Populism, Tamil Style � Is it Really a Success?
Prof. John Harriss, Development Studies Institute
London School of Economics Published: November 2001
The history of the Dravidian parties reveals the most
systematic and durable populist features to be seen in the
semi-industrialised world (Subramanian 1999: 15) Populism (can) attain
sustained success in semi-industrialised societies and aid the
representation of emergent social groups (Subramanian 1999: 13, 310) In
sharp contrast to the claims of most critics, Tamil Nadu�s record on the
dimensions of economic performance is remarkably good (and) in its
performance on social indicators (the) MGR government really shines (Swamy
1999: 144)
| This paper is mainly concerned to offer a more extended
review of Narendra Subramanian�s book
Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization: political parties,
citizens and democracy in South India (OUP 1999) than the one
which I wrote earlier for Frontline (17 March 2000); but in
discussing Subramanian�s arguments I shall refer as well to the
work of Arun Swamy, another Tamilian of the same generation,
whose Berkeley PhD thesis The Nation, the People and the Poor:
Sandwich tactics in party competition and policy formation,
India 1931-96 (1996) deals quite substantially with the politics
of Tamil Nadu1,
and develops a theme which overlaps with Subramanian�s. |
I think this is a worthwhile task not only
because Subramanian�s book is the most substantial study of Tamil politics,
in English at least, to have appeared for a quarter of a century (since
Marguerite Ross Barnett�s book The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South
India was published in 1976) but also because I find the work both of Swamy
and of Subramanian of much wider significance in view of what they have to
say about the nature of populism in politics and policy.
More generally their works are of interest as studies
of �an actually existing political system�, when these rarely fit into the
neat conceptual boxes of political science � hence, in part, the problem of
the way in which �populism� is regarded; and because of the centrality of
political parties in their analyses. Political parties have not been so much
the object of study in the more recent past, while they seem to be regarded
in some of the more programmatic literature on �governance� as being rather
a problem, presumably because they cannot be relied upon as instruments of
rational policy-making and implementation.
This may be part of the reason for the current
enthusiasm for �building organisations in civil society� which are
(supposedly, at least) outside the political arena. The work of these two
scholars is interesting, too, because of the approach to political analysis
which it reflects.
Both are equally impatient with the reductionism of
rational choice analyses, and with economic reductionism, and are influenced
by culturalist approaches without being bowled over by them. Swamy argues
against what he calls �building block� models of politics which take it that
demands and interests exist prior to and independently of politics, and
social groups as existing prior to political mobilisation. Subramanian,
somewhat similarly, wants to analyse what he refers to as �the social matrix
of contention�, or the interactions of social structure (in the sense of
�stratum�), prior solidarities and ongoing competition among competing
political forces.
Both, therefore, seek to take account of interests and
of ideas and values and of their interplay. �Populism� is one of those terms
which is widely but loosely used and perhaps little understood, so that some
scholars have been led to question its value altogether for political
analysis.
It is rather confusing when the same term is applied to
a farmers� movement in the US in the late nineteenth century, to a movement
which was in opposition to the Bolsheviks in Russia at around the same time,
to a regime like that of Peron in Argentina, which involved a form of
corporatism, and to a political leader such as MGR.
�Populism�, indeed, is not an established political
philosophy like socialism or liberalism or even fascism, associated with
particular programmatic texts (in spite of the efforts perhaps especially of
the Russian Narodniks to supply a distinct philosophy); and it can, quite
reasonably, be seen as an aspect of what are in other ways contrasted
political philosophies or movements. There was a sense, for example, in
which it made good sense to think of there being a strong streak of populism
in Margaret Thatcher�s conservatism, as much as in the socialism of her
opponent as the Leader of the GLC � and now the new Mayor of London � �Red
Ken� Livingstone.
�Populism� is properly used, Subramanian suggests, �to
characterise movements, parties and regimes [I would add �policies�, too]
which articulate notions of a �people� defined by special norms rooted in
its history �(1999: 8)2.
In Thatcher�s case it was �the British people�, in Livingstone�s it was an
appeal to �Londoners�. But put in this way it is perhaps not sufficiently
distinguished from nationalist thinking, and it is important to add � as
Subramanian does in his text � the adjective �common� or �ordinary� or
�simple� to the word �people�.
Populism also invokes an idea of the mass of �the
common people� who are either excluded from or only have limited access to
privilege, and who are thus distinguished from the elite, which does have
access to privilege and embodies alternative cultural traditions (at the
very least, Glyndebourne versus The Sex Pistols, or the refinements of The
Music Academy versus Bollywood film music).
What populist politics proposes is to secure access to
spheres of privilege for the ordinary people, but without necessarily
changing the system which generates differentiation in the first place. In
rather the same way populist economics seems to propose that it is possible
to have the benefits of a market economy without the downsides of
competition (which mean that not all are going to be equally successful).
Arun Swamy captures all of this quite well when he
proposes as a definition that: �Populism is a doctrine that holds that
ordinary people have been robbed of their due owing to no fault of their
own. Undifferentiated populism charges the elite with both preventing just
avenues for advancement and forgetting their moral obligation to protect the
poor� (1996: 72).
This definition has the merit, too, of showing up why
it is that �populism� has had such a bad press amongst social scientists and
political commentators � because it hides significant differences between
groups of people in terms of capabilities and access to resources (all
�farmers�, for example, or all �Londoners� are held to be in some way the
same), and because populist reasoning obscures the social processes which
create the differentiation which it seeks to address.
Add to these points the fact that there was a strong
element of populism in Nazism, for example, (substitute into Swamy�s
definition as follows: �Nazism is a doctrine that holds that ordinary German
people have been robbed of their due owing to no fault of their own but
because of the machinations of the international Jewish conspiracy�); and
the common observation that the pursuit of �populist policies� is
detrimental to sound economic management � and there appears to be a strong
case indeed for treating the adjective �populist� as a term of abuse.
Yet both Subramanian and Swamy argue that in many ways
�Dravidian populism� has served the people of Tamil Nadu pretty well. I
shall scrutinise their claims later in this paper. The distinctive
contribution that these two writers make, however, is not just that they in
some way clarify the meaning of �populism� and show how it explains the
nature and the outcomes of Tamil politics, but rather that they distinguish
forms of populist political mobilisation. Swamy claims the credit for having
made a distinction between two forms of populism in the first place, and
implies that Subramanian may have followed him without express
acknowledgement.
Indeed, the distinctions they draw are similar, though
there are perhaps subtle differences between them. But let us start with
Arun Swamy. He distinguishes between empowerment populism and protection
populism, implying thereby a connection with the broad difference in
patterns of welfare policy, between those which focus on access to means of
production, as opposed to those which aim to guarantee means of consumption.
He defines his terms like this: Empowerment populism
holds that the people have been robbed by an alien and privileged elite, and
the leading segments of �the people� will redress these grievances by
attacking the sources of disprivilege Protection populism holds that the
people have been robbed by selfish special interests and it is the role of
the elite or of the government, to keep those interests in check and to
protect and to provide for the poor (i.e it identifies leading elements of
�the people� as the problem rather than the elite) (1996: 72)
The latter depends upon the possibilities for the
deployment of what are called �sandwich tactics� in which as Swamy sums it
up �have-a-lots succeed in allying with have-nothings against the
have-a-littles�. The sandwich means the outflanking of �middle-level�
interests by an alliance between those at the apex of a pyramid of power
with those at the bottom. Sandwich tactics are manifested in policies which
seek to limit redistributive concessions to those held to be the most
unfortunate; and they can result in an institutionalised pattern of party
competition around a centrist populist axis rather than a contest between
left and right. Specifically he argues in his thesis that what has been
described by so many political commentators as fragmented and inchoate,
personalised party politics in India, can in fact be understood in terms of
the contention between the two kinds of populism.
The Congress has historically, both in the
pre-Independence period and subsequently, pursued sandwich tactics, while
its challengers have emphasised policies favouring middle groups. The two
�forms� are rhetorics of mobilisation, and imply different patterns of
alliances. �Empowerment populism�, indeed, seems on the face of it to be not
very clearly differentiated from the political mobilisation of class - but
the language is crucially different. This may be why empowerment populism is
ultimately weak � because the differences of interest and the different
social solidarities amongst �the people� can be opened up by the political
elite (as has happened several times in the history of Dravidianism). On the
whole, Swamy argues, in relation to Tamil Nadu specifically, and to Indian
politics in general, the sandwich tactics of �protection populism� have been
more successful than �empowerment populism�.
With regard to Tamil politics Swamy argues that �The
Dravidian Movement provides an excellent example of empowerment populism�s
ability to combine several sources of grievance into a single identity, and
to shift meanings among diverse elements as political circumstances change�
(1996: 148).
He refers here to the different issues which were taken
up by the Justice Party, the Self Respect Movement, the DK and the DMK, at
different times, all of them reflecting in some way an attack on privilege,
and to the shifts which took place from anti-Brahmanism to �Tamilism�, from
notions about an identity based on race to one around language, and from
secessionism to cultural nationalism.
But the history of Dravidianism also shows the
vulnerability of empowerment populism to a politics of protection for the
weak. Swamy argues that it was really only when the Congress appeared to
falter over food supply in the mid-60s, at a time when the language issue,
too, became particularly acute for Tamil speakers, that its claims to
represent Tamilians and the poor were undermined. �Empowerment populism� was
always vulnerable to conflicts within its constituencies, between the �more�
and the �less� backward (with which the Justice Party had to contend in the
first place), and between agrarian classes. MGR, Swamy and Subramanian both
suggest, proved himself to be adept early in his period of office in opening
up these conflicts (as in the way in which he succeeded in breaking the
Farmers� Movement in the state).
The DMK, Swamy argues, apparently had difficulty in
holding on to lower caste groups and the very poor from the beginning (and
he refers here, amongst other evidence, to the muted response of the DMK
government to the notorious Kilvenmani incident in 1969).
These conflicts made the DMK, which pursued principally
the rhetoric and the practice of empowerment populism vulnerable to sandwich
tactics on its own issues and to the substitution of welfare policies.
The emergence of the ADMK �replicates a critical
feature of similar splits in the history of the movement since 1916:
attempts to unite the majority of Tamils against a common enemy by
addressing them as a single category, repeatedly failed because, first, some
newly mobilized groups viewed themselves as relatively more disprivileged.
And second, because the poorest voters responded to other parties� promises
to address their basic needs� (1999: 147).
This, at bottom, is what the ADMK did with great
success from the mid-1970s, and which accounts for its having succeeded in
holding onto power for the greater part of twenty years, retaining
particularly strong support, as the MCC opinion surveys showed, amongst the
poorer, less educated people, and amongst women. It seems that MGR was
successful, through the noon meals scheme, in retaining his image as the
protector of the poor and of women in particular, in spite of the lifting of
prohibition; and there is some evidence which suggests that the very poorest
did derive real benefits from these measures (notably in the evidence which
Swamy quotes on the decline in the incidence of severe malnutrition in the
state).
Swamy makes a strong point, too, when he suggests that
it is not the �peculiarities� of Tamil society and the popularity of
particular film stars which accounts for the effectiveness of protection
populism in the state. There is a significant material base for it: given
that the Tamil Nadu economy is characterised by monetisation and by wage
labour to a greater extent than most other Indian states, and that it has a
particularly high rate of participation of women in the wage labour force,
it seems reasonable to suppose that social insurance and welfare programmes
are especially salient in Tamil Nadu and for Tamil women.
The argument is persuasive enough to lend support to
Swamy�s general conclusion which is that stable party competition should be
viewed �as arising not from parties grounded in identifiable social groups
or ideologies, but through the competition between broad rhetorical
strategies, flexible enough to be elaborated in terms of different
substantive policy positions. Necessarily populist in character, these do
not so much aggregate interests as attract diverse voters, experiencing
analogous concerns, to familiar themes that resonate with their condition�
(1996: 474).
And as he argues in the paper �Parties, Political
Identities and the Absence of Mass Political Violence in South India� (1999)
it is perhaps the nature of the party system in Tamil Nadu � �the ways in
which parties define the ideological space of a polity and incorporate the
electorate� (1999: 108) � which accounts in good measure for that absence.
There is little documentation in his account of the Tamil case, however, of
the support bases of the DMK and the ADMK, of how these may have shifted
over time, or of the character of the political elite. And his arguments
about the �success� of protection populism in the 1980s are superficial.
He takes no account at all of the demonstration by
Guhan, and following him by Pandian, of the way in which the operation of
the fiscal system in the state at this time worked in the interests of the
richer members of the society, and actually taxed the poor, so that the
benefits which the latter derived from, for example, the noon meals scheme,
were to a significant extent paid for by the poor themselves through tax
revenue. The schemes of the ADMK �had very little consequence (therefore) in
terms of a redistribution of income and wealth from the rich to the very
poor� (Pandian 1992: 24), great vote catchers though they were.
Narendra Subramanian offers a very similar but much
more richly documented history of Tamil politics, which supplies some of the
deficiencies of Swamy�s more schematic account. He draws not only on the
same, more or less standard English language sources as Swamy, but also the
Tamil language literature and the Tamil press, and on the results of
interviews with several hundreds of political activists, particularly in the
five state legislative assembly constituencies that he selected for special
study.
It seems a shame, however, that those he interviewed
are rarely allowed, in the text, to speak with their own voice. Points are
documented with reference to the testimony of �x� and �y�, but only very
rarely do we actually hear what �x� or �y� actually said . Still, one of the
strengths of Subramanian�s book is its analysis of the ideology of
Dravidianism. Dravidianism grew out of anti-brahmanism (directed � it has
usually been held
3- by upwardly mobile and more powerful members of
intermediate castes against brahman dominance in the institutions of
colonial rule).
In the hands of
E.V.Ramswami
(�Periyar�) in the 1930s and 1940s it was associated with a vision of
Dravidian and shudra primacy against �Aryan� brahminism. It articulated,
therefore, precisely that sense of �ordinary people having been robbed of
their due� which is at the core of the kind of thinking which can sensibly
be described as �populist�. Periyar�s rationalist assertions and his
anti-brahminism led him to make sometimes dramatic attacks on Hinduism
(rather than on religion in general), inverting orthodoxy, in what
Subramanian calls �the politics of heresy�.
But these, in Subramanian�s view, were politics of
protest rather than of social change (Geetha and Rajadurai regard the Self
Respect Movement differently, holding that it articulated a distinct social
vision : 1998), and the development of an inclusive Tamil nationalism �
associating the Dravidian community with the non-Sanskritic Tamil language
and cultural tradition, and with its territory, rather than with the shudra
category � and then the projection of this into active electoral politics,
was the achievement of
C N Annadurai and his followers.
After 1949, when they split away from Periyar to form
the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Annadurai and those who followed him
brought about an important shift �from politics of heresy to the politics of
community�. Subramanian does not concede that this shift obscured the
material and ideological bases of oppression and subordination and might be
considered to have been a regression (see below).
The thrust of it was anti-elite rather than anti-alien
(brahmans were treated increasingly as Tamils of a different stripe),
emphasising a non-Sanskritic identity, Tamil as opposed to English speakers,
and opposing the political elites governing India who wished to introduce
Hindi as the sole national language.
In contrast to what happened elsewhere, Subramanian
points out, the DMK incorporated caste categories within a vision of popular
community, in which what counted was �doing Tamil� (culturally,
linguistically) rather than an idea of Tamil racial substance.
It rapidly became much more a populist than an ethnic
discourse of a plebeian stamp, emphasising the notion of the common (Tamil)
man - and the genius of Annadurai and others in the DMK was in their ability
to create and to communicate a mytho-history which had meaning for ordinary
people in a way that the 'scientific', developmental project of the
Nehruvian state did not. A telling point is actually made in a footnote:
�The DMK protested against Nehru�s visit to Madras in 1953 to inaugurate a
science exhibition, demanding that an exhibition also be conducted on Tamil
history, and criticizing the neglect of South Indian history in textbooks.
The posture of the parties to this confrontation of
Nehru inaugurating a science exhibition, and the DMK demanding attention to
Dravidian cultural history � reflect their contrasting approaches to the
formation of the citizen. To Nehru, who placed the spirit of science and
rationality at the core of nation-building, the DMK�s demands could only
appear nonsensical� (1999: 157, fn 90). Not only Nehru, but the communists
too, lost out: �For instance [a DMK leader and a communist] debated each
other � on what is most indispensable to man, food (the supposed communist
view) or maanam (dignity � the putative Dravidianist view).
The terms of the debate clearly gave the DMK the high
moral ground� (note 83, p155). Instinctively, it seems, the DMK leaders
recognised what many intellectuals, here and elsewhere, have only come to
acknowledge much more recently. Sudipta Kaviraj has written eloquently about
the �neighbourly incommunication� between the modernising national political
elite, and the �vernacular� masses.
The emerging Tamil political elite, however, was
extraordinarily adept in building precisely that �common thinker we-ness �
and a single political language� which, according to Kaviraj (1991), the
elite of the Nehruvian state neglected. No matter what its policy
achievements, or its success in maintaining support amongst the �big men� of
the Tamil country, Congress gradually lost out through the 1950s and 1960s,
to the world of meaning - precisely a �common thinker we-ness� - created by
the DMK, as well as to its increasing organizational strength.
Subsequently, the fact that the DMK held on to a
widespread base of support even through the long years in which it was out
of office � and so was denied the possibility of maintaining support through
the extension of state patronage (in what Subramanian aptly describes as
�populist clientelism�) - shows how effectively the party has built
ideological support.
Nowhere else in the country, it seems to me, save
perhaps in the states in which the CPM has consistently won support, has a
political party been so successful in creating a body of shared meanings �
though this success has closed off certain political possibilities, notably
those of working class political mobilisation.
It is this culturally-rooted and engineered meaning
system that Subramanian opposes to the �vacuous brand of secularism� of his
parents� generation, and which he wishes to oppose also to the homogenizing
intentions of Hindu nationalism. Unfortunately the construction of such an
ideology is not a �policy choice�.
Neither is it clear, in the 1990s, which Subramanian
does not discuss, that the flexibility of Dravidianism that both the writers
whose work is discussed here rather celebrate, is not actually compatible
with the ideology of Hindu nationalism. Neither Subramanian nor Arun Swamy
seems to have recognised the strength of popular support for hindutva in
Tamil society, though this is attested in relation specifically to Dalits,
in work published by Anandhi and M S S Pandian already in 1994 (see
references in Anandhi 1995, chapter 3), which aims to explain �the
increasing participation of Dalits in Hindu communal programmes like the
Vinayaka processions [on the occasion of Vinayaka Chatturthi, which is now
being celebrated in Tamil Nadu as never before
4 and in communal
riots� (Anandhi 1995: 29).
These writers regret what they think of as having been
the �ideological regression� of the Dravidian Movement, when with the
formation of the DMK, language identity was privileged over the rest which
�left Hindu identity as well as other identities unproblematised� and ended
up by sanitising Hinduism �of how it constituted relations of power through
its interactions with other identities like caste and gender� (Anandhi 1995:
28).
This has allowed Hindu communal organisations to
colonise parts of civil society in Tamil Nadu. Though Subramanian � in my
view - does a brilliant job in explaining the ideological success of
Dravidianism, and implicitly of explaining why Tamil Nadu is in important
respects politically exceptional, he also brushes over the extent to which
this ideology is not so much opposed to that of Hindu nationalism as open to
it. But to return to another of the strengths of the book: this is in the
way in which it documents, partly though an interesting account of the
social geography of electoral competition, the shifting bases of support of
political parties (what is presumed but never demonstrated by Swamy).
The analysis draws largely on Subramanian�s detailed
studies of five assembly constituencies: Royapuram in northern Madras city,
and Tiruvannamalai on the northern plains of Tamil Nadu; Mannargudi in the
Kaveri valley; Dindigul on the southern plains; and Sermadevi in the
Tamirapani Valley in the �Deep South�. They were selected both to represent
different regions with their varying social structures and different phases
in the history of Dravidianism. The basic argument is that �Dravidian
populism successfully addressed the intermediate and lower strata� (1999:
47) which were marginal to the strategies of the Congress, mobilising
support rather through local elites, or of the communists who identified
primarily with the property-less.
By the term �intermediate strata� Subramanian refers to
those of both middle caste and middle class position, meaning white collar
workers and small to middling property holders, and by �lower strata� he
refers to those from lower castes, especially Dalits/Scheduled Castes with
little or no property.
The DMK, however, came to be rooted primarily amongst
people �with some social capability but limited political influence� (1999:
48), people from intermediate castes with small property, like small
shopkeepers and small peasants, and including many of the Muslims of the
state. �Groups which were socially capable but culturally distinct from the
gentry were the mainstay of early Dravidianist social coalitions, and were
best able to appropriate party appeals for their ends� (1999: 45). In
office, from the outset the DMK �benefited primarily rising groups and
especially party supporters�, while under Karunandhi a tilt towards
�emergent Backward Classes� became stronger, further alienating both the
upper and the lower strata.
The ADMK, after its formation, garnered much more
support amongst Scheduled Castes, those with little or no property, and
amongst women (MGR�s appeal to whom is well discussed by Pandian, 1992), and
it created more space both for upper castes (MGR repudiated anti-Brahmanism)
and (in the 1980s, at least) for non-Hindus, whilst still accommodating some
demands of the intermediate strata. These arguments are derived partly from
interviews with party activists and partly from study of electoral
geography. The latter, however, brings out the ways in which these social
structural relationships have been modified by particular histories of party
organisation and competition, and by the influence of caste solidarities.
The DMK grew rapidly through the later 1950s and early
1960s amongst the numerous �intermediate� groups of the northern plains, but
the party never had quite the same success in the, in many ways comparable,
social contexts of the southern and western plains, partly because of the
strength of Congress organisation there, partly because of the difficulties
the party had with such caste solidarities as those of Vanniars and
Mukkulathurs.
