In towns in the southern districts, such as Paramakudi, Pasumpon and Usilampatti, it is not considered inappropriate to ask a person his or her caste as it is an integral part of their identity.
In such a society, where people make sense of the world around them through their caste-conscious lens, caste identity also informs their politics.
The most culturally and politically dominant of the communities in areas such as Theni, Thirunelveli, Madurai, Sivaganga, Ramnad is the ‘Mukkulathor’ community, collectively known as Thevars (the consist of three sub sects: Kallars, Maravars and Agamudaiyars).
How do the caste equations in the region inform political dynamics? Any political observer will admit that over the years the AIADMK has received the unwavering support of the Thevars. There is an overwhelming feeling within the community that the AIADMK is their party, and the Chief Minister Jayalalithaa herself, time and again, has extolled the community’s revered leader U. Muthuramalinga Thevar.
Apart from ensuring adequate representation of Thevars in the party, Ms. Jayalalithaa has also taken part in Thevar Jayanthi celebrations in Pasumpon and donated an armour made of gold to the Thevar temple in 2014. In fact, ‘Thevar Jayanthi’, celebrated every year on October 30, is now celebrated officially observed by the government.
This time, however, the ruling AIADMK failed to come to an electoral understanding with its long-term ally, the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), a party that was made popular by U. Muthuramalinga Thevar.
After the AIFB’s attempt to forge an alliance with the DMK also failed, the community’s leaders floated an alliance of six other Thevar-centric parties.
At the first meeting with their cadre in Usilampatti, their stronghold, the leaders openly urged their supporters to vote against the ruling party. “We will contest in close to 45-60 constituencies where the Thevar population is more. The votes we gain are the votes that AIADMK will lose.,” said AIFB general secretary P.V. Kathiravan.
But, will this pose a serious challenge to the AIADMK? While parties such as AIFB have their spheres of influence, political observers say that the AIADMK has subsumed the Thevar vote bank and rendered these caste outfits irrelevant.
“AIADMK’s politics is simple: they will behave like the most reactionary caste outfit in different regions. They will be even more casteist than caste parties. In the same way, the AIADMK is more ‘Thevar’ than the Thevar parties,” says political commentator Subagunarajan.
Speaking about the AIADMK-Thevar link, social activist A. Marx says that the DMK has remained an elite ‘non-Brahmin’ party while the AIADMK gave them representation.
“Historically speaking, Thevars took an anti-Congress stand. They slowly turned against the DMK after the party failed to recognise them. They found common cause with the AIADMK.”
Caste discrimination
Caste violence, meanwhile, has been on the rise in the region in the past few years. Kathir, who runs an organisation that catalogues cases of caste and gender discrimination, says that the “mess in southern Tamil Nadu is due to the Dravidian parties.”
“The Dravidian parties accommodated dominant castes in each region and left the Dalits out,” he says, adding, “The backward classes, by holding power within the Dravidian parties, managed to accrue social, political and private capital. The community has grown phenomenally in the last few decades.”
