DMK’s subaltern politics at odds with monolith Hindu Rashtra

India, or Bharat as it may be soon called, is a complex country that has birthed several political parties that emerged from movements against upper caste hegemony. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) springs from such a movement, and a cursory web search for the ideas of the movement’s most significant ideologue, referred to as Periyar, would make this explicitly clear.

Critics of Dravida politics could also acknowledge that Tamil Nadu may have multiple problems but it’s way ahead on social, developmental, and economic indices than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s bastions in the Hindi belt, and even Gujarat. We can surmise, therefore, that empowering subaltern groups has contributed to this relative progress.

Beyond the hysterics over DMK minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s statement about the need to eradicate Sanatana Dharma, lies this certain schism in Indian society. For one of the fundamental truths about Hinduism is that it is not a monolith nor a codified religion of the book (referred to as Ahl al-Kitab). Yet we are living in an era that has been described as a de facto Hindu Rashtra. Hence, there is now a manufactured project to take offense on matters that may have invited none in the past.

After Udhayanidhi Stalin’s utterances about Sanatana Dharma, Paramhans Acharya, a priest from Ayodhya, announced a reward of Rs 10 crore for beheading the DMK scion. The entire episode seemed a farcical re-enactment of the 1988 death threat and reward against writer Salman Rushdie. If normal rule of law prevailed on matters involving the Hindu identity in the Hindi belt, then the priest should have been booked for inciting murder. What we have instead is the demand for the incarceration of the DMK leader.

This is because the Right wing abhors movements against caste hierarchies as they see them privileging the caste identity over the religious one. Such movements also dislocate entrenched interests, and all the data suggests that today, upper castes form the most loyal segment of BJP voters. The BJP’s hegemony in parts of India is possibly seen as protection against right-based movements led by subaltern communities.

The DMK would mark its presence in Tamil Nadu’s electoral politics in the 1960s. Decades later, Mandal era politics would transform political realities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, as reservation was extended to the OBCs (Other Backward Classes). The many political parties with socialist roots in north India were birthed in this era during the early 1990s. It should not be forgotten that the rhetoric in the 1990s of the now silent Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which represented Dalit assertion particularly in Uttar Pradesh, was provocative and strongly against the upper castes. If speeches of that era, made by BSP founder Kanshi Ram and his successor Mayawati, are revisited, there is enough for the thin skinned to be outraged.

The political parties emerging from the socialist tradition still have a capacity to cause unease in the Hindu Right: in Bihar, for instance, the coalition that unites two such parties, the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) and Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), has initiated a caste census. Although the BJP cannot be seen to be openly opposing such a census, it is known that it would not be happy with any data that shows an increase in the OBC population vis-a-vis the upper castes.

The possibility of finding a declining birth rate among Muslims is believed to be one of the factors behind the delay in conducting the national census. What the BJP has meanwhile managed to do in its bases is create a Hindu consciousness by relentless anti-Muslim mobilisation that works on the logic of uniting different castes against the ‘common enemy’.

To its credit, even if expansion strategies are planned by the Brahmin-dominated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leadership in Nagpur, it has included subaltern communities in the street mobilisations. The power of Mandal-era parties has been blunted by sections of the OBCs and the Dalits being included as Hindutva foot-soldiers.

Along the way, the party has also changed the terms of engagement with the Indian people, specifically its own voters. While the politics of the DMK and the Mandal-era parties is fundamentally about seeking rights, the BJP is both symbolically and rhetorically big on the idea of kartavya (duty). In the realm of ideas, this can be elaborated as a feudal concept of performing duty to the sovereign, and king. The citizen is not to seek rights but purpose in serving the king who also embodies the nation.

The Modi era also unites the symbols of State and church, be it in Delhi or Lucknow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is frequently seen inaugurating temple corridors while Adityanath Yogi, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, has currently made the beautification of Ayodhya a priority. The expectation is that a grand new Ram temple will open to the public by the third week of January 2024.

Amid this blowing of conch shells, Udhayanidhi Stalin’s words would be anathema to the Hindu Right — and an opportunity to highlight contradictions in the I.N.D.I.A alliance. Yet it can be a self-defeating exercise to take the pitch beyond a point. For the process could then involve excavating the writings and utterances of B R Ambedkar, whose account of the injustices of Hindu society is much more devastating than anything the young Stalin has said.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH