As students across Tamil Nadu protested against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test following the suicide of 17-year-old medical aspirant Anitha on September 2, one leader stood out for supporting the centralised admission examination. K Krishnaswamy, founder of the Puthia Tamizhagam, which represents a section of the Dalits in southern Tamil Nadu, even alleged a conspiracy behind the suicide.
He demanded an investigation into Anitha’s death, claiming she could have been coerced into ending her life by some politicians. The girl, he said, had been used as a “political pawn” by “vested interests”.
Krishnaswamy claimed he supported NEET because it would help improve learning among Tamil Nadu’s students. Instead of opposing the test, he argued, the state government should impart better training to students in its schools to bring them on a par with children studying in Central Board of Secondary Education schools.
Krishnaswamy was widely criticised. Former Communist Party of India (Marxist) legislator Bala Bharathi accused him of hypocrisy, recalling that in 2011, the Dalit leader had thanked then Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for recommending a medical college seat for his daughter. So, Bharathi said, Krishnaswamy had no ground to doubt Anitha’s merit.
Apart from NEET, Krishnaswamy has, over the last year, supported many policies and positions espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party. He has insisted that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the fount of Hindutva, is a nationalist organisation; that there is no evidence the BJP government is trying to impose Hindi across India; that aspiring for a Hindu nation is not wrong because India was ruled by foreigners for 1,500 years, damaging its culture and history; that no major corruption scandal has emerged during the BJP’s rule, so it must be assumed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working in the best interests of the nation.
His critics alleged that Krishnaswamy is appeasing the RSS for personal gain. But can Krishnaswamy’s quest for power be dismissed so easily given how the Dravidian parties, largely driven by the Other Backward Classes, have treated the question of sharing power with the Dalits over the last 50 years?
Hero for Dalits
Krishnaswamy’s emergence is contextualised by the periodic violence faced by the Devendrakula Velalar Dalits of southern Tamil Nadu over the last 60 years.
Their primary rival is the land-owning Thevar community, which has come to dominate politics in Tamil Nadu despite its insignificant role in the Dravidian movement. In the 1950s and 60s, the Thevars were led by U Muthuramalingam of the All India Forward Bloc, a vocal critic of the atheistic ideals of the Dravidian parties.
In Independent India, the bloody history of the Devendrakula Velalars and the Thevars dates back to 1957, when riots broke out following the murder of the Dalit icon Immanuel Sekaran in Paramakudi. At least 17 Dalits were killed in what came to be known as the Muthukulathur riots, and over 2,700 houses were burnt down.
The violence altered social equations. The Devendrakula Velalars, who had long faced discrimination and untouchablility – even tea shops kept separate tumblers for them – began to assert their rights. As the academic MSS Pandian has noted, later riots saw the Devendrakula Velalars hitting back strongly and the Thevars facing significant damage to life and property.
This rivalry came to a head in April 1997, when the state government under the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam announced the renaming of the transport corporation in Virudhunagar district after Dalit leader Veeran Sundaralingam. The Thevars were enraged; some of them openly declared that travelling in a bus named after a Dalit was an affront to them. In May, Krishnaswamy was arrested on charges of inciting enmity among different sections of the society. His arrest only escalated the violence as the Devendrakula Velalars accused the police of siding with the Thevars. At least three Dalits and as many Thevars were killed in police firing over the next few weeks. The incident is often cited as one of the reasons for the Thevar community decisively turning against the DMK.
Krishnaswamy played a crucial role in securing the rights of his community during this period. Most notably, he persuaded the Dalits in southern Tamil Nadu not to bow down in the face of violence. In 1998, he launched the Puthia Tamizhagam, which has held sway over the Devendrakula Velalars for nearly 20 years now.
Elected to the Assembly three times, Krishnaswamy has alternated, like most small parties in Tamil Nadu, between supporting the DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. In 2016, his party fought the election in alliance with the DMK, unsuccessfully contesting three seats.
The Puthia Tamizhagam has complained – as has Thol Tirumavalavan’s Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, which too claims to represent the interests of the Dalits – that the two major Dravidian parties have never treated them with respect. In 2016, Krishnaswamy sought seven seats but was given only three. For the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi was offered a single seat by the DMK even though it did not have any other major ally. Only after the party threatened to walk out of the alliance was it offered one more seat.
Following caste violence in Dharmapuri in 2012, some leaders in the Dravidian parties argued in internal meetings against keeping the Dalit parties in their alliances. The Pattali Makkal Katchi led by S Ramadoss mounted a campaign alleging that these parties were encouraging Dalit men to woo non-Dalit women. This led to an anti-Dalit movement comprising of various caste Hindu organisations. By 2016, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi was out of the DMK alliance.
The Dalit leaders who have thrown in their lot with the Dravidian parties have found it hard to climb up the hierarchy.
Quest for power
The BJP and the RSS have taken advantage of this situation. In 2015, BJP chief Amit Shah visited Madurai and met with representatives of the Devendrakula Velalar community. The meeting was arranged by members of the community associated with the RSS. Shah promised them the representation they deserved, and later took them to meet Modi in Delhi.
The folklore of the Devendrakula Velalars is rooted in Hinduism. They claim to be the descendants of the Hindu god Indra. The community’s leaders have even been demanding removal from the Scheduled Caste category as they no longer consider themselves Dalits. Krishnaswamy is open about his strategy: since changing the community’s Scheduled Caste status would require amending the Constitution, it is imperative to have cordial ties with the ruling party, the BJP.
The Dravidian parties, on the other hand, have done little to facilitate the removal of the Devendrakula Velalars from the Scheduled Caste list while also denying them a share in power.
Still, two questions remain about Krishnaswamy’s quest. One, will merely moving out of the Scheduled Caste category end discrimination against the community? Two, will allying with the RSS, which often defends the caste system, help the community in any manner?
The writer Stalin Rajangam, a Dalit, said Krishnaswamy must be placed in the context of the OBC politics in Tamil Nadu. Almost every community in the state has played the caste card to gain political power, he explained, but the burden of carrying forward the struggle for annihilating caste has often fallen to the Dalits. Getting off the Scheduled Caste list, the community feels, would raise their status on a par with the OBCS, an enduring aspiration of the Dalits, Rajangam argued. “Here is a situation where there is a possibility to share power,” he said. “This is the basic goal for the community now.” Politics is all about power, he added. Attaining social power is difficult without ascending the political ladder.
Tamil Nadu has several communities whose social position improved vastly after taking political power. The Nadars, the community of K Kamaraj, were once considered untouchables, but they are now a powerful group in the society and in electoral politics. The BJP’s two top leaders in Tamil Nadu – the party’s state president Tamilisai Soundararajan and Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan – belong to the Nadar community. No non-Dalit party has a Dalit as its leader. This includes the Left parties, which refused to declare Tirumavalavan as the chief ministerial candidate of their alliance in 2016.
“What the Devendrars are essentially saying is that we are ready for annihilation of caste,” Rajangam said, referring to the Puthia Tamizhagam. “But let’s talk about it when everyone’s ready.”
Rajangam said the Dalits have been portrayed only as victims by others, to the extent that the idea has taken root within the community. The very act of saying that they do not see themselves as just victims and are ready to wield power is a counter-hegemonic narrative that Krishnaswamy represents.
It is in this larger picture that some Dalit scholars place Krishnaswamy’s position on NEET. Rather than merely play the victim card, they said, it was important for him, and the community, to adapt to the situation.
Not everyone is convinced. Ramu Manivannan, professor of political science at the University of Madras, said the people opposing NEET are fighting for the same ideal of social justice that Krishnaswamy has held up in the last two decades. “Statistics tell you that only five government school students got medical seats this year,” he said. “Is this not denial of social justice?”
The problem, Manivannan argued, is that political leaders focus on expanding their own power without considering whether that power trickles down to the masses they represent. “In the case of NEET, it has been detrimental to the very constituency Krishnaswamy represents,” he said.
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