S. 2003. The wrestler's body: identity and ideology in north India. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6n39p104/. 646 Ibid

224 the collective responsibility was to the wellbeing of Sulur itself. This collective commitment, like the gym itself, fell within the bounds of the Kallar caste. In that sense it was locally constituted within the caste and community dynamics that were at the core of Sulur.

Such a commitment to Sulur’s wellbeing had no relationship to Indian nationhood whatsoever647. Its relationship to political parties, the Congress or the DMK, and their local or state-level leaders, was superficial. The depth of emotion I witnessed in my interviewees when they spoke of wrestling laying the foundation for them to become strong, virtuous citizens of Sulur, was connected to the individual and fraternal commitment that united gym members. In that sense, the commitment to this value system was resolutely non-partisan. The primary preoccupation and continuing affective tie was each individual man carving his body and spirit through these practices and values, and his membership in the collective of men who did the same. This caste-bound individual practice of wrestling gave these men a sense of belonging in a collective of other men with the same commitment. Together, as strong bodies and spirits, they engaged in the ‘public good’ of the village648. Following from this, it is apparent that the ‘public’ whose good was being served also existed within the bounds of the Kallar caste649. It is this service to the public that is then mobilized within the discourse of the ‘strong Tamil bulls’650.

The practice of wrestling in a public space, in Sulur as well as in other places in the subcontinent, predates the 20th Century and thus the Anjaneya Gym. The space in which wrestling was practiced is a kothapetti651 in Tamil. This was also the space to which training in other traditional forms such as Puliyattam and Silambam were also connected. The first known kothapetti of Sulur is mentioned in a life narrative of champion wrestler Bayilvan (Wrestler) Karuppannan652. He seems to have excelled in wrestling, from early in the 20th Century. While a clear picture does

647 None of my interviewees spoke of ‘India’ as a spatial marker or ‘Indian’ as an identity marker for themselves in any context. 648 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017 649 The spatial analysis and the limits of that in terms of being bound by caste based spatial organizing of Sulur has been addressed in Chapter 2 of this dissertation. 650 Ref. 633 651 The term kotha in Tamil refers to wrestling. The Kothapetti is a box or a space in which to wrestle. 652 Notes by members of the Pavendar Peravai from their interview with Bayilvan Karuppannan. They did not include all the details from their notes in Sulur Varalaru. But I was able to access this information from their handwritten notes during interviews. Bayilvan Karuppannan was no longer alive for me to interview directly.

225 not emerge from the available sources, it can be discerned that at least from the late 19th Century there were many kothapettis set up in Sulur653. These were usually associated with a rich patron of the Kallar caste. The mention of the Deha Payirchi Salai (physical training center) before the formation of the Anjaneya Gym might be a reference to a kothapetti rather than a more multipronged gym. With the demise of the kothapetti654 , all the practices connected to that space – wrestling and the traditional performance forms – were subsumed within the newly emergent, multifaceted Anjaneya Gym.

The gym members whom I interviewed had mentioned wrestling in passing but did not highlight it as the most important part of their practice. Their focus was on keeping in touch with ‘tradition’ by practicing wrestling while seeking to excel via ‘modern655’ practices such as weightlifting, bodybuilding and gymnastics. It is important to note here that the lineage of yoga and bodybuilding practices that were central to the training at the Anjaneya Gym, which will be discussed in detail shortly, explicitly looked down upon traditional wrestling. This school of thought considered wrestling to be non-conducive to holistic physical training and bodily beauty656. Nonetheless, in Sulur, every interview included at least one proud mention of the interviewee’s prowess in wrestling. I concluded that wrestling had persisted as a traditional form, one that was to be respected in spite of the demise of the kothapetti.

Wrestling’s status of being a ‘traditional form’ is often conflated with it being unique to the Tamil context by my interviewees. They spoke of it as a form that emerged and thrived in the soil of Sulur as it were. This claim of uniqueness of wresting practices to the Tamil context is untrue. These practices while practice in many different regions, were also local and specific in each area where they were practiced. They were constituted by local caste and community

653 ibid 654 More information on detailed reasons for the demise of the kothapetti will require further research. But for the purposes of this dissertation it can be discerned that the coming of newer forms of physical training during later colonial times created a need for more multi-pronged physical training centers that provided space for all these forms, rather than being focused only on wrestling. 655 There is a whole body of literature on the dominant definitions of modernity as being associated with Colonialism in the post-colonial context. For an excellent critique of this and for a proposal for a definition of modernity from a non-Eurocentric perspective see: McNeal, Keith E. 2015. Trance and modernity in the southern Caribbean: African and Hindu popular religions in Trinidad and Tobago. Gainesville [Fla.]: University Press of Florida. 656 Iyer, K. V. 1938. Perfect physique: a poem to my system. Bangalore: Bangalore Press.

226 dynamics. This local nature enabled a conflation with uniqueness for my interviewees. This pride in the local/unique nature was employed within the trope of the Tamil masculine prowess evoked by Dravidianist leaders such as Anna. As a result of all these discourses through which wrestling was spoken of, a caste-bound traditional practice, common and yet localized to many parts of the sub-continent, was evoked as the symbol of the strength of the generalized, undefined ‘Tamil nation’.

This evocation, along with the sense of self and way of being – individual and collective – that wrestling provided to my interviewees, adds a whole new layer of embodiment to DravidaThanmai. The masculinity connected to wrestling and other traditional performance forms was, in line with DravidaThanmai, seen as ‘indigenous’ and uniquely ‘Tamil’. While both practitioners and Dravidianist leaders shared this discourse, there were crucial differences between the two perspectives. These differences will become clearer further on in the chapter. Additionally, this was very different from the perspective on the ‘modern’ masculinity that was celebrated in the physical training that involved the coming together of yoga and bodybuilding657. Just as with wrestling, for these practices too, it is possible to juxtapose their construction in the Dravidianist discourse with the complex history of how they came to be practiced at the Anjaneya Gym.

17.2 “Physical Culture” through Yoga and Bodybuilding

The genealogy of the Anjaneya Gym’s yoga and bodybuilding practice has a very specific history. I have traced some of it to the teachers whose pictures adorned the walls of my interviewees’ houses and the Jeyamaruthi Gym. Those pictures usually consisted of athletic champions of the present day (in the Jeyamaruthi Gym) with political leaders. The Jeyamaruthi gym displays pictures of political leaders of all hues while the homes of erstwhile gym members show off their favorite leaders. The majority are Congress leaders from Tamilnadu (such as former Chief Minister of Tamilnadu K Kamaraj), the national Congress leaders, former Congress Prime Ministers (Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru), M.K. Gandhi, and Sulur Congress leader and major patron of the gym, SVL. There were only two other figures displayed. One was Tiruvallur, an ancient Tamil poet and an exponent of ‘Tamil morality’. The other was a yoga

657 ibid

227 teacher Mariappa Thevar, mentioned by everyone I interviewed as their moral compass. He was accorded the reverence usually associated with spiritual teachers. One yoga teacher, S.V. Pechumuthu, emerged from within the generation of my interviewees. His son Loganathan, also a yoga teacher, runs his own yoga school in Sulur today. Loganathan showed me a picture of his father’s yoga teacher, who hailed from Bangalore and was very famous658. His name was Sundaram, known as ‘Bangalore Sundaram’ in Sulur. He was famous, among other things, for the accessible visual chart of yoga poses that he made. Pechumuthu and other men in Sulur of his generation used this chart extensively and it hangs on the wall of the Jeyamaruthi Gym today659.

Bangalore Sundaram was a significant character in my tracing the lineage of this form of physical training that combined yoga and bodybuilding in the Anjaneya Gym. Bangalore Sundaram, otherwise known as Yogacharya Sundaram, was indeed a famous exponent of Yoga and an integral part of the journey of ‘modern yoga’ in India660. His posture, especially in the seated ‘padmasana’ position, was uncannily similar to that of the Anjaneya Gym yoga teacher, Mariappa Thevar, and to later teachers such as Pechumuthu. While such poses are standardized today, it is important that this was the period when such a standardization began and these teachers were part of it661. While I was unable to ascertain a direct connection between Sundaram and Mariappa Thevar, they were contemporaries and the similarity in their practice suggests that there may have been some contact during the 1940s and 1950s. Such contact could have either been direct or through the widely circulated written material authored by Sundaram. The Anjaneya Gym was part of a much larger move towards what was known as ‘Physical Culture’ which was a watershed moment in the history of yoga and bodybuilding in India, especially southern India, from the 1940s onwards662. Sundaram was a significant part of this process.

658 Loganathan, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th June 2017. 659 Figure 22 660 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice; Singleton, Mark, and Ellen Goldberg. 2014. Gurus of modern yoga. 661 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 662 Singleton, Mark, and Ellen Goldberg. 2014. Gurus of modern yoga.

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The history of Physical Culture is associated with a significant body builder called K.V. Iyer663. Sundaram was closely associated with him. K.V. Iyer was a world-renowned body builder. He evolved his own style of ‘Physical Culture664’ that brought together bodybuilding and Hatha665 yoga666. Towards the goal of spreading this method, Iyer started one of the first gyms in India, the Hercules Gym, in 1922. This gym was in Bangalore within the grounds of the Mysore King Tipu Sultan’s summer palace. Iyer was employed in the palace as a consultant on physical health. The palace was, till 1948, the headquarters of the princely state of Mysore. Because of this relationship he was given space to create his gym there. K.V. Iyer was inspired to pursue bodybuilding by the lineage of British body builder Eugene Sandow who traveled to India among many other places in the early 20th Century and left his mark667. To this British inspiration, Iyer added indigenous elements of physical training. Iyer was famous enough to be featured in bodybuilding magazines worldwide and celebrated for what he self-described as a ‘body which the gods covet.668’ His gym grew in popularity in the following decades and in size. Iyer was prolific in his writing about this system and even evolved the first curriculum for a distance-learning course in what he called ‘Physical Culture669’. In the world of physical training, K.V. Iyer’s influence is far from marginal. Sundaram’s close association with such a giant in the world of physical training made him a significant practitioner in his own right, who also left a profound impact on this area in the early- to mid-20th Century670.