The ADMK has always performed better in the south and
in the Tamirapani valley. There are interesting questions about the
geography of electoral support, such as the basis for the strength of
Swatantra in Tamirapani and the �Deep South�, which emerge from the analysis
which are not addressed (understandably so in view of the main focus of the
book). Conceptually the historical narrative depends upon the posing of two
distinct categories: �assertive populism� and �paternalist populism�.
The analysis shows how these modes of political action
have intertwined in the history of Tamil politics, and how its phases
reflect that interplay and its outcomes.
The meaning of paternalist populism� is more or less
self-evident (and it is what is often identified as �populism� in general):
a benevolent leader - and MGR, the founding genius of the ADMK was the very
archetype of such a figure - or a party or state, promises to provide for
�the people�, through subsidised wage goods and protection from repressive
elites. In the period of ADMK rule in the 1980s paternalism was to the fore,
The content of the idea of �assertive populism� is perhaps less immediately
apparent, but it is also the key to Subramaniam�s analysis of what has been
distinctive about the Dravidian parties in Tamilnadu.
Under assertive populism excluded groups are urged to
assert themselves against the discrimination which they have faced (partly
focussed in Tamilnadu by agitations over the language issue), and to secure
entitlements (to education, jobs, loans, subsidised producer goods and
sometimes small pieces of property). Demands are presented as being made on
behalf of the �popular community�. This mode of populism strikes more,
therefore, against social deference than does paternalist populism; but its
forms of action also mean that the groups most involved are likely (as we
have seen.
In the case of the key supporters of the DMK) to be
ones with some �social capability�. Paternalist populism appeals more
strongly to the �lower strata� (including , perhaps mainly, the dalits) and
women, who are often unable to assert their demands independently. ( The
chapter on the ADMK contains an interesting analysis of MGR�s appeal to
women, and of gender constructions in Dravidian politics).
It is the strand of assertive populism, combined with
the existence of vigorous competition between the Dravidian parties, with
their somewhat different constituencies, which accounts for the sustained
electoral success of populism in Tamilnadu, underlain by the embracing, and
multi-layered character of the ideology of Dravidianism.
The close similarity between Subramanian�s concepts and
those of Arun Swamy is apparent, though the former emphasises more the style
of political action, and the latter the different alliances of classes which
are involved. Their arguments complement each other, and the distinction
which they make, seems both valid (certainly in regard to Tamil politics)
and insightful. Subramanian�s analysis of the interplay of the two forms of
populism in the history of Tamil politics from the later 1940s to the
beginning of the 1990s, though much richer in detail, does not differ very
significantly in terms of its purport, from Swamy�s.
His account, however, brings out more clearly the ways
in which assertive/empowerment populism brought about the political
mobilisation of hitherto excluded groups; and, as he says �The assertive
populist outlook regards the activist�s self-willed activity as the basis of
movement and the social changes it introduces� (1999: 74). This is a
possible aspect of populist political ideology and organisation which has
not generally been recognised, I believe.
Nonetheless Subramanian is led to portray �Dravidian
populism�, as it has been articulated by the DMK and ADMK, in an oddly
rosy-tinted manner. While I, as a reader, find the analysis of Dravidianism
in the book, and the account of the interplay of the two faces of populism
within it, compelling, the constructions which Subramanian himself builds
upon these arguments appear tortuous and in the end, even perverse. His
central concern is with the fact that, though Tamilnadu has had a powerful
political movement, and political parties deriving from it, which have
projected a strong ethnic identity � initially that of �the Dravidian� and
later of �the Tamilian� - the politics of the state have not succumbed to
ethnically defined exclusivism, in spite of pressures towards it at
different times.
Rather have the politics of Dravidianism had the effect
of fostering social pluralism and a pluralist democracy. Given the
pervasiveness of ethnic conflict in the contemporary world, and the common
failure of states in managing such conflict, and in the context, too, of the
strength of an exclusivist Hindu nationalism in Indian politics, Subramanian
suggests that the Tamil case is of particular comparative interest. The core
of his argument in response to the questions he poses is that in the
politics of Dravidianism, though ethnic appeal has supplied cohesion, the
dominant motif and mechanism has rather been populist.
The populist features of Dravidian ideology rather
rapidly became more significant than its ethnic features in generating
support � as is shown, for instance, by the greater success of the ADMK than
of the DMK after 1977, in spite of the fact that it adopted less militant
postures, and had enormously popular leaders in MGR and then Jayalalitha,
who were not actually native Tamils. Populism has here moderated the
potential of ethnicity to generate disintegrative social conflict , and had
�sustained success (in aiding) the representation of emergent social groups�
(1999: 13, 310).
