Gajendran Ayyathurai : Reconstruction of the Past and Dilemmas of the Present: Caste, Electoral Politics, and the Marginalized.
Political consciousness and mobilization for representation in Tamil Nadu is a century-old phenomenon. Primarily this involved advocating policy changes that have implications on the social status and economic interests of the concerned communities. Caste, both its proponents and critics, have been part of this consciousness since pre-independence times– as well as under colonialism. Further, this long caste century animates the political present in more ways than meets the eye. The political history of Tamil Nadu has produced significant studies on ‘non-brahmin’ political mobilization, and ‘Dravidian’ political parties and its members; however, there is an inadequate understanding of the point of view of the marginalized such as Dalits. While ‘reserved constituencies’ and the ‘political behavior’ of the ‘Scheduled Castes’ have preoccupied scholarship ad nauseam, Dalit political consciousness, its manifestation, its appropriation and suppression by non-Dalit forces, and its political expediencies in the political processes of Tamil Nadu remain understudied.
A Dalit perspective on Tamil Nadu politics would encompass addressing a series of questions:
- How are the categories such as Caste, ‘Scheduled Caste’, ‘Dravidan,’ ‘Adi-Dravidan,’
‘Taltappator,’ ‘Taltappatapen,’ ‘Tamilan,’ ‘Brahmin,’ ‘Non-Brahmin’ and so on read among the Dalits and for what purposes in their political present? - Could one historicize the political categories of those marginalized by the caste system?
- If so, what are the transmutations and ambiguities that structure their political participation, successes, and failures in the recent past?
- How does a Dalit perspective speak to political power? Does it augur an alternative political culture?
This paper will attempt to examine the aforesaid questions in the electoral politics of Tamil Naduconnecting the past and the present.
Biographical Statement:
Gajendran Ayyathurai is in the department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Currently, he is writing his PhD dissertation, which is a historical anthropological study of the anti-caste Buddhist movement led by the marginalized communities such as Dalits in the Tamil speaking areas of South India since the late 19th century. His research interests include anti-caste studies, indigenous knowledge systems, Dalit social movements, and Buddhist studies.