663 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 664 Chapman, David L. 2006. Sandow the magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the beginnings of bodybuilding. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 665 Hatha Yoga is a form of Yoga that involves forming and holding a series of poses as part of the practice. For a history of how these postures were standardized see: Singleton, Mark. 2010. Yoga body: the origins of modern posture practice. 666 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 667 For the history of the connection between bodybuilding, the physical health of individuals and the nation see: Chapman, David L. 2006. Sandow the magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the beginnings of bodybuilding. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. K.V. Iyer, while admitting to being inspired by Sandow’s practice, does not seem to invoke the nation in his style of ‘physical culture’. 668 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 122 669 This term, while inspired by Sandow, for Iyer consisted of Hatha Yoga and a shunning of certain elements within traditional wrestling in India. So it was a conversation with influences from elsewhere and a responses to existing practices in India all happening simultaneously. See: Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 670 ibid

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Sundaram began training at Iyer’s gym when various life circumstances brought him to Bangalore. The gym seems to have been a space of solace and community for Sundaram in a city that was new to him671. He already had a practice of physical training involving exercises that were part of wrestling traditions672. He also already practiced Hatha yoga. His previous practice of yoga combined with a few years of training at Iyer’s gym led to him becoming Iyer’s partner in spreading the methods of Physical Culture far and wide. Sundaram travelled with Iyer to demonstrate his method of ‘Physical Culture’ that was a combination of bodybuilding and Hatha yoga. Sundaram then was primarily a practitioner of yoga who came to be influenced by and worked to spread the methods of Iyer’s Physical Culture673.

Iyer and Sundaram, both Brahmin men, were part of the early 20th Century zeal in urban centers amongst upper caste men for evolving and popularizing various traditions that evoked a sense of strength among their ‘fellow countrymen’674. It was an exciting time for yoga culture in which the interplay between traditional practices and modern influences led many to evolve myriad practices and popularize them. Much of these practices remained within the enclave of Brahmins in Bangalore675. Iyer and Sundaram, however, were drawn to the social reform movements that had gained prominence in these urban centers in the 1920s676 and were not restricted to Brahmins. This meant then that while they practiced all the ritual norms required of a Brahmin man, they were also invested in building ‘secular’ public institutions that strengthened all persons who were interested in getting stronger.

A deeper analysis of the relationships of these men, their physical practices, institutions thereof and their caste identities is yet to be done. This is beyond the scope of this dissertation. But for our purposes here a few observations are of relevance. In all available published photographs of both men demonstrating their respective physical practices, they are not wearing the sacred

671 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 672 Alter, Joseph S. 2003. The wrestler's body: identity and ideology in north India. Berkeley: University of California Press. 673 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 674 ibid 675 ibid 676 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice.

230 thread that indicates their Brahmin-hood677. This thread, traditionally, is to be ceremonially worn by Brahmin men at all times. They are wearing the thread in other photographs where they are not performing exercises678. There were regular worship practices at the gym as part of physical training, but these were to the god Hanuman alone and none other. Both yoga and bodybuilding came with their own sets of ritual practices and intense disciplining of the body. While the frugality of it, such as the lack of meat consumption, may be influenced by Brahmanical food practices, the full extent of the connection between caste and this practice requires a deeper analysis. It is relevant to our analysis that the influence of this system of thought and practice was not limited to Brahmin communities alone but was available to men across caste679. Primarily, this access was through the written material with visual representation that circulated extensively apart from the many non-Brahmin men of Bangalore who visited the gym. This is how Sundaram, a Brahmin man, came to be so significant to the Anjaneya Gym in spite of the complete absence of any Brahmin influences in any aspect of life and thought in Sulur.

Iyer’s method was aimed at achieving the perfectly sculpted body that was beautiful and possessed enormous strength. Such a body was to be chiseled through methods that involved strict moral and ethical discipline of the body and mind. These methods weren’t just a physical practice but was a way of life. In parallel, in the late 1920s, Sundaram joined a group of other yoga practitioners to evolve a form of thinking about Hatha yoga practice which proposed it as a way of achieving holistic physical and emotional wellbeing. Towards this end he published the first manual of Hatha Yoga, complete with pictures of him performing the poses, with descriptions in English. This text was called Yogic Physical Culture or the Secret of Happiness. This text had a forward by K.V. Iyer’680. Thus, Iyer and Sundaram, together and alone, through their respective practices and by bringing them together in some instances, were both working towards holistic physical, mental, moral health and beauty681.

677 ibid 678 ibid 679 ibid 680 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice. 681 ibid

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To achieve this holistic health and strength, Iyer’s system of bodybuilding required a strict regime of food, exercise and rest that was explained through a combination of modern science and traditional knowledge. Sundaram’s practice also required its own version of the same. Both teachers were known for having lived by the principles they espoused. This disciplining of the body was repeatedly connected to a discourse of a moral ethos. Both men provided ways for practitioners to live strong, long and healthy lives in order to ‘fulfill his obligations to himself, his home and the society he is a part of’682. Sundaram for his part, apart from actively contributing to this discourse of strength building and health as a Hatha Yoga practitioner, also expounded in his text about the ‘Body as the Vehicle for Transcendence’. He borrows from ancient texts such as the Yoga Sutra and breaks down into parts the path to transcendence through yoga. Like Iyer, he lived an austere life and was humbler than Iyer by all accounts683.

682 ibid. 146 683 ibid

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Figure 15: Top left: Advertisement with image of K.V. Iyer for his book. Top right: Yoga teacher Sundaram demonstrating a pose as part of K.V. Iyer demonstrations. Iyer used these images of Sundaram in his books. Bottom: Undated picture of Sundaram many decades later with Sulur yoga teacher Pechumuthu standing second from left.

Sundaram’s influence on the Anjaneya Gym can be ascertained through a few different indicators. While many of Sundaram’s publications on ‘Physical Culture’ were widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, the chart with pictures of him performing the various asanas was key to the training at the Anjaneya Gym. It is unclear if the chart was used at the gym before or only after his direct association with gym members in later decades. The honor with which Sundaram seems to have been invited to the gym indicates that members were previously well-aware of his practice and were honored to be able to train with him directly. The translation of the Tamil term in the Anjaneya Gym’s name – Deha Payirchi – is Physical Training or Culture. It is then possible to conclude that Sundaram’s contemporary, Mariappa Thevar, was influenced by this practice as he taught yoga at the Anjaneya Gym from the 1930s onwards. Mariappa Thevar was spoken of as a spiritual being who, like Sundaram lived a disciplined and austere life684. It is through this complex history that moved beyond the Tamil land that the practice of Physical culture that was central to the Anjaneya Gym came to be practiced there.

This history of the forms that made up the crux of everyday training in the Anjaneya Gym, which in turn was key to the role of the gym in constituting public political lives, is important to our

684 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017; Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017; Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

233 understanding of DravidaThanmai. First, the fact that this practice does not have purely Tamil origins is ignored in descriptions of the gym by my interviewees, as well as by the meanings of the gym evoked by Dravidianist leaders. These diverse and shared origins are incommensurate with the register of speech within DravidaThanmai. First, the influence of Brahmins, the wider regional reach, and the influence of secular urban cultures that created these practices are inconsistent with DravidaThanmai and are thus ignored. Second, the deep-seated influence of these practices was that they were a discipline and a way of life rooted in an individual commitment to oneself and to a collective of those who were engaged in building that discipline for themselves. From this place of individual discipline and morality one was to choose to fulfill one’s responsibilities to the ‘society within which one lived’685. The latter was not to be severed from the former. This ‘society’ for my interviewees was the public political sphere of Sulur, bound within the Kallar caste and through practices of politics that spanned their membership in the two major political parties, the Congress and the DMK. This then simultaneously added a layer of nuance to DravidaThanmai by enabling the embodiment of politics while also being an element that challenged DravidaThanmai’s blanket evocations of the Tamil self. My interviewees, in their everyday life as gym members engaged in public politics, were aware of this varied origin of their practice. Simultaneously they also inhabited the role of the uniquely ‘Tamil bull’ in public political discourses of leaders. Every day, they navigated this cusp of the ways in which their physical practice both affirmed and challenged DravidaThanmai.

To ascertain the impact of the gym on the lives of my interviewees, it is important to consider the discipline espoused by this training – a careful sculpting of every single muscle in the body to achieve symmetry, physical strength, emotional strength and confidence – along with its emphasis on living in the world as a respected man who performed his social and cultural duties to the best of his ability. It is this masculine form, internally and externally, that was being chiseled at the gym. This sculpting, a lifelong practice and commitment, was integral to the lifelong everyday routine of my interviewees. This sustained practice explains the deep affective tie that they hold to the gym to this day. The depth and routine of this practice bred an unmediated physical and emotional connection to the gym among its members, that went beyond the boundaries of ideology, political parties and its leaders. Simultaneously, the evocation of the

685 Goldberg, Elliott. 2016. The path of modern yoga the history of an embodied spiritual practice.

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‘strong bulls’ to describe their everyday practice by important leaders is part of, and yet not central, to my interviewees. The embodiment of politics that the gym made possible lent itself to the registers of DravidaThanmai such as the ‘Tamil Bull’ while also layering and expanding it.

What did the gym mean to my interviewees?

