As DMK chief Stalin nibbles through AIADMK’s traditional vote base, gounder tag fails CM Edappadi K Palaniswami

CHENNAI: The gounder caste tag, cultivated earnestly by Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami for his party and the government to keep him in good stead through his present term, bombed at the hustings because he failed to keep track of DMK president M K Stalin’s game plan to nibble through other community votes, especially the arunthathiars, a sub-sect of the Scheduled Castes.
Sensing the social undercurrents, which put stumbling blocks in front of a gounder-arunthathiar truck, the DMK did backroom work to bring the two communities together much before the polls. At the behest of the DMK, a conference was organised by Adi Tamilar Peravai, an arunthathiar outfit, at Sankagiri in Namakkal Lok Sabha constituency on February 9. At the instance of the DMK, the so-called organisers invited a gounder outfit, Kongunadu Makkal Desia Katchi (KMDK), headed by E R Eswaran to the event.
The Saankagiri conference helped the DMK unravel the arunthathiar puzzle. “The community, which had been traditionally voting for the AIADMK right from the MGR days, started thinking about a change of mind. Moreover, after my participation in the arunthathiar conference, the AIADMK’s attempts to scare them with the hardcore gounder tag of the KMDK did not work in the polls,” said Eswaran.
The results show while the AIADMK, contesting alone, secured the maximum margin of 2.94 lakh votes in Namakkal in western Tamil Nadu in the 2014 polls, the party lost by the maximum margin (2.65 lakh votes) in the region in the very same Namakkal Lok Sabha seat in 2019 despite having big partners like the S Ramadoss-headed PMK and ‘Captain’ Vijayakant’s DMDK with it.
The poll outcome also shows that despite all the hype of Edappadi K Palaniswami promoting his gounder caste and region – so much so that he gained the moniker of Salem chief minister - gounders themselves did not consolidate under the AIADMK leadership.
DMK’s ally Eswaran split gounder votes across all over western Tamil Nadu and parts of central TN, accounting for 11 Lok Sabha constituencies - Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur, the Nilgiris, Salem, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, Namakkal, Pollachi, Karur and Dindigul.
Signs of Easwaran’s influence were evident when his party organised World Kongu Tamilar Conference at Namakkal on February 3. Gounder leaders from 27 countries participated in the event and the state intelligence agency had estimated the crowd was massive.
The drubbing is the region was complete. Anbumani Ramadoss, one of the two NDA MPs to win in 2014, lost his Dharmapuri seat despite a gounder-vanniyar truck.
Apart from alienating arunthathiars, the gounder domination in the AIADMK alienated many forward and backward classes like the mudaliars and chettiars from the ruling party, said political analyst Raveenthiran Thuraisamy.
“This polarisation is a surprise because gounders are not known to be aggressive. But their political domination was perceived as an aggressive posture by non-gounder communities,” said Thuraisamy.
Mudaliars and chettiars account for 50,000-70,000 votes each in many Lok Sabha constituencies in the western region.