Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi founder Thol. Thirumavalavan on Tuesday ruled out any possibility of an alliance with Pattali Makkal Katchi in the 2021 Assembly election.
In an interview to The Hindu , he said his party would not be a part of an alliance that features the PMK due to their fractious and tumultuous recent past.
“We have taken this stand after thinking about it calmly and deeply about merits and demerits over a period of time. An alliance with the PMK would be a major compromise, opportunistic and constitutes foolishness,” he said.
When asked if he would be open to a dialogue if the PMK reached out with an attempt to reconcile differences, Mr. Thirumavalavan said he was not in a position to lay down conditions for reconciliation. “He [PMK founder S. Ramadoss] has had a cordial relationship with me and, at the same time, he has expressed extreme animosity… to the extent that my personal safety was compromised. There was a time when he kept moving his pieces against me with no reason whatsoever… I have no personal animosity against him and I have no differences with him. In fact, we have worked with him closely for five years in Tamil Padhukappu Iyakkam,” he said.
Mr. Thirumavalavan felt that Dr. Ramadoss’ recent comments in an interview to a television channel that VCK (or any other party) and the PMK are not sworn enemies were “meaningless”.
“He came across as a very revolutionary force in the beginning — someone who cared for Tamil culture, people, a crusader for social justice and someone who embraced Dalits… He came across as an Ambedkarite, a Periyarist and a Marxist and we wanted to work with him politically on that basis. But, then again, he went back to caste,” he charged.
Mr. Thirumavalavan accused Dr. Ramadoss of resorting to caste-polarisation for political gain.
“Whenever he loses political clout, he goes back to caste politics. He doesn’t seem to care even if poor working class people — those who herd animals, who work in the farms, etc. — are affected by this. To achieve polarisation between non-Dalits and Dalits [working classes], he is sharpening the differences between them. I am not saying he is creating the split between Dalits and non-Dalits — the split already exists in society due to caste, but he is using the caste conflict for political gain. This is dangerous — we should work to remove differences between people, not use those differences,” he said.