A few pages into the Malar Weightlift Association’s commemorative publication is a note from the then Social Welfare Minister and later Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi, a note similar to that by Anna (then Chief Minister) shown above. With his signature poetic language, Karunanidhi’s note is more elaborate and begins with a tracing of the traditions within which aanmai (machismo) was bred and nourished. He begins with a reference to traditional bull-fighting and wrestling. These practices, he stated, were encouraged for aanmai valarppu, a term that literally means the honing of masculine strength towards machismo. The ‘soil of Tamil lands’, he adds, bred machismo through these practices while the (Tamil) people considered ‘machismo and a fearless heart’ as that which made for a masculinity that was to be celebrated. Poets of yesteryears, he said, proudly sang the praises of these macho heroes. It is thus ‘our duty’ he declared, to unilaterally support any efforts by Tamils to take forward this tradition. The rest of the note echoed Anna’s wishes including the use of the same imagery of ‘strong bulls’ that were the ‘army of the (Tamil) nation.686’ This publication was released in 1967, was on the eve of the setting up of the first-ever DMK state government. This voice from the highest echelons of state power affirmed the work of local patrons who had supported these physical training practices for many decades by then. This claiming of the gym space and those who trained there into the discourse of ‘Tamil aanmai valarppu’, as part of strengthening the nation, is common in many parts of India and resolutely in Tamilnadu. The patronage of the gym by the Congress leader SVL, and the conflation of service to the party and/or town with the gym duties of members, indicated that this gym too fell within the realm of public politics that celebrated Tamil machismo although this practice was far from being unique to Tamilnadu687. While this was the dominant meaning read onto the gym and its members within the Dravidianist discourse both locally and at the state level, the everyday lives of gym members and the meanings of the space to them provided a much more complex narrative. This narrative that follows must be understood

686 Malar Weightlift Association Souvenir Publication (Coimbatore, 1967) 687 Ref 617

235 in the context of this dominant symbolism of the gym. The interaction between the symbolism attributed to the gym and the experience of gym members themselves provides an insight into the layers of TamilThanmai that are centered on the history of embodiment within the everyday public political lives of gym members.

In terms of affiliation to political parties, the Anjaneya Gym, the physical training it provided and the ‘machismo’ bred there, were not tied to the DMK or any Dravidian political space in the beginning. It began as a gym primarily patronized by the local Congress leader SVL688. Upon his instruction, members of the gym in the 1940s and 1950s were the muscle for local do-good activities689. Kamatchi, Mariappan and Naatrayan, regular lifelong gym members, are the three members from that era who still maintain a loyalty to the Congress party. Kamatchi is still an active member690. Mariappan maintains loyalty to specific leaders he likes691. Naatrayan has the least resolute loyalty now although he served as the president of the gym for decades and held positions in the Congress-affiliated union at the mill where he worked692. All three of them spoke of destroying the toddy shops to prevent their town’s men from falling prey to alcoholism. This was not without contradictions as the toddy shops were owned by, in some cases, SVL’s own brother and other relatives. Similarly, the gym members were the workforce for building public infrastructure, such as digging wells or making water canals693. Everyone from that generation, including ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, who was more clearly affiliated with the DMK then and now, said that ‘he (SVL) would say and we would just do it’694. This affiliation to the Congress Party in spite of the gym and its members falling well within the ambit of breeding Tamil machismo within the Dravidianist public sphere, it also affirms the fact that DravidaThanmai is not bound by affiliation to Dravidian political parties.

688 Gauthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995) 689 Gauthaman N. Senthalai Pulavar ꯁலவர் சசந்தலை கퟁதமன் , Sulur Varalaaru 毂쯂ர் வரலா쟁 [History of Sulur] (Sulur: Paaventhar Peravai, 1995) 690 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017. 691 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 692 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 693 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017; Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017; Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017. 694 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017.

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Mariappan, who was still loyal to the Congress, but primarily to the erstwhile leader and Chief Minister K. Kamaraj, explained how participating in things SVL asked them to do was a matter of course in the gym:

“So, if there were public functions in the village we would go and perform our skills there. SVL patronized the gym. If there was a Congress meeting or something, they would ask us to come… especially if there was an election going on, and we would agree to come. We would go and support in any way we can. It was a give-and-take relationship – they helped the gym and we helped the Party695.”

Kamatchi, who was still an active member of the Congress Party, related stories of defending the party against attacks by members of other parties in Sulur. He joined the Congress because of his father’s involvement. He was proud of the place that SVL held in the eyes of significant Congress leaders at the state and national levels. As for his relationship with his contemporaries who were of other parties, it was multipronged. He spoke of being cordial towards his friend and school batchmate Thalaivar Thangavelu, who was a Communist from the 1940s to the 1970s. Simultaneously, he proudly spoke of taking on Thalaivar Thangavelu’s brother and significant DMK leader since the 1960s, SRS., in public forums.

“I have taken on SRS publicly in (election) campaigns. SRS would get government contracts and make money out of it. I spoke about all of this with a mobile mic while moving around on a bullock cart during election campaigns. I was alone on the bullock cart – SVL’s bullock cart. I went all around the village. A few of them (DMK members) blocked the bullock cart. I just said I am going to keep doing what I am doing and kept going. Then after that I put some big wooden sticks in the bullock cart and kept going. So, if anyone threatened me, I told them I can hit them back.696”

Here it is important to note that Kamatchi, now in his late 70s, and with various health complications, was still visibly strong. Years of sustained training in yoga, weightlifting, wrestling and other forms of training were visible in his physical self697. In the 1960s and 1970s,

695 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 696 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017. 697 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017.

237 then in his twenties and thirties, he must have been discernably strong. For the Congress Party, then, he did and in some ways still does represent a lone, intimidating, muscular strength along with conviction and poise. As for the split between the gyms to form the Jeyamaruthi Gym after 1964, Kamatchi was quick to characterize it as a party-based divide. But despite having given himself this simple and straightforward narrative and having picked a ‘side’ for himself – the Congress, he did not want to talk more about the split. His silence and disturbed body language were the very first indications I had of the magnitude of emotional impact that this split had had on all the gym members of that generation698.

‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy came to be the teacher at the newly formed Jeyamaruthi Gym in 1964. He was a prize-winning weightlift champion, the pride of Anjaneya Gym. His narrative around the Anjaneya Gym’s affiliation to the Congress was surprisingly complicated. He declared the gym to have been a Congress-based institution. But the meanings of that characterization were far from straightforward. While discussing the story of the split, he spoke of five gym members, including himself, who were drawn to the DMK but continued working for the Congress upon SVL’s instruction, as was the practice in the gym. Because of this complex circumstance, he says, when the police came to mediate the split and asked that Congress and DMK gym members stand in separate groups, some of them could not go to one or the other group. Simultaneously, he illustrated the power of Congress influence on the gym as public events were often a collusion of powerful businessmen and local Congress Party members who were elected representatives from the district. He too spoke of the split with tenderness and grace, making clear its effect on his life699. The younger members at the Jeyamaruthi Gym, for instance, were much less moved by the split as it was a mere story to them. To ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy and others, it was a significant turning point in their physical, emotional and social life. We will return to the split in detail shortly.

Mariappan had a nuanced narrative about the relationship of gym members to SVL and to the Congress in general. He had much less at stake as he was a mere foot soldier and did not make it up the ranks of the party. In the gym, too, while his strength was palpable, he did not rise to be a champion the way ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy had done. But his internalization of the ethos of

698 ibid 699 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017.

238 strength, self-respect, and virtuousness in life that he traced back to his training in the gym were palpable as much in his body as in his stories700.

Figure 16 Mariappan and his wife in front of their house with his bicycle acquired 40 years ago

In the above picture, Mariappan and his wife are standing outside their present-day home – a small space surrounded by a garden where they grow food for their own consumption. The bicycle in front of them is the one he bought when he got his first permanent job at the mill. In the 1950s and 1960s, buses were rare from Sulur to the nearby towns where the mills were. Workers either walked or traveled by bullock cart. A bicycle was thus the first most important acquisition upon receiving confirmation of a sustained salary. He went to the mill on this bicycle for 40 years. Mariappan was insistent on showing his physical strength during our interviews and would break into various exercise routines, which indeed showed his physical strength. His interest was primarily in the gymnastics routines, and that may explain his not rising as a champion in spite of his strength: as weightlifting and bodybuilding emerged as the most significant competitive physical training practices, all other forms lost their significance. He, like

700 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

239 all members of the gym of his generation, was loyal to SVL and thus by extension, the Congress Party. But the nature of this affiliation became clearest to me when he recounted the story of the split in the Congress Party and the effect it had in Sulur and on gym members’ relationships with SVL701. The Congress Party at the National level went into intense internal flux after the death of its leader and erstwhile Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1964. This internal strife was very complex and among other things, it led to splits in the Congress Party in different states in the country and amidst different leaders. Much of this flux was consolidated in a clear split in 1967, when what is popularly known in Tamilnadu as the ‘Indira Congress’ was formed at the national level702. Significantly for Tamilnadu, however, the other Congress, commonly referred to as Kamaraj Congress at that time, was led primarily by K. Kamaraj, who was elected Chief Minister of Tamilnadu for three consecutive terms from 1954-1963. He was popular for his social welfare measures through extensive schemes to support the poor. He was also the first non-Brahmin Chief Minister of Tamilnadu and was of enormous significance, in spite of his party affiliation, to the broader non-Brahmin struggle for socio-political power in Tamilnadu703. Kamaraj was thus an inspiring leader to men such as Mariappan. The split at the national level had significant ripples in Sulur. SVL chose to affiliate with the Indira Congress. Many members, including Mariappan, were drawn to and remained loyal to Kamaraj. Mariappan’s everyday life, work, and the spaces he inhabited were intricately connected to SVL. Mariappan’s father had contracted land from SVL to grow betel leaves and feed his family. His family had a multi- generational, intra-caste, feudal relationship with SVL’s family. Apart from this, Mariappan’s affiliation with the gym and with the Congress Party had further deepened this relationship. In this context, the repercussions of the difference in affiliation between him and the wealthy Congress leader were palpable. I asked Mariappan about what the repercussions were of him making a choice that was different from SVL. He answered as follows:

“In the beginning he helped us a lot (at the gym). Even the betel leaf farm (of his individual family) was contracted from that family. But after this (split) he wouldn’t even

701 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 702 Singh, Mahendra Prasad. 1981. Split in a predominant party: the Indian national congress in 1969. New Delhi: Abhinav. 703 Perumal, c. A., and V. K. Padmanabhan. "Congress and non-Congressism in Tamilnadu." The Indian Journal of Political Science 47, no. 3 (1986): 421-34.