Given that populism has often lapsed into
authoritarianism, centred on a �great leader�, and sometimes been allied
with fascism this conclusion concerning the �success� of populist politics
in the case of Tamilnadu itself calls for explanation. The one which is
offered is that Dravidianism has encouraged �organizational pluralism within
influential political organizations�, and that this �alone explains the
emergence and maintenance of social pluralism� (emphasis in the original, p.
38).
By �social pluralism�, which he takes to be a condition
of pluralist democracy, Subramanian means: �the existence of many active
associations significantly autonomous of the state and of one another � it
does not exclusively denote ethnic diversity although social pluralism would
enable citizens to affirm ethnic difference� (1999: 3) ; while
�organizational pluralism�: �denotes the extent of autonomy and flexibility
characterizing both relations within an organization (a movement or party)
and transactions between the organization and society� (1999:37).
The components of the �organizational pluralism� of
Dravidianism are said to be �leadership flexibility�, referring to the fact
that its leaders have pursued a long run strategy and goals which they have
been ready, nonetheless, to adjust in the light of the outlooks and
interests of support groups and non-support groups; and � relatedly - the
autonomy both of party cadres and of supporters.
The historical narrative of the book dwells at some
length on the transactions of the both the DMK and the ADMK regimes with
organised groups � especially caste associations, farmers� association and
industrial and agricultural trade unions � showing how both parties have
deployed accommodation and repression (especially in regard to unions) in
managing them, but have been ready to shift their positions as they have
done so.
A contrast is drawn at several points, and finally in
the conclusion, with Hindu nationalism, which has neither shown the same
flexibility, nor allowed such autonomy amongst cadres and supporters. But
then, of course, as Subramaniam at last concedes, the core leadership of
Hindu nationalism � in the RSS � has sought quite specifically to oppose
moves in the direction of such �flexibility�.
The whole comparison would be a hare, but for the fact
that the BJP, in its pursuit of office, has in fact shown the sort of
flexibility which Subramanian describes in the case of Drivaidianism. In the
last few years the BJP has displayed what has seemed often to be a cynical
ruthlessness in the way in which it has trimmed and �adjusted� to win the
support of different coalition partners in different parts of the country,
and to extend its support base (not very successfully, so far) beyond the
middle classes and upper castes.
Part of the problem, as I have pointed out elsewhere
(Frontline 17 March 2000), is that flatly contradictory statements are made
about the relationships of �social pluralism� and �organizational pluralism�
at different points in the text. The latter, as we saw in the quotation
given in the preceding paragraph, is said alone to explain �the emergence
and maintenance of social pluralism�.
Later it is suggested that �high levels of mobilisation
outside the party system [and what is this if not a reference to the
existence of �active associations�?] before the Dravidian mobilisation�
(1999: 319) aided the emergence of those features which are described as
being those of �organizational pluralism�.
So at the last the argument is confused, though it
seems possible that what Subramanian intends is to say that organizational
pluralism and social pluralism are inter-related, and mutually supportive,
but that the nature of political organizations supplies an essential context
for thriving �social pluralism�. The implications which are drawn as
�Guidelines for Citizencraft�, such as the idea that �citizens committed to
tolerance must mobilize autonomously of states and parties, even while
engaging with these institutions� (1999:
326) would be platitudinous, but for the popularity
amongst a good many intellectuals and activists of the mistaken notion that
voluntary associations in civil society can somehow stand in the place of
political parties, or even (in extreme forms of the argument) of the state
itself.
But the confusion in the text surrounding the relations
of the Dravidian political parties and �social pluralism� and pluralist
democracy seems even perverse, in the sense that the arguments brush over
the strongly repressive aspects of the rule of both the DMK and the ADMK.
These are actually referred to, for example, in the passages on the attacks
of the ADMK regime on trade unions in which it is noted that �The police
were particularly violent in suppressing strikes in bicycle, automobile and
textile factories, and in the Madras harbour� (1999: 296, and ff), and the
subsequent short discussion of �social control�, in which it is concluded
that �Although the inclinations of paternalist populism towards social
control were tempered by the prior strength of social pluralism (my
emphasis: JH) , civil rights were abridged when MGR�s government faced
radical challenges and when Jayalalitha�s felt beleagured�.
