A Dravidian Nation in South India?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] 

The world’s attention regarding Tamils has centred on the failed attempt by the Tamil Tigers on the island of Sri Lanka to create a separate Tamil Eelam in the north, across the Palk Strait from India.

But the 70 million Tamils in the mainland state of Tamil Nadu in India have also harbored separatist dreams over the years.

Most Tamils are Hindus, but because of their history and culture, they practice forms of Hinduism and its rituals different from other parts of the country and resent the northern versions.

Though a tiny minority, upper-caste Brahmins in what was then Madras Province in British India dominated the administrative services and the newly created urban professions in the 19th and early 20th century. This led to discontent amongst the lower castes.

Anti-Brahminism became organized in the formation of the Justice Party in late 1916. It represented the non-Brahmins in Madras and was the start of the so-called Dravidian Movement in India’s southern regions.

It championed ending the domination of Hindi-speaking northern India, with its Sanscritized Brahmin-dominated Hindu culture, over the politics and economy of the south Indian province.

Members were urged to boycott the use of Brahmin priests in ceremonies, who, they claimed, used religion to exploit the Tamil masses.

The Tamil Dravidian Movement also opposed the imposition of Hindi as a national language in the south of the country.

On July 13, 1947, a month before India became independent, Tamil separatists passed a resolution demanding an independent nation.

Most Dravidian parties today, including the Dravidian Progress Federation (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravidian Progressive Party (AIADMK) are offshoots of the Justice Party, later renamed the Dravidian Conference (DK).

Modern-day Tamil Nadu was formed in 1956 after the reorganization of India’s states on linguistic lines. By granting nationalists a Tamil state, with Tamil its official language, the Indian government took much of the separatist steam out of the Dravidian movement.

Even so, during the 1950s and the 1960s, arguing that Tamils were a distinct people, Tamil leaders demanded, at the very least, greater power and control over their own affairs from New Delhi. The DMK, the more separatist of the two parties, still wanted a sovereign country.

After winning control of the state in the 1967 election, the DMK demanded autonomy in which the national government would control only defence, foreign affairs, inter-state communication and currency.

Some Tamil separatists were suspected of being involved in the 1991 assassination of Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, arising from his sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka.

At its most recent general council meeting, the DMK demanded adequate powers for the state government on subjects such as finance, education, subsidies and loans, and an end to the “big brother attitude” of the Centre.

Though the state is governed today by the AIADMK, in the 2019 Indian federal election the DMK won 24 of Tamil Nadu’s 39 seats, while the AIADMK, allied with the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, took just one.

The BJP itself, viewed as an upper-caste party, won no seats. Tamils remain wary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who espouses an all-Indian nationalism.