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invite us into the house when we visited. So, one day I went alone to confront him. He was sitting there along with Bangalakarar (Karupanna Thevar – DMK leader and SVL’s brother-in-law) and a few of the other rich people. I asked him: ‘You are such a big leader, so important in the Congress. And you won’t even invite a guest into your house? These people (poorer people, including himself) come believing in you. If you don’t invite them in and respect them, how will they respect you? So, you care more about your ego than anything else?’ Yes, they were helpful. But that doesn’t mean I have to put up with disrespect. After I confronted him, I got respect again.704”

This story, read along with his show of physical strength and the deep affinity to the discipline that the gym propagated, provides a complex perspective on the journey of building a physically and emotionally strong self by men such as Mariappan. Not only did Mariappan stand up for himself, his physical presence, like that of Kamatchi’s, would have been intimidating even to the most powerful – in this case, SVL. Simultaneously, the narrative of the self-respecting ‘Tamil bull’ evoked during this period to refer specifically to men such as Mariappan, provided a sense of self to him and others like him. They respected and propagated that symbol. This too would have contributed to the respect extended to Mariappan by SVL in that moment. But, this, we must recognize, was very different from other stories of self-assertion in which dissenters were brutally quelled, such as that of Valluvarasan’s challenge to corruption by DMK leaders as seen in Chapter Three. Mariappan, through the gym, could assert self-respect without posing a challenge to the rich and powerful. Even though the meaning of the gym and the strength it inculcated in him was deeper and went beyond the evocations of Tamil masculinity, he could, at the same time, claim a space in such a masculinity by virtue of being the symbol of it. And so, even as he challenged powerful men, he remained a ‘raging Tamil bull’ who was to be ‘respected by the Tamil lands and its people.’

The affective pull of this imagery upon those in power was visible. It was a practice that remained central in Tamilnadu, continues to date, and has grown exponentially705. Mariappan did not directly affirm or challenge this imagery in our interviews. In the absence of such a direct relation between this image and himself in Mariappan’s narrative, his self-respecting act, it could

704 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 705 See: https://thewire.in/politics/jallikattu-protest-casteism-patriarchy

241 be argued, was more surface-level and simply in order to defend his party affiliation. So, I asked him why he had decided to support Kamaraj although his local Congress leader, with whom he had a multi-generational socio-economic and political relationship, did not. He answered as follows:

“(Kamaraj) was doing many good things for poor people and for Tamilnadu… I thought to myself, ‘What are the others doing?...’ They (other parties) all seemed to be focusing on making money. I decided on the Kamaraj party. I stayed there… But I also know that no party feeds you. Do they feed you? They seem to be doing some good, so I stayed with one party. But no party feeds you… I have nothing to hide. I am loyal (visuvasam) to the party I have been part of from the beginning.706”

The term visuvasam in Tamil evokes loyalty that a pet may show to its owner, or in the case of humans, a feudal relationship. This way of describing loyalty to political parties was common amongst all my interviewees. In tone and connotation, this term evoked a sense of dependent loyalty without ideological depth or sustained personal reasoning. Or at best, it was a term that indicated what Valluvarasan referred to as a ritualistic affiliation to a certain politics or party. Interestingly, none of the gym members, including Mariappan, ever used this term with regards to the gym. They always spoke of the gym as a public space, institution, and affiliation that they were actively involved in creating, building, and maintaining. It was a place they went to, to do things, to spend time in consistently, to be with each other and to become strong through a disciplined life, in and outside of the gym.

It was clear that no persons, however powerful, could disrespect Mariappan’s strong, disciplined, self-respecting personhood. Further, such disrespect could not be justified by what were to him mere inanities of ego clashes over party affiliations. The strength and the respect that emerged from his sustained practice at the gym, he held dear to himself. It was at the core of his sense of self and way of being. It was this that he was defending in this incident.

In conclusion, the embodiment of politics within the gym was constituted both by the depth of affinity to the training along with fellow gym members cultivated through everyday practice at

706 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

242 the gym as well as the meanings read onto this practice through the discourse of the ‘strong Tamil bulls.’ Together, these made for a DravidaThanmai that stands affirmed and broadened when traced through the narratives of the gym and its members as part of the history of public politics in Sulur. To further affirm this complex layering that the gym provided to our mapping of DravidaThanmai, it is important to consider in detail the narratives of gym members with regard to the big split in the Anjaneya Gym in 1964.

The big split

The big split in the Anjaneya Gym was at the crux of understanding the role of the gym in the public political lives of my interviewees. There were diverse narratives about the split. Kamatchi, who was an active supporter of the Congress party, dismissed it as DMK members creating trouble and splitting the gym707. Naatrayan, with his much more toned-down continuing loyalty to the Congress, painted it as an incident that was a party-based split, but he primarily highlighted the ways in which the split weakened the gym and its significance in Sulur708. I noticed in Mariappan’s tone and body language that he was restrained as he spoke of the split, as he was holding back the emotions that were brought forth while thinking or speaking of it709. ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy traced the split to a thwarting of competition-related rules by some gym members which then escalated to cause the split710. Of these four men, Naatrayan and

‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy led opposing sides during the split711. In spite of major differences in perspective on the split amongst these four persons, they all indicated that this incident had had a deep impact on them. This impact can be ascertained by considering these perspectives together, and an exploration of the interstices between them presents a more complex narrative about the split.

The split had major repercussions for the gym members, especially in its immediate aftermath. ‘Police’ Kandasamy was also present during the split but was of a slightly younger generation

707 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017. 708 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 709 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 710 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 711 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017.

243 than my interviewees, and was, as a result, on the peripheries of the conflict. He half-jokingly explained how all members of the Anjaneya Gym, while participating in competitions that required them to wear only their underwear – such as weightlifting and bodybuilding – wore them in the Congress colors of orange and green. After the split, they wore underwear of their respective party colors, red and black or orange and green712. What the athletes wore during competitions were the visual symbols of the gym. Such a split in sartorial practices was no small change. This was also important, as beyond the difference in the colors on their underwear, these men were trained by the same teachers and had trained together every day, by then for two decades. Even though the split is generally understood in Sulur as having been a party-based split, the members held on to the affective relationship they had to this shared and prolonged everyday life experience. The garment that protected their modesty, showed their pride, and expressed their loyalty was in the party colors. But the deeper strength, commitment and affinity that was present in their bodies and minds was affiliated to and sculpted by the discipline and value system espoused by the physical training at the gym. This became apparent through the many incidents that were related to me as being connected to the split.

‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy explained the intricacies of the conflict from when it began in the early 1960s. In the run up to a district-level weightlift competition that the Anjaneya Gym regularly organized, they raised money to freshly paint the weightlifting equipment. Some members of the gym painted the bars red and black – the DMK colors, same as that of their underwear. Prior to this, the bars were usually painted the Congress colors – orange and green. The governing body of the gym, including ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, reprimanded the members who had done so and asked them to repaint the bars orange and green. ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, although drawn to the DMK at that time, remained committed to his role as the Assistant Secretary of the gym’s governing body and supported this decision. As he told me the story, he referred to those who painted the bars red and black with a tone of kinship and affinity. He upheld the spirit of them facing the repercussions of violating the strict rules of the gym. Simultaneously he was also proud of them and felt an affinity to them as they chose to express their loyalty to the DMK. As with most incidents which involved men of the Kallar caste who inhabited public spaces, some

712 ‘Police’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author, Digital Recording. Sulur 19th June 2017.

244 among the group of miscreants were related to ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy by blood. Others were those with whom he felt a broader caste-based kinship. For ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, the commitment to the gym’s rules were paramount and went beyond other affinities that would otherwise be considered the most important713.

The breaking of any rules was not taken lightly in the gym. All those I interviewed illustrated this with a potent example. If any member was seen smoking a beedi (cigarettes made of tobacco rolled in a leaf, which are cheaper than regular cigarettes and smoked commonly by working class men), they were suspended from the gym for three months714. This was the extreme strictness of the rules of the gym, for the space and for the bodies of the members. Given this, to go against an office-bearer’s decision and paint the bars in different colors was an affront to the very ethos of the gym.

After this incident, in spite of its seemingly peaceful resolution, ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy said, two groups evolved within the gym – Congress loyalists and the emerging DMK supporters. The district-level competition organized by the gym was to happen soon after. Four members of the gym were to compete in four different weight categories in the weightlifting competition. Two members fell within the same weight category. Two members of the same gym, according to gym rules, were not to compete against each other in a competition. In order to follow this rule, one of them was instructed to reduce a specific amount of weight to fall within another category. This person, a nascent DMK supporter, did not follow these instructions. He then went ahead and registered to compete against his fellow gym member. Such a breach in policy by a member, ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy explained, was a serious offense and attracted a fine to be paid to the gym. This fine, he said, usually ranged from 5 to 25 rupees – which in the 1960s was a fair amount for such an offense. But the governing body of the gym said that the member was to be fined 500 rupees. This amount in the 1960s was enormous. ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy then argued against other members in the governing body and pointed out the difficulties in losing weight on short notice and that the fine being levied was not commensurate to the offence. He even argued

713 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 714 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017; Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017; ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017.

245 that losing weight so quickly would have been a difficult feat even for himself, the weightlifting champion and teacher to all others at the gym. The governing body then responded by saying that he too would have been subject to the same fine had he committed such a crime. Following this disagreement, ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy and a few other supporters (who were also DMK supporters) held a meeting and decided to leave the gym with some of the equipment. This led to the police being brought in to investigate and mediate. Here, it is important to remember that local governance by this time was in the hands of DMK members, and thus by extension, held sway over the local police. Simultaneously, the presence of the DMK was spreading in Tamilnadu as a whole and Sulur was no exception. It was during this mediation that there was a moment when the police asked DMK and Congress members to stand in separate groups. In response, ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy reaffirmed the non-partisan nature of the gym and said that members of all parties train at the gym. The members refused to separate by party. It is important to highlight that even at such tense moments, the reason for the conflict was principles and rules rather than party affiliations715.

These negotiations continued for three months, during which time the gym was closed. This was the first time the gym had been closed in all the decades it had been in existence. The gym had been, till this point, accessible at any time of day or night. All members had access to the key and would come and go freely. It did not close for weekends or holidays. It was, beyond doubt, a routine everyday space for the members. Given this, it is possible to imagine the impact of the gym being closed for three months on the physical and emotional lives of these men. Every one of them, through their tone, communicated that this period when they could not go to the gym anymore had been the most impactful on all of them amidst the chaos of the split716. But this was not the end. At the end of the three months, the two conflicting groups made an agreement to work together as a unified gym. But during those three months, “they (Congress loyalists) registered the gym and removed us (the members challenging the fine – many of whom were DMK loyalists) from positions (within the governing body)” said ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy. It is after this that 15 members left the gym. U.Ki.Na. Rasu, emerging wealthy businessman and

715 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 716 Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017; Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017; ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017.

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DMK supporter, offered a space for them to train in the Thangam Shopping Complex that he owned on the Trichy Highway, across the street from the Panchayath Office. This is the same complex where Valluvarasan’s shoe shop was set up in the 1970s. Till the point of this final decision to leave the gym, ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy in his narrative did not assign the reasons for the split to party affiliations. After the official split occurred, the narrative fit more easily within party divisions. The immediate aftermath of the conflict that led to a closing down of the gym was a major breach in the everyday life and practice of gym members717.

While it is important to assume some DMK bias in ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy’s narrative, we can corroborate it with additional evidence. The Anjaneya Gym was officially registered for the very first time in 1964718. Till then, its name or structure was not a legally marked public institution as per government rules for such public institutions. Hence, it was in 1964 that the gym became a legal entity. ‘Police’ Kandasamy added that it was because of this official recognition that the other gym had to find another name – Jeyamaruthi719. Unsurprisingly, the dissenting members named their gym after the same god, Hanuman, who has many names. Yet again, while the conflict and the legal strictures left them with the unpleasant choice of having to call the new gym something else, they maintained the ethos of the gym and the practice that is symbolized by the god Hanuman. The key moment in ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy’s narrative of the conflict – of new office bearers being chosen for the gym, using the legal registration as the excuse, has factual evidence to prove it. Simultaneously, the imagery of Hanuman is a source from which to ascertain the persistence of the central ethos that was fundamental to practices at both gyms. This persistence was not dampened by the conflict or its impact, both material and emotional, on all those involved.

717 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017 718 Figure 20 719 ‘Police’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author, Digital Recording. Sulur 19th June 2017.

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Figure 17: The letterhead of the Anjaneya Gym has the lord Hanuman in one of his many poses that showcase his strength.

Figure 18: Jeyamaruthi Gym’s ‘worship room’ with an altar that consists of all that is important to the gym. This altar has at its center a large picture of Hanuman. TO the left of Hanuman is a picture of Muthuramalinga Thevar, the leader of the Forward Bloc and the Thevar landlord who was responsible for instigating caste violence in 1956 and emerged as a leader who is often revered in a godly fashion amongst Thevar communities since.

The emotional impact of the moment when the split occurred was palpable in the tone, body language, and the occasional direct admission by my interviewees. As the effects of the split dragged on, gym members admitted it as given and dealt with all the issues as and when they

248 emerged. While Jeyamaruthi Gym members worked towards finding a more permanent space, the Anjaneya Gym faced legal challenges to its presence on the Sooraththamman temple complex. Naatrayan was the named respondent in the case on behalf of the gym. The case began, according to him, in 1975, around a decade after the split720.

At this time, the owners of the land on which the temple stood asked for rent from the gym. The representatives of the gym argued that it stood on government land. Gym members collected money for court expenses and under the leadership of Naatrayan, fought the case and won in the lower level magistrate’s court. However, they lost the case in the appellate court. Naatrayan said this struggle went on for 15 years in court. Along with his daily job at the mill and continuing training at the gym, he also did the work of liaising with lawyers to fight this case. Naatrayan could not sustain working on the case, given all his other responsibilities in his personal and professional life. Eventually, the powerful landowners won the case against the young, poorer mill workers such as Naatrayan, who represented the gym in court in the early 1990s. Naatrayan pointed out that all parties to the case and the lawyers were ‘nammaalunga’ (our people), implying that they were within the Kallar caste. He did not make a clear connection between the landowners and the DMK, which would have established this case, clearly as one of DMK strong men attacking the gym. Neither were they any of the well-known landowning DMK leaders of Sulur. He did not speak openly about who the owners of that land were, and neither did anyone else721. But it suffices to say that the owners were outside of the realm of active involvement in public politics in Sulur and no clear connection can be established with the DMK.

The emergent prime location of the land made it extremely lucrative and thus legal battles over clear claims of it were not surprising. Mariappan, who owned a small shop in that cluster, was affected by this land dispute personally as well722. The same landowners claimed ownership over his shop and other establishments in the area such as the Navamani bicycle shop that was owned by the nine DMK members723. The land claim was about the piece of land in that entire area and not just about the gym. But the gym was the only explicitly public institution on that land, and

720 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 721 ibid 722 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. 723 Ramu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

249 they chose to channel the land claim primarily against the Anjaneya gym in the legal documents. ‘For 30 years, the gym functioned there. We took care of the temple too. Kept it clean. We did all our training in front of the goddess,’ Naatrayan said724. A sudden demand for rent, after so many decades, he and others saw as unjust. Despite the best efforts of gym members, they could not take on those more powerful than them, and lost their claim to the land upon which they had practiced every day for five decades.

After the case was closed, the gym continued to function and tried to remain within the two cents of land within that area that belonged to the Congress leader SVL’s family.

Figure 19 Anjaneya Gym members, 1972

Figure 20 pamphlet printed on the official letterhead of the Anjaneya Gym showing date of origin as 13th November 1943, announcing an officially sanctioned district-level strength-building competition organized in Sulur by the gym in 1997.

724 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017.

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The two images above are testament to the fact that the functioning of the Anjaneya Gym was taken very seriously long after the split. Figure 19 is of the gym and its members in 1972. Figure 20 is a pamphlet announcing an officially sanctioned district-level strength-building competition organized in Sulur by the gym in 1997. True to its original affiliation, the pamphlet’s header was an exact reproduction of the board of the gym. The picture of Nehru in the far left has the nationalist slogan ‘Vande Mataram’ below it. In the middle is Anjaneya or Hanuman in a pose displaying his enormous strength – his holding and flying with a mountain in his hand – based on a scene in the Hindu mythical epic, the Ramayana725. Below this the text reads ‘Sri Ramajeyam’, a praise to Lord Ram. To the far right is a picture of Subhash Chandra Bose, an Indian Nationalist symbol of physical strength and resolve, as he formed a well-trained army to defeat the British as his strategy to achieve independence726. The Forward Bloc party established by Bose had become a party primarily of the Thevar caste in Tamilnadu by this time headed by Muthuramalinga Thevar727. Below this picture, the text reads ‘Jai Hind,’ another nationalist slogan. The two speakers at the competition were S.V.L., described below as Honorary President of the gym, and Naatrayan, the President. In the midst of the court case that the gym was embroiled in at that time and given that the Jeyamaruthi Gym was, by then, an established institution in Sulur, to hold such an event in 1997 would have been no small feat for members of the Anjaneya Gym. To evoke all the original iconography while undertaking this task would have been a specific choice to highlight pride in the legacy of the gym. By this point, Sulur’s local governance was firmly in the hands of the DMK and the influence of the ADMK had grown. Gym members knew that it would no longer be possible to maintain a space that attracted young men if the gym was affiliated to the Congress party to any degree. And so, the invocation for Congress imagery might be read as an assertion of party affiliation in spite of it being detrimental to the Gym. But by this point there was no real support from the Congress for the gym. The invocation of this imagery, it is safe to conclude, was the external, familiar expression of a legacy in order to maintain the battle with a much deeper affective pull, of maintaining the gym as a functioning space and asserting its legitimacy in the world of physical training culture

725 http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/bce_299_200/ramayana/hanmtn/hanmtn.html 726 Banerjee, Santanu. 2018. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose: Feared Even in Captivity. London: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd. 727 Figure 18

251 in Sulur. It was yet another moment when my interviewees who remained in Anjaneya Gym re- committed to the fight to keep the gym and all that it stood for, against all odds, for the generations to come. The gym did not close for ten years after this event.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DMK member U.Ki.Na. Rasu, who had given space to the Jeyamaruthi Gym at the moment of the split, offered to work with the Panchayath (at that time under DMK control) to arrange for a grant of two cents of government land for the Anjaneya Gym728. This is yet another indication that the split did not, in any way, reduce or undo the respect held for the Anjaneya Gym as an institution in Sulur. This respect was shared by all across party lines. It is this respect that made U.Ki.Na. Rasu offer space to the splitting faction in 1964, and to the Anjaneya Gym members who had fallen into bad times and were unable to recover by the early 2000s. By the time this offer was made, older members had stopped coming to the gym and new members, Naatrayan said, were not interested in following up. It was in this context that the Anjaneya Gym closed its doors permanently in 2008 after close to 60 years. Naatrayan was the last president of the gym729.

The Jeyamaruthi Gym as the ongoing legacy of the Anjaneya Gym

The Anjaneya Gym is spoken of with reverence in Sulur by all, including those at the Jeyamaruthi Gym. The contours of the ongoing legacy of Physical Culture in Sulur became visible to me through a cross-generational conversation with members of the Jeyamaruthi Gym. I walked into a room full of weightlifters and body builders at the Jeyamaruthi Gym. Within minutes, the gentlemanly air of disciplined and morally upright men who held respect for women became clear in their body language and their treatment of me. Some of the men were in their 30s and had been training for anything between 15-20 years. The walls of the Jeyamaruthi Gym was covered in framed photographs of members, moments and other things that were significant over time, first to the Anjaneya Gym and now to those practicing today.

728 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. 729 Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017.

