Caste, social mobility: How Karunanidhi shaped the Dravidian movement

Since his teens, the late “Kalaignar” Mu Karunanidhi was associated with the Dravidian movement, initially with the Self Respect Association, the Justice Party, the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and later with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which he led for five decades. His public career of eight decades was intimately connected with various trends in Tamil Nadu’s politics and society. How might we regard the directions Kalaignar gave the DMK? How far might his passing change Tamil politics?

Building plebeian parties

The Dravidian movement is among Asia’s most durable ethnic movements. It initially claimed to represent a Dravidian community consisting of South Indians, primarily Tamil-speakers, other than Brahmins. While the Justice Party was led by elites from upper non-Brahmin castes and the DK’s founding leader, Periyar E V Ramasamy, was from a wealthy mercantile caste (Kavarai Naidu), the DMK’s leaders were born in underprivileged middle- and lower-middle-caste families – C N Annadurai, a Kaikola Mudaliar (a weaver caste) and Kalaignar, an Isai Vellalar (a musician-dancer-temple servant caste) from a middling farmer family. (Karunanidhi’s family, however, acquired immense wealth over the course of his career and his son and political successor, Mu Ka Stalin, hardly had an underprivileged upbringing.) The AIADMK, like the early Congress Party, had upper caste leaders – M G Ramachandran, a Malayalam-speaking Nair and J Jayalalithaa, a Malliyam Iyengar, who nevertheless built close links with lower strata.
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