Their apprehension is palpable as political historical past factors to the rise of all of the chief ministers of Tamil Nadu.—From the Madras Presidency underneath British rule to post-independence—usually tied to Dravidian ideology.
For the primary time since 1967, an rising political group defeated the main political teams – Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
The Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK), the occasion based by Mr. Vijay in 2024, gained 108 of the 234 seats within the Tamil Nadu Meeting, ousting the DMK-led authorities and throwing the AIADMK into turmoil.
“For the primary time, the risk is from inside. Till now, outsiders have been portrayed not simply because the Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) and the old school Congress, headquartered within the Hindi heartland, but in addition as those that threaten the Tamil language, identification and social order,” stated commentator BR Sreenivasan. Dravidianism.
Collectively, the Tamil language, identification, and its distinctive socio-political order type the core of the Tamil psyche. This pleasure within the Trinity is rooted not solely of their 2,500-year-old language and tradition, but in addition of their 100-year-old complicated, multilayered consciousness. Dravidianismstated analysts and commentators who spoke to ThePrint.
of Dravidian The motion started as a deliberate push to say the Tamil language and oppose Brahminical domination earlier than independence.
It later morphed right into a broader ideology advocating social justice points resembling gender equality, academic reform, and financial redistribution.
Additionally learn: After MGR and Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK was united once more. This time the cracks received deeper
Pre-independence: British, Adigals, Periyars.
Opposite to fashionable perception, its historical past Dravidian This concept didn’t originate with the fierce iconoclast Periyar.
“The mental foundations of this motion had been established within the late nineteenth century by a Cybite mental named Malaimalai Adigal,” writes Dr. Arvind Kaushik, PhD in Philosophy and Non secular Research, in his five-part collection “The Late nineteenth Century.” Dravidianism Indica in the present day.
Adigal was born in 1876 in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, was educated at a Christian missionary college, and is taken into account one of many elementary thinkers of Christianity. Dravidian motion.
He regarded Saiva Siddhantham as an authentic. Dravidian They claimed that Saivism shaped the idea of Tamil civilization and popularized it as Tamil monotheism.
Adigal was additionally one of many first proponents of Tamil nationalism, spearheading the Thani Tamil (Impartial Tamil) motion, which sought to de-Sanskritize the Tamil language, de-Brahmanized Tamil society, and asserted the prevalence of Tamil over Sanskrit.
Nonetheless, Kaushik, assistant professor at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, stated that Adigal’s political idea was anti-Tamil chauvinism. Dravidianism It was shaped by the British understanding of India.
Adigal, who studied underneath Christian missionaries, absorbed the “nationwide language faith” speculation from the British missionary Robert Caldwell and civil servant Francis White Ellis, and went a step additional in assuming and espousing an Aryan race.Dravidian It’s a idea that divides Indians and makes them simpler to transform and dominate,” Dr. Kaushik writes later in his ebook. Dravidian collection.
to Adigal’s Non-Sanskritization And Periyar, who ideologically seeks to distance Brahmins from Tamil society, added anti-Hindi sentiments.
Periyar, who was solely three years youthful than Adigal, met Adigal in the course of the first anti-Hindi motion in 1938 when C. Rajagopalachari, then Chief Minister of the Madras Presidency, made Hindi obligatory in all colleges. On September 11, 1938, on the iconic Marina Seaside in Madras (now Chennai), Adigal and Periyar raised the slogan ‘Tamil Nadu Tamisarukke’. Which means that Tamil Nadu belongs solely to the Tamils.
The year-long protests and agitation that adopted is commonly described as a watershed in Tamil Nadu’s historical past for 2 causes.
Throughout this motion, Neelambigai Ammayal Adigal’s gave the title of ‘Periyar’ (elder) to EV Ramasamy, the daughter of Dravidian This motion was until then nothing greater than a renaissance and reform motion among the many Tamils.
Periyar had already been on the forefront of the Self-Respect Motion in Tamil Nadu in 1925, however in 1939 he joined the Justice Get together and led it. Dravidian motion.
The Justice Get together and its function in Tamil Nadu politics stands as a robust interlude between the highly effective forces of Adigal. on the weekend Tamil Nationalism and Periyar’s Social Reform Motion (SRM).
If the SRM challenged caste discrimination and promoted social equality, gender rights, and rational considering, the Justice Get together, or the South Indian Freedom League because it was initially known as, was based in Madras (now Chennai) on November 20, 1916, as a political group to signify the pursuits of non-Brahmins within the Madras Presidency.