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Figure 21 Members of the Jeyamaruthi Gym with ‘Police’ Kandasamy on the extreme right and ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy next to him

In the picture above, ‘Police’ Kandasamy is seated on the far-right corner with ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy next to him on his left. Others in the picture mostly belong to the generation that came into the gym in the late 1960s and after, including the youngest amongst them, who are standing at the back. The walls above them are adorned with pictures of political party leaders from all the major political parties – DMK, ADMK and Congress. The pictures were of past and contemporary leaders. Champions from the gym across time, including from the Anjaneya Gym, were on the wall. This included pictures of them at competitions as well as portraits placed in their honor upon their passing. It also included pictures of more recent and contemporary champions who trained at the gym. Along with all of these were the prized possessions of the Anjaneya Gym, Sundaram’s yoga instruction chart next to the revered Hanuman (see Figure 22).

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Figure 22 Sundaram’s Yoga instruction chart to the right with picture of Hanuman

Two main themes emerged in my conversation with this cross-generational group. Its cross- generational nature helped to ascertain, through verbal accounts and body language, the legacies of physical training culture that persist in Sulur in its only remaining gym. The two themes were, first, a stated commitment to a non-partisan status for the gym, and second, enormous pride and commitment to the long lineage of disciplined lives, chiseled bodies, and moral and physical strength that these men inherited and continued to learn from their elders730.

All the men, including those who were older, such as ‘Police’ Kandasamy, touched the feet of ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy as per the discipline at the gym which inculcated eternal reverence for the teacher. The men spoke and moved with the grace and poise that came with many years of disciplined living and holistic physical strength. For members of the Jeyamaruthi Gym, at least in their narrative of the gym, party affiliation was described as a burden on the more important project of becoming ‘good men’ through the discipline of Physical Culture731. Having said this, an ADMK influence and patronage of sorts was visible in the gym in many ways. The presence of ‘Police’ Kandasamy, local ADMK member and elected Government Official, was the most direct sign. However, he himself, as an honorary member of the gym, fervently repeated the need to be non-partisan in order to maintain the integrity of the gym. ‘We must leave our politics

730 Group Discussion by Author. Digital Recording. Jeyamaruthi Gym Sulur, 19th June 2017. 731 Group Discussion by Author. Digital Recording. Jeyamaruthi Gym Sulur, 19th June 2017.

254 outside before we enter (the sacred space) of the gym’ he said. He indicated sacredness by bringing his hands together in a praying position while speaking that sentence732. The respect for the practice at the gym was expressed through ongoing practices of articulating the values of the gym and also being wary of elements such as party affiliations, which in the past have impinged on such values.

There were many legacies of the Anjaneya Gym that were lost in the shift to the Jeyamaruthi Gym. It seemed like gymnastics training was no longer part of the gym. While this particular form of training seemed to have begun dwindling in the 1960s, it was completely absent at the Jeyamaruthi Gym except for some exercise bars that were used for specific exercises that were a part of gymnastics training. But as a form, gymnastics was no longer being practiced733. Similarly, the role of gym members as performers of traditional forms such as Puliyattam and Silambam was confined to black and white photographs from the past. Additionally, they were indicated in other parts of the gym, such as on the name board of the gym, and served as a symbol that indicated the persistence of the discourse of the masculine strength of the ‘raging Tamil bulls’. Traditional Tamil folk practices as well as gymnastics had held a special place in the creation of this ideal/discourse, although the discourse addressed all practices at the gym. Older members such as Mariappan, Naatrayan and ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy nostalgically recalled how the crowds would throng to see them do the gymnastics act734. They spoke of the pride that came with wearing the costume for the Puliyattam performance or the thrill of performing the martial art form Silambam735. ‘With TV and other things,’ Mariappan said, people no longer want to see all this736. Temple festivals themselves have taken to other forms of entertainment that often involve the newer technologies of television and popular music. However, the actual practices at the Jeyamaruthi Gym did not involve these traditional forms, they contributed to the iconic symbols of the masculine strength being sculpted in this space.

732 ‘Police’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author, Digital Recording. Sulur 19th June 2017. 733 Group Discussion by Author. Digital Recording. Jeyamaruthi Gym Sulur, 19th June 2017. 734 ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017; Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017; Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. 735 ibid 736 Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

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From the perspective of DravidaThanmai, the persistence of this symbolism is of enormous significance. But it must be seen along with the physical practices that endured. And these were of the legacy of Physical Culture, which, as previously established, did not have ‘pure’ Tamil roots. The commitment to this ongoing legacy is so deep that affiliations, such as to political parties, were considered an impediment in the latest iteration of Physical Culture practice in Sulur.

The gym as a space of embodiment of the self

The Jeyamaruthi Gym, as it functions today, is one final source from which we can ascertain the main elements that constituted the affective relationship between the gym as a space inhabited by Kallar men every day of their lives. These elements provide an essential layering to the DravidaThanmai being mapped here. First, the commitment to individual growth through the discipline of Physical Culture persisted in spite of many interruptions to practicing in the gym over the years. This individual growth manifested itself in the sense of collective identity these men felt with one another, which, unlike a party affiliation, was unstated and yet deep. In spite of the split, the unpleasantness, and the eventual demise of the original gym, the core commitment to strong bodies and a disciplined physical, emotional and moral life left these affective ties between all those who worked towards these values. It is this embodied practice at the gym that provided all my interviewees a sense of self and way of being.

Second, this sense of self and way of being, even though influenced deeply by Dravidianist language and discourse around Tamil masculinity, kept such influences in the symbolic realm. Affiliation to political parties and the sheer existence in the realm of public politics by being gym members meant that party affiliations and the language of public politics in Sulur was part of the gym members’ sense of self as well. Simultaneously, the history of the Anjaneya Gym, with its sound discipline and training that was interrupted by the trials and tribulations of the split, has left a lesson which is expressed through a discourse of skepticism and the shunning of party politics in the present day. Yet, party affiliations were and continue to be present in the gym. It is clear, however, that affiliation to any party, Congress or later the DMK and then the ADMK, are all those that emerge from the individual and collective affective tie of the practice at the gym itself. It was not, as we may assume, originally or solely party affiliations that held them together

256 or split them up. Thus, the gym and the embodied physical practice was the root from which other practices of public politics emerged for gym members. While the roots persisted, these other aspects of public politics have fallen out of favor amongst later generations of Kallar men engaged in Physical Culture.

The story of the Anjaneya Gym and the continuing legacy in the Jeyamaruthi Gym are testament to the fact that public political spaces inhabited by working class, Kallar men in the 1950-1970s were never free of the influence of political parties, their leaders, and ideologies. Simultaneously, neither were such spaces subsumed within and bound by this influence. To the contrary, their everyday practice and the discipline and morality that it gave these men contributed to a physical and emotional embodiment of public politics.

The existence of the Jeyamaruthi Gym is being threatened by emerging gyms with modern equipment such as the treadmill. This gym too may see its end in the coming years, especially with the rapidly growing urbanization in Sulur. But the chiseled bodies and minds of many generations of men is an integral part of the history of public political lives in Sulur. The slow erosion of the clear affiliation to any one political party or ideology is an indicator of the many ways in which clearly stated public politics (affiliated to parties and spaces connected to that) was part of, but not an exhaustive arena within which poor Kallar men worked towards and acquired a sense of self and way of being. The story of the gyms urges us to revisit and reflect upon the categories within which the history of public politics is often imprisoned in historiography. It exposes existing historiography’s blindness to the body as a methodology and archive of history. The bodies of these men and the training that sculpted them had diverse origins across language, region and caste. It was resolutely modern and yet ‘traditional’. The Gym enabled participation in public politics as long as such participation was in line with the everyday moral values which are at the core of their training. In conclusion, the gym presents itself as a significant part of the history of the embodiment of everyday public politics in Sulur.

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Chapter 6 Conclusion: TamilThanmai in contemporary Sulur

Towards the end of my field work, I was scanning a few more documents at the Ariviyal Poonga Library when I heard an election announcement outside the window. It was the time of State Elections and so this was not unusual. I came out of the library to check which party it was, as the announcement involved repeated mentions of the caste name ‘Thevar’. It was the Forward Block, a national party whose Tamilnadu chapter was once led by Muthuramalinga Thevar, the Thevar caste leader who was complicit in the Mudukulathur violence in 1956. I was surprised as I had assumed that they only contested in the Thanjavur District of Tamilnadu, where the Party and the Thevars remain powerful, aggressive and caste-ist. In the Coimbatore District, where Sulur is, that role was played by the Gounders, who had their own political outfits. The Forward Block had fielded a candidate in a single constituency in the Coimbatore District, that included Sulur and a few other villages with Thevar or Kallar populations who were originally from Thanjavur and had migrated many centuries ago.

Yet another time, I was walking through the small street that runs along the Panchayath Office and Anna Kalai Arangam, with Com. Valluvarasan, who had his shoe shop in Thangam Shopping Complex on the Trichy highway. He said he needed to show me the place where his original rented shop had been, that was now destroyed. He had run his business from this space for a small amount of time before moving to its present location. It was more of a nostalgic exercise that I was happy to participate in, given the friendship we had built by this time. We stood in front of the destroyed building where his shop used to be, and he told me stories of the ‘old days’. As I turned around, I noticed a board in the colors and with motifs of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka – yellow and red, with an image of a roaring tiger. It said ‘Mukkulathor Puligal Sangam’ – Mukkulathor Tigers’ Association. The board was a combination of the word ‘Mukkulathor’ (the name given to the caste group that consists of the Kallars, Maravars and Agamudaiyars), and the imagery of the tiger which had become a symbol of the struggle for self-determination for both the northern and eastern Tamils of Sri Lanka, as well as ‘Tamils’ everywhere.

