Shashi Tharoor, Author and Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha)
I was born in the north of Madras, as Chennai was known till 1996, only a short walk from where the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was publicly launched on 18 September 1949 and grew up in a politically surcharged milieu where political meetings and rallies were the order of the day. For weeks before the elections, the place resembled a festival venue with boisterous rallies, campaigns and fiery speeches. I grew up listening to political speakers of all hues and shades but the speakers of the Dravidian movement held me in thrall. It was difficult not to be affected. The movement grew on me.
My childhood coincided with the DMK's innocent phase. When the party split in 1972, I was in high school. During my adult years, the DMK was no more in power. In 1989 briefly, in 1995-96 and again between 2016 and 2019, I had the opportunity to see the party from close quarters.
My writings on the party began during the aught years. The political biography of the DMK's founder leader Conjeevaram Natarajan or C.N. Annadurai (Anna) was followed by one on the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) founder leader M.G. Ramachandran (MGR). Both were brought out to mark the centenary years of the leaders. They were the first comprehensive English biographies of these colossuses.
This book, in conjunction with Anna: The Life and Times of C.N. Annadurai and MGR: A Life, my earlier books, could be said to constitute a trilogy on the Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu and its charismatic leaders. Together, they recount the story of Tamil Nadu since Independence. Anna told the story up to 1969, and MGR took it up to 1987. This work takes it to the summer of 2024, only months short of the DMK's seventy-fifth birthday.
When I initially pitched this theme, it failed to gain traction with Penguin Random House India. Author Pavan Varma connected me with Sudha Sadanand of Westland Publications, and they were interested. However, it was not to be. The previous iteration of Westland folded in the spring of 2022, and my search for a publisher began anew. I remain grateful to Pavan and Westland.
It was then that my former editor, Kamini Mahadevan, suggested I approach Meru Gokhale, who set the ball rolling. Executive Editor Karthik Venkatesh perused the early chapters and signalled we were on.
The DMK's identity politics remains unique. The state's public distribution system and welfare populism have been a model for other states. Today, thanks to its human resources and development indices, Tamil Nadu is India's second-largest economy after Maharashtra. An estimated thirty-five lakh migrant workers from mostly the Hindi heartland have chosen the state to better their lives.
It was the Congress's Kumaraswamy Kamaraj who, as chief minister from 1954 to 1963, laid the agricultural, educational and industrial foundations of modern Tamil Nadu. His Dravidian epigones have stood on his shoulders.
A sixth-grade school dropout, the young Kamaraj was consumed by the independence struggle. Married to the Congress movement, he spent nearly nine years in British jails, stayed single and led a bohemian lifestyle. His rustic charm and plain-speaking endeared him to the masses. Kamaraj rose through the Congress ranks to head the party in his home state and later India. However, he was no match for the DMK and its cultural nationalism.
The DMK began as a separatist party. Anna's mentor, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, had, in 1939, advocated a separate Tamil Nadu to ward off the teaching of Hindi in the state's schools, seeing it as a northern cultural assault on the Tamils and their language. The demand soon morphed into Dravida Nadu or a separate south.
Periyar reverted to his original demand after the 1953 reorganization of the states.
Periyar's thoughts and advocacy were radical and unpopular. Prizing his freedom of expression, Periyar had eschewed political power. His fidus Achates C.N. Annadurai (Anna) sought political power as an instrument of change. Using as an excuse the seventy-year-old Periyar's marriage to his much younger aide Maniammai, whom Periyar had named heir to the movement, Anna bolted. For fourteen years, the duo had braved formidable odds to spread the message of self-respect to Tamils. But now they were estranged.
In 1949, Anna founded his party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Unlike his utilitarian mentor, he began to peddle a serious brand of identity politics where Thamizhunarvu (Tamil affinity) was the guiding light. The DMK spread slowly but surely. Anna and his thambis (younger brothers, also a term of endearment) spoke and wrote mesmerizingly, promising an independent Dravida Nadu free of being under Delhi's thumb. His thambis thundered, 'Dravida Nadu or death!' But, non-Tamils cold-shouldered the idea.
Even Tamils had rallied behind Anna and not the ideal. So when Anna dropped the demand in 1962 after the Indo-China War-in the wake of an impending ban on secessionist advocacy-it mattered little to the DMK cadre.
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