This was the primary political group shaped by 30 people to counter the dominance of Brahmanism in politics. Justice was the primary newspaper the Get together had as a method of propaganda.
The Justice Get together dominated politics within the Madras Presidency representing non-Brahmin pursuits for 17 years from its first election in 1920 to 1937, however was defeated within the 1937 Tamil Nadu elections and the Congress regained energy underneath the Rajaji authorities.
Across the similar time, Periyar discovered an apprentice in CN Annadurai (Anna) and recruited him to the Justice Get together.
Anna thought-about Periyar as her mentor and accepted him. DravidianismHe additionally edited the occasion’s periodicals. Viduthalai and greenbackhad a falling out with Periyar over ideological variations. He opposed altering the title of the Dravida Kazhagam and sustaining it as a radical, reform-oriented social group quite than a celebration geared toward democratic participation. Lastly, in 1949, Anna reworked the Dravida Kazhagam and based the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and have become its first normal secretary.
The place Tinseltown meets politics Dravidianism
When Anna broke away from Periyar’s radical DK to the politically bold DMK, he succeeded in moderating the DK’s radical ideology.
In 1957, within the first elections after the state’s reorganization on the idea of language, the DMK gained 14 of the 205-seat meeting, and within the 1962 elections it gained 50 seats, with the Congress nonetheless robust underneath Okay. Kamaraj. In 1959, the full variety of seats was 206.
Anna, who had beforehand championed the reason for Tamil separatism, needed to abandon her calls for. Since India was already at warfare with China, he needed to make a extra viable case for higher nationwide autonomy. Additionally, when the Indian Structure got here into power in 1950, it laid down guidelines for all political events to comply with the thought of India as a nation, thereby forcing Annadurai to resign all claims to an impartial state.
“Mr. Anna was pressured to desert the thought of making Dravida Nadu impartial as a result of then Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru threatened civil warfare if the south tried to secede. India was going to warfare with China, and in 1962 Mr. Nehru didn’t need any requires additional balkanization of the nation,” stated political scientist Vignesh Karthik, creator of the ebook. of Dravidian route.
President Nehru’s robust warning, India’s defeat towards China, and the following defeat of the Congress occasion towards the DMK in Tamil Nadu led Anna to take one other have a look at Dravidian ideology.
Vignesh Karthik says the compulsion of electoral politics has made Anna change her perspective. Somewhat than rejecting faith fully like Periyar, he started to assist rationality in religion.
MurasoriThe DMK mouthpiece began selling the thought of ’Onle Kuram’. Orvanay They chanted “Devan” (one group, one God) and stopped attacking religion in God. Anna realized that in a state with greater than 38,000 temples, “we will not afford to be anti-Hindu.”
“Anna even aligned himself with Mr. Rajaji’s right-wing Swatantra Get together to defeat the Congress, one thing Mr. Periyar would by no means have achieved. The DMK gained a landslide victory within the 1967 Tamil Nadu elections and there was no trying again after that,” Vignesh stated.
As soon as in energy, the DMK fused cultural populism with cultural populism. Dravidian It presents its ideology by the framework of Tamil cultural nationalism and successfully disseminates its concepts by Tamil movies. The DMK first got here to energy in 1967 by a six-party coalition, attaining an absolute majority within the 234-member Home of Representatives, overwhelming the then-ruling Congress led by Okay. Kamaraj.
Nonetheless, lower than two years after taking workplace, Annadurai died in February 1969. M. Karunanidhi, all 45 years previous, was unanimously elected because the DMK Legislative Get together chief, paving the best way for Annadurai to succeed him as chief minister.
The DMK authorities, which got here to energy in 1969 underneath Mr. Karunanidhi, continued to rule Tamil Nadu for nearly seven years till it was eliminated by the central authorities in January 1976.
Lyricists and screenwriters Anna Karunanidhi and M. Karunanidhi, identified for his or her command of the Tamil language, gave voice to movie star MG Ramachandran and used their recognition to additional increase the recognition of the language. Dravidian political ideology.
The occasion strategically used movies as a robust automobile of mass propaganda to convey messages of social justice, anti-Brahminism, and Tamil pleasure to the individuals, serving to the DMK develop right into a widespread mass motion.
Annadurai wrote the screenplay in the course of the early propaganda period of the Nineteen Fifties and 60s. Velaikari (Home Assist) is a movie that instantly criticized the Zamindari system and the greed of the rich and launched the essential ideas of social equality and independence to theater audiences.
Then got here Parasakthi, usually thought-about the turning level of the world. Dravidian political film.