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As a young person growing up in Tamilnadu I was well aware that the declaration of non- Brahmin, non-Dalit caste names by organizations indicated a strong caste-ist ideology. To see such a thing on that small street appalled and disturbed me. Besides, the machismo of the tiger, be it associated with Sri Lanka or Tamilnadu, left me feeling unsafe in the presence of those who identified with such an image. But I stood my ground and turned to Com. Valluvarasan, hoping to see some version of this discomfort on his face too. I found none. I took a breath and asked him what this organization does. He dismissively declared that they ‘arrange marriages’ and hold other public functions with ‘cinema songs’ where boys danced. I knew that to ‘arrange marriages’ meant that they policed and enabled marriage practices within the Kallar caste in Sulur in order to resist, avoid or discourage inter-caste marriages. While I understood Com. Valluvarasan’s resigned dismissal given his own commitment to anti-caste politics as per his TamilThanmai and his son’s marriage to a Dalit girl, a part of me wished he were more enraged by the existence of such an organization in his Sulur – the proud home of Dravidianist anti-caste politics that he had been a part of making and which had made him who he was. I later learnt that this group supported J. Jayalalitha’s AIADMK, by this point a common occurrence amongst non-Brahmin, non-Dalits in Tamilnadu.

I also noticed stickers on cars with the same imagery which read ‘Kallar Boys’. I had seen such stickers in North India which were proud declarations of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit identities of caste groups that propagated brutal caste violence in those regions. I had not observed such practices of unabashed pride in declaring one’s caste in Tamilnadu before.

It was with this awareness of strong caste-ist political groups in contemporary Sulur that I went to the Pongal Vizha (Pongal Festival) in Sulur in January 2018. The Pongal Vizha had begun in the late 1990s under Thalaivar Thangavelu’s leadership, to bring Sulur together to celebrate the harvest festival. While many linguistic groups in the subcontinent have their own harvest festivals, Pongal was the one that was for Tamils everywhere in the world. In the past 20 years or so it has been claimed as the ‘Tamizhar Thiruvizha’ (Tamil People’s Festival) – a symbol of Tamil identity. The traditional intention of the festival, however, is not one that had much to do with linguistic identity, but was about the land, agriculture and the significance of the yearly harvest that occurred in mid-January. The rituals that were part of Pongal were all directed

259 towards nature – the sun, the land and water – and towards thanking the ancestors for watching over and blessing us with enough food to eat.

That year, the Jallikattu (bull taming) practice that is part of Pongal festivities had come under much debate in the realm of the law and was responded to on the streets in many parts of Tamilnadu. The practice was challenged by non-Tamil animal rights groups on the grounds of animal cruelty737. In Tamilnadu, the mainstream discourse focused on resisting such a critique and claimed it as a matter of Tamil cultural pride738. This led to a large and complex mobilization in Tamilnadu with widespread participation that warrants careful analysis739. In line with the TamilThanmai mapped here, the many people who took to the street were there for myriad reasons that they felt a deep affective pull to: anti-India sentiments were at the forefront of it but it was also other issues such as the strenuous circumstances of Tamilnadu’s farmers, and the fishermen affected by the Kudankulam Nuclear Powerplant, among others740. Simultaneously, the protests also embodied the various contradictions within Tamil identity that are of relevance today. The mobilization was large and varied and thus requires a more careful analysis in the coming years. The axis of the debate, within and outside the courts, was constructed as being animal rights versus cultural rights. Meanwhile, the history of debates around Jallikattu did not fall neatly within the dichotomies of critiques from outside versus Tamil pride, or animal cruelty versus culture. Local mechanisms within villages placed checks on the practice in order to enable its continuance as a cultural heritage while avoiding animal cruelty to some extent as well as danger to life and limb of the people participating741. Further, the Jallikattu practice is primarily one of caste groups that own bulls that they use to till the land that they own. This includes non- Brahmin, non-Dalit agricultural castes, such as the Kallars. It was entirely a male practice – where only men were allowed to tame the bulls as the women cheered on in their Pongal finery of new clothes and jewelry. The Tamil media was full of arguments about how the bull chase is an integral part of maintaining the virility of the bull to perform its function within the

737 https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-jallikattu-challenge/article22734450.ece 738 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/A-movement-to-reclaim-Tamil-pride/article17076065.ece 739 ibid 740 https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/jallikattu-tamil-anger-modi-centre 741 ibid

260 agricultural economy. The register of speech was such that it was not just the virility of the bull that was being defended, but also that of the men taming them742.

The Jallikattu debate at a fundamental level confirmed the elements of TamilThanmai (albeit with key differences from the 1950s-1970 period) such as the claiming of a practice as ‘Tamil’ when it was primarily one of non-Brahmin non-Dalits; the affective pull of ‘Tamil pride’; the lack of focus on material histories to do with the practice when mobilizing identity and culture as discourses; the reference to the ‘other’ in order to claim unity as Tamils; and the machismo. It also affirms the way in which the register of TamilThanmai was established as the only legible way of public political speech, so much so that only a debate in which cultural pride is evoked could garner this much attention in the media and bring large masses of people to the streets. This was the nature of the discourse, even though in reality many people there were also concerned with everyday material realities of and injustices upon the marginalized in Tamil society, such as the farmers, who had in that same year committed mass suicide given the dearth of harvest that year around Pongal time743.

In Sulur, there was no memory of a Jallikattu. I did not take on the task of mapping if it had ever occurred, and if it had, when it may have ended. But there had not been any food crop agriculture in Sulur for close to a century. The betel leaf farms, the main crop grown in Sulur, had been replaced by the textile mills and some cash crops such as banana and coconut.

In this context one of the young men speaking at the Pongal Vizha at the Anna Kalai Arangam (Figure 2) declared “next year, we will have a Jallikattu in Sulur. But in the meantime, I would like to present the most well-bred and strong cocks in Sulur”. He ushered in a row of men of his generation who came up on stage carrying beautifully groomed cocks. They declared the specific breed of the birds, what their diet was, and one of the cocks was declared the winner of the cock- breeding competition. There was no space in Sulur in which to hold a Jallikattu. Sulur does not have vast tracts of paddy land, and its growth into a small urban center meant that a lot of land had been built up into houses and other businesses. The speaker’s declaration therefore seemed

742 https://www.thehinducentre.com/the-arena/current-issues/article8119877.ece 743 https://thewire.in/agriculture/demonetisation-tamil-nadus-deepening-agrarian-crisis

261 far-fetched and Sulur’s Kallar men will most probably have to settle for the cock competition as a test of their virility for a long time to come.

I stood with Thalaivar Thangavelu, who wanted to take my attention away from the happenings on the stage even though he himself was the main organizer. He pointed out other groups to me such as the youngsters he worked with to protect the Noyyal River from pollution, or other environmental groups made of young men working in IT companies who were from Sulur.

Meanwhile, I started hearing slogans being aired from a loud speaker. They were in a tone reminiscent of the monotony of a school teacher in the Tamil context. Listening to them closely, I realized these were the kind of slogans I had heard Thangavelu speak of. They asked for Sulur to come together against caste. They asked that girls be educated for a better society. They asked for cleanliness and discipline. They emphasized the importance of the Tamil language. I moved closer to the direction of the slogans and realized they were recordings being broadcast via speakers installed on an empty vehicle. A small procession, including myself, then moved through the streets, following this vehicle. We were a trickle of people, mostly men of an older generation, who walked past the different public political spaces and the Dalit settlements which formed the core spatial map of this dissertation (Figure 2). As we walked, Thalaivar Thangavelu told me that these were the slogans used in the days when the Pongal Vizha procession involved participation from hundreds of Sulur residents, including school children from every school in Sulur. The schools no longer organize the children to attend. Participation of other residents had dwindled over the years. He told me all of this in the same resigned tone in which Com. Valluvarasan spoke of the Mukkulathor Puligal Sangam744. The procession then met the crowd back at the Anna Kalai Arangam.

I then became part of the sea of people in front of the Anna Kalai Arangam that was segregated by gender. I stood at the edge of the unsaid and yet clearly marked women’s section so I could observe what both genders were doing in the remainder of my time there. The young people were in the front of the crowd while the elders watched from the sidelines. The crowd was largely bored through the entire proceedings, including the speaker’s proud declarations of

744 Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

262 holding Jallikattu in Sulur. Suddenly, there were rumblings in the crowd and bodies began moving almost in unison and everyone began to dance to a current, popular Tamil film song. Typical of hit Tamil movie music, the song was extremely superficial and was in a form of Tamil that was far from the pure Tamil that was insisted upon by my interviewees. It was barely comprehensible. But this and other songs that were played, that I too am very familiar with, energized the festivities. This was the part of the event that most people were waiting for. Thalaivar Thangavelu had left by the time the songs began. I danced with the young folks and left to write my fieldnotes.

Barely any of my other interviewees attended the event. Even members of the Paavendar Peravai, who had brought out Sulur Varalaaru and who had assisted Thalaivar Thangavelu in organizing this event in previous years, did not come. Later, Senthalai Gauthaman, the main person in Paavendar Peravai said to me:

“Pongal vizhakku naan porathillai. Romba nalla thodanguna oru Vizha, ur nalanukkaaga, ippo verum kuppai.” (“I don’t go to the Pongal Vizha anymore. It began for the good of Sulur, with very good intentions. Now it’s just garbage.”)

It became clear to me that what I was witnessing was the demise of the last vestiges of the public political sphere that I had mapped for the 1950s to 1970. The principles of TamilThanmai that I had identified for this period were not living in contemporary Sulur in the everyday public political sphere. What remained of it in contemporary times was a ritualized love for Tamil and a newer version of non-Brahmin, non-Dalit machismo, similar and yet very different from the machismo that was at the core of the history that has been mapped in this dissertation. The majority of young men in the Pongal Vizha were not, in body or spirit, like my interviewees who were members of the Anjaneya Gym. They did not inhabit shared spaces explicitly meant to hone their bodies, minds and souls. Neither did they spend time in spaces that were specifically intended to enable political debate. The tea shops and other shops no longer played that role. While there are other means by which political conversations occur (which are beyond the scope of this dissertation), from my own observation and from the responses of my interviewees at the Pongal Vizha, it was clear that this space, even though embodying many of the concerns of my main interviewees such as Tamil culture and language, and being held in the same spatial

263 location that was key to their own everyday public political lives, did not exist as a space in which a sense of self and way of being recognizable as the TamilThanmai of the 1950s-1970 was embodied or lived in everyday public political lives in contemporary Sulur.

With regards to the Dalit presence, while I did not undertake any detailed research on their presence at the Pongal Vizha, it is important to note that the harvest festival is steeped in caste hierarchy and the Dalit castes often receive food from the upper castes on the day but do not celebrate together745. Such a celebration would be impossible as checks on commensality are of utmost importance within everyday caste practices. A festival primarily based on food has to be segregated by caste.

Traditional Pongal processions in villages do not go through the Dalit quarters. While our procession that day walked past the Dalit areas on the main road, it too did not traverse those streets. None of my interviewees who were Dalit were present at the Vizha and neither were any of the younger Dalits I had met over the course of my research. Having gathered during my time in Sulur that caste-based segregation in everyday social spaces was intact in Sulur, it is possible to make an informed assessment that the Pongal Vizha too was a primarily Kallar affair. In this sense, the Pongal Vizha and its spatial location at the Anna Kalai Arangam retained the caste exclusivity of public political lives and their TamilThanmai mapped in this thesis for the 1950s to 1970.

Similarly, while at some level the presence of women was palpable in the Vizha, it too was reminiscent of the TamilThanmai of the 1950s to 1970. They remained on the sidelines of the discourses that were being propagated on that stage. While the priorities and choices of this generation of women in contemporary Sulur may be different from those associated with my interviewees, in terms of their role in the public political sphere as witnessed at the Vizha, it was possible to observe a continuity.

For this dissertation that sought to map TamilThanmai of an earlier period in Sulur, this was the present face of the complex, contradictory and inadequate way in which the lineage of earlier years has been taken forward in the public political sphere. The co-existence of an anti-caste

745 Andre Beteille. "89. A Note on the Pongal Festival in a Tanjore Village." Man 64 (1964): 73-75.

264 register of speech along with the lack of practices that radically challenged the everyday insidious existence of caste as the structure and logic of Tamil society – caste as the air we breathe – was now exhibiting itself through the explicit caste-ism and religious fundamentalism that can be bred from that. The ritualization of Dravidianist principles as discussed in this dissertation has led to this point in history where it no longer poses a potent threat to blatant declarations of caste affiliations and hegemony in Sulur. Simultaneously, the deep affective tie to Tamil identity with all the strands of TamilThanmai I have traced remain: antiquity, the notion of a pre-formed fraternity and egalitarianism, and the pride in the vibrant history of non-Brahmin self-affirmation of the 20th Century all continue to thrive in the public sphere in Sulur. The machismo of TamilThanmai that was at the core of this dissertation exists today, albeit differently, and without the shared spaces of building friendships such as that of Su.Ra and Com. Valluvarasan or collective affinities and identities formed based on everyday practice and discipline such as at the Anjaneya Gym.

Having said this, the journey of the TamilThanmai all the way up to the contemporary period has to be mapped carefully for Sulur and elsewhere. If anything, the present caste-ist public political sphere of Tamilnadu urges us to look more closely and critically at the history of anti-caste politics in Tamilnadu. It urges us to carefully reclaim the powerful challenge to Brahmanism from within Dravidianist politics while also showing with absolute clarity that to do so without bringing the same critical astuteness to the lack of challenge to non-Brahmin, non-Dalit casteism leads us to dangerous ends.

As I write this Conclusion in 2019, national elections are underway in India. In Tamilnadu, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the face of Hindu right-wing fundamentalist politics within the realm of elections in India, is contesting the largest number of seats it ever has in Tamilnadu. They will directly stand in five seats and have formed a coalition with a range of parties including all the major political parties that represent specific non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes in Tamilnadu. This includes the AIADMK with a stronghold amongst Mukkulathor in many parts of Tamilnadu state, and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), built on the support of the violent Vanniyars, a non-Brahmin, non-Dalit caste, infamous for enacting brutal caste violence on Dalits

265 or their own caste members who defy caste norms746. The Kongunadu Makkal Desia Katchi, also a member of this alliance, is the representative of the Gounders of the Coimbatore District to which Sulur belongs. This coalition also includes the Shiv Sena, a Maharashtra-based organization that is methodically spreading its message of violent Hindu fundamentalism worldwide747.

There was an understanding earlier that the BJP could not enter Tamilnadu on the grounds of Hindu Fundamentalism or Indian nationalism alone. Tamilnadu was the land that opposed ‘India’ and Brahmanism and its relationship to Hinduism was complicated by caste and the strand of politics that espoused atheism. Other religious identities within Tamilnadu – Muslim, Christian and others – were traditionally understood as being one part of the larger, more central identity marker of Tamilness. Over the past decade or so there has been some observations made that the route for Hindu fundamentalism in Tamilnadu would be through groups and political parties that represented non-Brahmin, non-Dalit castes that resorted to violence. Hindu fundamentalist politics had already begun working through these groups. The entry of the BJP into the electoral realm in a big way in Tamilnadu is a culmination of this process.

It is in this background that this dissertation proposes taking an unafraid critical look at the history of the public political sphere in Tamilnadu with all its complexity. The historian V.Geetha wrote an incisive, unpublished piece where she brought together her own mapping of the Self-Respect Movement’s anti-caste politics with the ongoing multi-pronged (material and cultural) violence upon Dalits in Tamilnadu. She addressed a number of points in this essay that I too had begun to think through for the purpose of this dissertation. It was my conversations, debates, agreements and disagreements with her about this essay, her body of work on the whole and about my own research that enabled this dissertation to take shape. In many ways then this dissertation gained its strength from being a conversation between two Tamil feminist historians deeply committed to the land in which we were born and to the politics that has made us who we were, feminism. It is only apt then that she be quoted here. She says:

746 https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/when-development-triggers-caste-violence/article4693188.ece 747 https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/legal-and-political-magazines/shiv-sena

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“....in view of subsequent historical developments (here she is referring to brutal violence upon, and denial of access to ‘cultural and material resources’ to Dalits) it appears important to not only account for the gradual retreat of a fascinating and utopic vision (of the Self-Respect Movement), but also revisit the vision itself.748”

I would argue that this is true not just of the Self-Respect Movement but also of all those that traced their lineage to that Movement within the Dravidianist public sphere. It is in the spirit of heeding her call that this dissertation has mapped what I call TamilThanmai. While I have applied this concept as a perspective and methodology to one particular time period, it is one that can and must be applied to multiple places and multiple times in the Tamil context. It is with that hope that I leave you this text.

I share the disappointment and heartbreak of my interviewees about the contemporary state of politics in Sulur. But at the same time, I do not share their exhaustion and resignation. Neither do I see the process as a ‘corruption’ of ‘purer’ ideals from their time as many of them do. I have shown a much more complex picture of this history. I propose now a concept from which we may understand our past more carefully in order to imagine a better future.

For an ancient people such as us who have been speaking and continue to speak multiple versions of our language for about 3,000 years, the responsibility of looking carefully at our history is of enormous importance. The insecurity that critical history may unhinge us from our roots is deeply unfounded as our history is broad, layered and complex, given the sheer amount of time for which we have walked this earth and spoken our tongue. Such a deep sense of rootedness must then ground us in a process of a fearless stocktaking of our histories and in processes of criticality, reflection and imagination. It is in that spirit that I present to you, TamilThanmai.

748 Geetha.V. Untitled unpublished piece where she re-assesses the history of Self- Respect Movement’s history from the perspective of contemporary realities of Dalits and of caste in general in Tamilnadu. Used with permission from the author. Personal Communication June, 2017.

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‘Police’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author, Digital Recording. Sulur 19th June 2017. ‘Weightlift’ Kandasamy, Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. Arulprakasam. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th June 2017. Balasubramaniam, Appan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, May 29th 2017. Dhanraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. Group Discussion by Author. Digital Recording. Jeyamaruthi Gym Sulur, 19th June 2017. Ismail Khadr. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 22nd June 2017. Iyyasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 8th April 2017. K. M. Jeyaraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. Kamakshi. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th May 2017. Kittusamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 10th June 2017. Maakali. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd April 2017. Mariappan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. Murugesan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. Naatrayan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 3rd May 2017. Palanisamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. Paulraj. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th June 2017. Pavunammal. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 24th June 2017. Pechchumuthu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 14th March 2017. Perumal. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 29th May 2017. Radhakrishnan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017. Ramu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. Sankaran. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 12th June 2017. Sinnaiyan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur 9th June 2017. Sivasamy. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 5th April 2017. Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 21st January 2017. Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 13th March 2017. Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017.

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Su. Ra. Thangavelu. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 4th June 2017. Thamizhnenjan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 27th April 2017. V. K. Shanmugavel. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 9th June 2017. Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 20th August 2017. Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 26th April 2017. Valluvarasan. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Sulur, 30th May 2017. Valluvarasan. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. Vaathiyar Subramanyam. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. Tamizharasan. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. Kamakshi. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017. Tamizharasi. "Memorial Speech on Su.Ra. Subrahmanyam." Sulur. 8th May 2017.

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Filmography

Patwardhan, Anand. Prisoners of Conscience Zameer ke Bandi.Hindi and English. Directed by Anand Patwardhan. Anand Patwardhan, 1978. Sadanandan, S. L. Puram. Chemmeen. Malayalam. Directed by Ramu Kariat. Kanmani Films, 1965

Reports

Chinniyampalayam thyagigal 殿ன்னியம்ொமளயம் 鎿யா垿கள் [Chinniyampalayam Martyrs] த뮿ழ்நா翁 கமல இலக்垿ய பெ쏁மன்றம் யகாமவ மாவட்ட 埁폁 (Tamilnadu Kalai Ilakkiya Perumandram, Kovai Kuzhu) Coimbatore. 2014. Malar Weightlift Association Souvenir Publication (Coimbatore, 1967) Set of demands submitted to P. Kakkan, Minister of Public Works (Madras State) on his visit to Sulur, 25th November 1961, Ariviyal Poonga Library, Sulur 殿ட்羿 ொꯁힿன் 殿மற மடரி [Chitti Babu’s Prison Diary], (Self Published, 1976)

Journal Articles

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