On September 10, 2021, a day after R N Ravi, then Nagaland Governor, was transferred to the Raj Bhavan in Chennai, almost all allies of the ruling DMK criticized his appointment as they suspected an “ulterior motive” by the BJP in sending a former police officer to Tamil Nadu.
And since then, the Governor, who was deputy national security advisor to the Narendra Modi government after having worked with the Intelligence Bureau (IB), has had a rollercoaster ride in Tamil Nadu. The DMK and its allies view him as a “disruptor” as his public speeches often take a dig at the Dravidian ideology, entrenched in Tamil Nadu’s political landscape, and accuse him of toeing the BJP line on critical issues.
Born in April 1952 in Bihar, Ravi is a Kerala-cadre IPS officer and was named the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in 2014 and appointed deputy NSA in October 2018. From 2014 till his transfer to Tamil Nadu, Ravi served as the interlocutor for the talks between NSCN-IM and the Union Government.
Finding it hard to hang his police boots, Ravi went on to make statements against Popular Front of India (PFI) even before it was outlawed and tore into the DMK dispensation for the “delay” in handing over the October 23 Coimbatore blast case to NIA. However, he remained mum when Karnataka took more days than TN to hand over the Mangaluru blast case to NIA, an example political parties in the state cite to highlight his “political motives.”
Ravi’s fair relations with the DMK government and Chief Minister M K Stalin didn’t last even three months. The first stand-off began after the Governor sent back the NEET bill to the state Assembly – it was swiftly returned to his office within a week after reenacting it in the House.
His penchant for deviating from the prepared speech and peppering it with quotes from ancient texts might have prompted the Governor to attempt the same in the Assembly on Monday. Constitutional experts say Ravi has erred by deviating from the prepared text of the speech.
By skipping the portions that he felt were “far from truth” on Monday, the Governor only ended up opening yet another front with the DMK, whose mouthpiece Murasoli has been unsparing on him by devoting a significant portion of its newsprint every week to tear into him.
Ravi’s remarks that Thirukkural, a collection of two-liners that offers remedy to modern day problems, was wrongly translated into English by omitting its spiritual message, every country is dependent on one religion and India was no exception to the rule, and indirectly pushing for introduction of Hindi brought him directly in the DMK’s line of fire.
And the Governor’s penchant for quoting from Sanathana Dharma, which he says still guides the country, gave enough ammunition for the DMK and its allies to accuse him of mirroring views of the RSS, the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, and he has been sent here only to propagate those ideals.
Ravi’s latest controversial statement that the state was following regressive politics and Tamizhagam will be a more appropriate name than Tamil Nadu prompted the DMK to question whether he was trying to replace his super junior in the Indian Police Service, K Annamalai, as the state BJP chief.
More than the delay in assent to the bills, Ravi’s statements which were deemed controversial as they were in contradiction with the government's stated ideology made his relationship with the DMK more bitter. Though admonished by many, the Governor has friends in BJP and AIADMK, which lap up his statement more often than not.
In a state that wears language and identity on its sleeves, the Governor’s statements on the issues, which he might think will put the government on the mat, might only end up only helping the DMK dispensation that takes pride on the glory of Tamil language and the distinct culture of the Tamil land, political observers say.
The incident in the Tamil Nadu assembly would only be the beginning of yet another confrontation between the elected government and the governor. After all, the DMK has another 3.5 years in power, and in all probability, Ravi will occupy the sprawling Raj Bhavan tucked inside a reserve forest, for the remainder of the ruling party’s term.