Scripted by M. Karunanidhi and starring the well-known Sivaji Ganesan, the movie featured legendary courtroom monologues slamming spiritual hypocrisy, casteist social hierarchies, and blind religion.
Then M.G.R. Nadodi Mannan, Enga Veethu Pillaiand Airatil Orvan It was an enormous industrial hit. They largely built-in the DMK occasion image (the rising solar) and its crimson and black colours, even because the egalitarian dialogue served as a de facto election manifesto.
Whereas Kamaraj ridiculed the presence of actors in governance, former DMK central minister Murasoli Maran stated DMK movies mirror elements of each the previous (the wealthy language and tradition of the Tamils) and the longer term (social justice).
The fusion of ideology and cinema enabled Anna and her colleagues to hold out social reforms, financial improvement, and welfare measures concurrently, contributing to the rise of Tamil Nadu in all elements.
“CN Annadurai, M. Karunanidhi and MGR collectively reworked society. Dravidian By enacting populist social justice reforms and asserting state autonomy, it goals to transition from a social reform motion to a dominant political power,” S. Narayan, a former IAS officer who served as financial advisor to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and held senior positions in Tamil Nadu, instructed ThePrint.
“Whereas Annadurai pivoted to electoral politics, Karunanidhi institutionalized social justice by insurance policies and MGR popularized ideology by movies and welfare schemes,” he added.
After Anna’s demise in 1969, Karunanidhi grew to become the elected chief of the DMK occasion and inside weeks grew to become the chief minister. The MK, known as Karunanidhi, was supported by MGR, who performed an lively function within the rise of the MK.
Nonetheless, the victory didn’t final lengthy.
Within the aftermath of the 1971 victory, MGR’s membership in the primary occasion was suspended as a consequence of inside battle and public calls for for disclosure of the occasion’s monetary accounts, and the occasion skilled a critical break up.
Understanding occasion construction and group constructing, MGR based a brand new group named after Anna and confirmed himself to be the rightful inheritor to Annadurai’s legacy. Additionally, firefighter actor Sivaji Ganesan’s dismissal from the DMK after visiting the Tirumala shrine didn’t go down properly with a faction within the DMK that favored MGR over Karunanidhi.
Additionally learn: Caste, freebies, Dravidian ideology and new gamers—Tamil Nadu elections are not a DMK-AIADMK duopoly
Descendants and derivation period of DMK
When the AIADMK got here to energy in its first elections, MGR proved to be the champion and savior of the poor, a task he performed completely within the movie. The AIADMK gained three elections in 1977, 1980, and 1984, establishing itself as a robust occasion among the many individuals, particularly from underprivileged sections and amongst ladies.
MGR and her disciple Jayalalithaa, a convent-educated movie star, succeeded her mentor and former fellow actor in 1987, stabilizing the AIADMK and making it a reputable various to the DMK.
“MGR and Jayalalithaa Manufacturers Dravidianism He was markedly completely different from Anna and Karunanidhi. First, MGR and Jayalalithaa had been dedicated to each the Hindu gods and the nation. The truth that MGR has determined to prefix the occasion’s title with the phrase ‘All India’ reveals that it has not imbibed separatist concepts from Mr Periyar and Mr Anna,” political commentator B. Saravanaprasad instructed ThePrint.
“Whereas MGR was generally seen on the Kollur Mookambika temple in Karnataka, Jayalalithaa was a Brahmin and deeply dedicated to the Vaishnavite temple at Srirangam and sanctioned a grant to protect its heritage,” he added.
Throughout her reign and tenure from 1991 to 1996, Jayalalithaa brazenly advocated constructing a Ram temple in Ayodhya, although Karunanidhi had ridiculed the Ram Setu bridge, which was believed to attach India and Sri Lanka. Jayalalithaa, like her mentor MGR, believed in pleasant relations with centrist states, breaking away from a long time of anti-centrist attitudes.
Throughout her Bharatiya Janata Get together rule, Jayalalithaa handed the Tamil Nadu Anti-Compelled Conversion Act in October 2002, nevertheless it was repealed in 2004 after strain and intense opposition from Dalits and minorities.
Jayalalithaa remains to be remembered for her ‘Annadanam’ meals distribution scheme which she revived at a well-known temple in Tamil Nadu.
“By the late Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, when the DMK and AIADMK had been in regular rotation, there was little scope for anti-Hinduism because the period of welfare politics had totally taken over. As Tamil Nadu was one of the industrialized and extremely literate states, there was little scope for social justice to grow to be an electoral difficulty anymore,” Narayan stated.
From the late Nineteen Nineties, the Middle’s suspicions about separatist calls for in Tamil Nadu softened, and each the DMK and AIADMK entered into alliances with the BJP and the Congress, signaling additional dilution of the occasion. Dravidian ideology.
Nonetheless, because the Nineteen Nineties, Tamil Nadu has seen common makes an attempt by political forces to benefit from the shortcomings of custom. Dravidian Kind a celebration and current another plan. Dravidian stated commentator Subhagnarajan.
Thor Thirumabalawan headed the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) throughout Sri Lanka’s LTTE motion within the early Nineteen Nineties, championing the reason for Dalits in Tamil Nadu whereas additionally championing the reason for the island nation’s Tamils.
Vaiyapuri Gopalsamy (Vaiko) based the Marmalarkhi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) in Could 1994 after being expelled from the DMK. Vaiko’s MDMK was based purely to withstand Karunanidhi’s efforts to anoint his son Stalin as his successor.
Within the 2000s, Telugu Naidu actor Vijayakanth adopted within the footsteps of his senior actors and based Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) in 2005.
Though he succeeded in successful over the votes of an essential section of Telugu settlers in Tamil Nadu, his occasion was unable to maintain itself for the subsequent few years.
Sebastian Simon, also referred to as Seeman, a Tamil movie director turned politician, based Naam Tamil Katchi (NTK) in Could 2010 to as soon as once more take up the problem of Tamil nationalism.
“The entire cycle, from Tamil separatism to impartial Tamil nationalism, unfolded like a film reel. Smaller events, known as ‘half events,’ at greatest tried to supply some respite, however not a everlasting answer to the dominance of the 2 events.” Dravidian It’s main,” Subhagnarajan stated.
Nonetheless, 60 years later, the period of so-called “two-party and half-party system” and steady rotation was shattered by actor Vijay’s TVK. Dravidian Not simply the Majors, the BJP and the Congress are additionally searching for solutions.
cult determine
The BJP’s poor efficiency in successful only one seat and the Congress’s poor efficiency in simply 5 seats has as soon as once more raised questions in regards to the relevance of nationwide events in Tamil Nadu.
“what have they got present? ” requested S. Narayan.
“The Bharatiya Janata Get together’s model of Hindutva and improvement is not going to work in Tamil Nadu as it’s an industrialized state. The Hindu-Muslim divide card can’t be performed right here because it was by no means invaded by the Mughals. Secondly, each the nationwide events must amend the structure to permit cult figures to rise and seize the creativeness of the individuals,” he added.
Many political observers say the absence of cult figures from 2016 to 2026 additionally contributed to Mr. Vijay’s rise within the state.
“In Tamil Nadu, cultism has taken priority over ideology, it has taken priority over welfare politics and all notions of faith, caste and nation have been abolished,” Saravanaprasad stated.
However with Mr. Vijay’s rise, the controversy about ideological preservation has resurfaced.
Some say that Vijay’s emergence alerts a dilution of society. Dravidian ideology. Nonetheless, conventional Dravidians rooted within the institution argue that the brand new occasion’s electoral alliance is an indication of a sluggish ideological collapse and rupture.
Commentators ThePrint spoke to stated the ideology’s relevance within the modified socio-economic circumstances of industrialized and urbanized Tamil Nadu was being questioned.
Famend improvement economist A. Kalaiyarasan stated Mr. Vijay’s victory represented an obligation to the earlier authorities, which had misplaced contact with the individuals, however “it isn’t the tip of the warfare.”Dravidian mannequin” ideology.
Nonetheless, there may be robust opposition to this concept.
Subhanarajan known as Vijay neither a rationalist nor a nationalist. He stated the actor-cum-prime minister symbolized the failure of the nation. Dravidian He campaigned and took benefit of the weakened order to mission himself because the savior.
The truth that Vijay is an admirer worries many individuals within the nation Dravidian ecosystem. And the truth that his citizens comes from quite a lot of religions solely provides to their fears.
Mr. Vijay’s political struggle was geared toward ending what he termed the “evil DMK rule” to explain the occasion that has dominated till elections in April 2026.
The editors of each magazines are Dravidian The spokesperson, its tv channels and manufacturing firms are cautious of Vijay’s enchantment amongst younger individuals and ladies, believing that welfare divorced from ideology might not stand the take a look at of time.
Nonetheless, political specialists stated the truth that TVK is counting on the assist of the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) to show its majority might be an indication of issues to come back. Dravidianism Even when it stays on the margins, it’s nonetheless related.
(Edited by Sugita Katiyal)
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