These observations � and similar ones made about the
DMK regime in the 1970s, when it is said that �Local DMK leaders and party
activists resorted increasingly to violence to enforce their will (and)
gangs of toughs became part of the party�s repertoire everywhere� (1999:
236) - are hard to reconcile with the idea that there is something special
about the Dravidian parties which encourages �social pluralism�.
Add to this problematical neglect in Subramanian�s
overrall assessment the strong possibly, noted by Anandhi and Pandian (see
above), that Tamil cultural nationalism leaves open spaces in civil society
for the mobilisation of Hindu nationalism, and the increasing evidence of
the renewal of caste conflict in the state5, and it is rather hard to accept
the notion that Dravidian populism has been such a great �success� except in
so far as it has indeed made for remarkably durable regimes.
It is perhaps hardly surprising that the state has not
exactly been in the forefront in the promotion of democratic
decentralisation; or that an analysis of the fertility transition in Tamil
Nadu, by comparison with that of Kerala, should have shown that it reflects
a �coercive� rather than a �cooperative� process (Nagaraj, nd).
Generally, it is widely felt, the rule of the Dravidian
parties has become increasingly authoritarian, and focussed on the leader at
the centre � and that these tendencies have become increasingly apparent in
the 1990s, while developments in the economy may have enhanced social
exclusion. The strand of assertive populism has worn thin. 5In addition to
the violence between Thevars and Dalits in southern districts in the recent
past, there are observations from field researchers of reversion in some
villages either to excluding Dalits altogether from village teashops or to
making them drink from a separate vessel.
The work of the historian David Washbrook on
contemporary Tamil politics gets fairly short shrift from both the authors
whose work is discussed here. Washbrook may have gone awry, as Arun Swamy
suggests, in so far as he failed to distinguish between the rhetorics and
the modes of mobilisation of the DMK and the ADMK; and his argument is
objectionable for the way in which it disparages popular common-sense and
understanding.
But there seems still to be some substance in his view
that: �the AIADMK regime [specifically the ADMK regime and not the DMK, I
think: JH] was one of bread (or rice) and circuses (or movies) and in broad
political terms, might be conceived as a form of Bonapartist or Caesarian
democracy (my emphasis, JH � as opposed to �pluralist democracy�).
Classically, the bourgeoisie, or the elite of wealth,
withdrew from a formal position of control over the state apparatus and the
constitutional political process. Not only was their direct control no
longer necessary for the purposes of capital accumulation but their attempt
to exercise it ... provoked resistance and instability.
Formal control was transferred to a cadre of
professional political managers who on the basis of a populist ideology,
mollified resistance by turning what was left of the state into a welfare
agency and by stirring up feelings of patriotism and atavism� (1989: 258).
The ADMK and the DMK have both supplied regimes which
have succeeded to a greater extent, no doubt, than regimes in some (perhaps
most) other Indian states, in relation both to economic growth (particularly
latterly, with the flows of FDI into the state and the growth of the
software industry) and �human development� � though some analyses suggest
that the �initial conditions� of circa 1960 were relatively favourable to
progress in the latter.
But the extent to which these �achievements� have come
with a high price attached in relation to civil rights, popular liberty and
something like substantive democracy is unmistakable.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank participants in a seminar
presented at the Madras Institute of Development Studies for a lively
discussion which led me to reconsider some of my views; Vasanthi Devi and K
S Subramanian for their courteous patience with me; and Andrew Wyatt (of the
University of Bristol) and K Nagaraj and M S S Pandian (of MIDS) for their
encouragement - though I must add that these last two friends in particular
are entirely exonerated from any responsibility for the arguments which
appear in this article.
References
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*
Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: from Iyothee Thass to Periyar.
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Notes:
1 Chapter 4 of the
thesis, which deals with Tamil politics, has been published with relatively
minor modifications as the paper �Parties, Political Identities and the
Absence of Mass Political Violence in South India�, in a book edited by Atul
Kohli and Amrita Basu (OUP, Delhi 1998).
2 Cf also Wiles,
quoted by Swamy: �any movement or doctrine that rests on the premiss that
virtue resides in the simple people who are the overwhelming majority and in
their collective traditions�
3 V Geetha and S V
Rajadurai (1998) have recently qualified this conventional account, showing
�the various trajectories of non-brahmin assertion beginning with the
articulation of dalit voices as these emerged from about the last decades of
the nineteenth century� (p xv)
4 The Vinayaka
Chatturti processions are currently being researched by C J Fuller of the
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics.
