The DMK and the Politics of Tamil Nationalism

Abstract

C ONFRONTED BY A CONTINUING BARRAGE of factional demands, from the Muslim League to the Jan Sangh, the Jharkhand, and the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham, Nehru often denounced the mentality of the Indian communities. Since his death, many fear that India's new leadership will be unable to hold the nation together. Like many of the new states of Africa and Asia, India is a mosaic of communities-religious, ethnic, and linguistic: she has six major religions; two major language families (Aryan and Dravidian), of which there are fourteen major languages, as well as innumerable dialects and tribal tongues; racial varieties of Aryan, Dravidian, and proto-Austroloid; and some two thousand castes, endogamous, occupational, and hierarchially ranked. She poses all too clearly the question of whether a multi-national society can become a viable democracy. One of the most serious fissiparous tendencies with which India has had to contend is the Tamil separatist movement. Led first by the Dravida Kazagham and later by the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK), the movement advocated the secession of Tamilnad from the Indian Union and the creation of an independent and sovereign Dravidasthan.' In the i962 general elections, the DMK, vanguard of the Dravidian movement, emerged as the strongest opposition ever to challenge the entrenched Congress Party in Madras, capturing fifty seats in the Legislative Assembly and seven in the Lok Sabha. These electoral successes, in part, led the National Integration Council to appoint (in June, i962) the Committee on National Integration and Regionalism. The Committee, chaired by Dr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyer, consisted of the Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Madras, Assam, and Orissa, and Mr. Asoka Mehta, M. P. In its report, the Committee recommended that