The elections to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly next year will be the first since the passing of the State’s dominant political leaders of the past three decades — J.Jayalalithaa who led the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) from 1989 to 2016, and M.Karunanidhi who led the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) from 1969 to 2018. Their passing potentially changes the political terrain. The AIADMK’s support, which depended crucially on charisma under the leadership of both M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa, is less sustainable as no credible successor has emerged. By contrast, the DMK’s support depended mainly on its ethnic and populist orientations rather than the perceived qualities of its leaders. Moreover, Karunanidhi groomed his son, M.K. Stalin as his successor over three decades. This makes the DMK’s prospects much brighter than the AIADMK’s in the forthcoming elections and over the coming decade.
Electoral developments
The results of the 2019 parliamentary elections and Assembly by-elections held since Jayalalithaa’s passing underline the DMK’s status as the electoral favourite. The United Progressive Alliance led by the DMK won 38 of the State’s 39 seats and 54.4% of the vote in the parliamentary elections, in contrast with the tally of the National Democratic Alliance led by the AIADMK of merely one seat and 30.7% of the vote (https://bit.ly/37Dfswb) In the Assembly by-elections since Jayalalithaa’s passing, the DMK won 13 seats, the AIADMK nine, and the AMMK one. The gap was much lower in the seats won by the Dravidian parties and their alliances in the civic body elections in December last year: District Panchayat Chairs: AIADMK: 13 (NDA: 14), DMK, UPA: 12; District Panchayat Councillors: AIADMK: 214 (NDA: 242), DMK: 243 (UPA: 267); Panchayat Union Chairs: AIADMK: 140 (NDA: 150), DMK: 125 (UPA: 133); Panchayat Union Councillors: AIADMK: 1,797 (NDA: 2,216), DMK: 2,110 (UPA: 2,365). The Assembly by-elections best indicate likely voter inclinations in the forthcoming elections. The DMK’s advantage in them is the more significant as the AIADMK was the incumbent in 22 of these 23 constituencies, the two alliances have not changed their main constituents since, and the NDA outpolled the UPA by a mere 1.0% (40.9% to 39.9%) even in the last Assembly elections of 2016 involving Jayalalithaa.
Dravidianist impact
The political future depends crucially on how parties engage changing social forces. To understand this, I outline how the Dravidian parties shaped party competition, civic life, and socio-economic policy in Tamil Nadu through their over half-century of rule.
Among Asia’s most durable ethnic movements, the Dravidian movement initially claimed to represent non-Brahmin South Indians, primarily Tamil-speakers. The DMK’s leaders were born in underprivileged middle- and lower-middle-caste families — C.N. Annadurai, a Sengunthar (weaving caste) from a weaver-temple servant family, and Karunanidhi, an Isai Vellalar (musician-dancer-temple servant caste) from a middling farmer family. The Dravidar Kazhagam linked Dravidian identity mainly to the middle castes and the DMK with those primarily communicating in Tamil. The AIADMK associated itself closely with the lower strata and women and asserted Tamil politico-cultural specificity, while underemphasising ancestry and having leaders beyond the movement’s early ethnic visions; both MGR and Jayalalithaa belonged to upper castes, and MGR was a Malayalam-speaker. The Dravidian parties were also populist, distinguishing the popular community from elites based on caste, language, dialect and occupation. This helped them attract various plebeian groups, increase voter participation,and marginalise Indian nationalist parties far more than in other big States. They changed status relations and public culture much more than income and property distribution.
The DMK built bridges with Brahmins, non-South Indians, and Indian nationalism by abandoning secession and opposing caste inequalities rather than Brahmins. It forsook anti-Malayali nativism which failed to contain early AIADMK growth. As Dravidianism did not seriously sharpen ethnic antagonisms, the AIADMK was the most popular party for the better part of the past five decades despite its leaders’ ancestry.
Reservation, welfare
Tamil Nadu has the highest educational and job reservations (69%), which helped the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) more than Dalits and Adivasis. The Dravidian parties raised the OBC quota from 25% to 50%, but also extended it to a further 27% of the population, including many better-off castes. By comparison, they raised the Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe quota by less than a fifth, from 16% to 19%, below these groups’ population share of 21%. However, the introduction of a 1% ST tier and a 3% Arunthathiyar tier helped some lowest-status groups, and the two 10% tiers created for Most Backward Classes and denotified communities aided worse-off OBCs.
Some Dravidianist welfare and development policies had more poorer beneficiaries even after the national and State governments embraced neoliberal reform. The mid-day meal scheme, later adopted nationally, particularly improved nutrition, health and education among the poorest. Along with high educational spending, it propelled primary school enrolment to the third highest level in India. High investments in primary health and widely distributed subsidised food grains, homestead land and housing, the rural employment programme, and women’s self-help groups extensively benefited the underprivileged.
The Dravidian parties, however, distributed productive assets mainly to the upwardly mobile. Land ownership and tenurial reforms, and generous agrarian subsidies primarily aided middle-caste tenant farmers, not Dalits and Adivasis. Being closely associated with the middle castes,the Dravidianists did not impede anti-Dalit violence particularly in the southern and western plains. Mobility among middling and lower-middle strata, somewhat egalitarian welfare policies, and an emphasis on language policy gained the Dravidian parties more widespread and durable support than what other Indian caste-focused and language-based parties secured.
Hindu nationalism
Hindu nationalist parties have been weakest in Tamil Nadu, polling 3.2% at best in Assembly elections. This was because the DMK promoted non-Hindutvavadi norms — Tamil specificity based in middle-caste cultures, rather than Hindu homogeneity based on Sanskritic upper-caste norms — and built cooperative links between OBC Hindus and Muslims. Such networks impeded Hindutva growth and inter-religious violence, which were most limited in DMK strongholds in northern and central Tamil Nadu. As AIADMK leaders more readily accepted Hindu supremacism, Hindu nationalists gained more support and promoted more violence in AIADMK strongholds in the south and west.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) capitalised on the decline of more established parties through the past two decades in West Bengal, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Assam. In Tamil Nadu, closer party-society engagement limited the space for new political forces more. The erosion of AIADMK support over the past four years has however increased opportunities for the BJP’s growth especially in the south and west, where Hindutva social organisations have grown since the 1980s. The BJP’s advances are likely to be more limited in the north and centre, where the DMK has retained more support and shaped popular sentiment in ways that still constrain inter-religious antagonisms somewhat.
Other parties, civil society
The Dravidian parties retreated from mobilising society from the late 1980s, while retaining a slightly diminished electoral dominance. Civil society mobilisation, which transcended Dravidianist visions especially thenceforth, is likely to do so even more hereafter. Many caste associations pressed to change caste policies and other associations opposed certain neo-liberal policies. Some of these initiatives led to the emergence of new parties that mobilised certain MBCs (Vanniyar), denotified communities (Mukkulathor), OBCs (Kongu Vellalar),and Dalits (Parayar, Pallar, Arunthathiyar), but polled no more than 8.1% of the vote although they influenced popular aspirations more. Other new parties, notably the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) gained support across caste boundaries, but did not poll over 8.4%. The AIADMK’s recent decline creates room for the growth of more such multi-ethnic and ethnic parties and movements.
Narendra Subramanian is Professor of Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada