A new face of Tamil belligerence?

By Venkatesan Vembu

Back in the 1980s, residential rental advertisements in newspapers in New Delhi would frequently incorporate two words: "Madrasis preferred". That tenant-filtering terminology of course reflected an inadequate appreciation of the diversity of regional cultural identities: anyone coming from south of the Vindhyas was pigeonholed as a "Madrasi". But even so, it mirrored a widely shared cultural stereotyping of "Madrasis" as non-troublesome tenants who could be counted on to disappear quietly and without a fuss into the night whenever the landlord wanted his property back.

However, the political tantrums thrown by DMK leader M Karunanidhi last week may have served to eternally shatter that overly benign characterisation of 'Madrasis', particularly Tamils, as a docile, unfussy lot. His political grandstanding over the number of ministerial appointments he wanted for his family and friends ruined the inauguration of the UPA's second innings. However, it's the enduring image of an octogenarian politician in a wheelchair holding out threats to withdraw from the ruling coalition that will typify the "troublesome Tamil" for a while.

To be fair, it isn't just Tamil politicians who are given to political brinkmanship. Nor is Karunanidhi the first politician from Tamil Nadu to hold central coalitions to ransom: that honour forever rests with AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa, whose whimsical tantrums caused the Vajpayee-led coalition government in 1998-99 to miss several heartbeats.

There's something about the way Tamil politics, including Tamil diasporic politics, is played out that shows up politicians from that state as being easily inflamed -- literally, in some cases -- and more than a little unreasonable.

The Tamil Nadu assembly, for instance, has several notorieties associated with it. It was the first assembly in India to witness a police lathi-charge inside the legislative chamber, after a failed vote of confidence. It was the first assembly -- and perhaps the only one to date --where an MLA once lifted up his dhoti and (as a newspaper account of the day delicately put it) "displayed his wares" to make some particularly forceful political point. In that same august chamber, Jayalalithaa has alleged in the past, DMK MLAs attempted to disrobe her --after the then chief minister Karunanidhi was punched in the face and had his spectacles broken.

Jayalalithaa herself demonstrated years later her abilities. When Subramanian Swamy, briefly her political adversary, filed a case against Jayalalithaa, her party arranged for AIADMK women cadres to gather around Swamy in public and lift up their saris waist-high, ostensibly to subject him to some ritual humiliation.

Tamil Nadu also tops the list of Indian states for the number of cases of self-immolation, a particularly incendiary form of political protest. Until earlier this year, there were several cases of self-immolation by combustible cadres to protest the Centre's perceived inaction against the Sri Lankan military offensive against the LTTE. To this day, popular Tamil culture -- as reflected in film song lyrics and TV shows -- valorise regional chauvinism and pitch for linguistic 'purity', which are the springboards for Tamil identity politics and "cultural nationalism".

What has all this got to do with Karunanidhi's tantrums last week? Only that for all the consternation it gave rise to among the chattering class, Karunanidhi's demand for more ministerial berths for his family is par for the course in the parallel universe in which Tamil politics operates. And compared with traditional Tamil ways of making political points, his threat to merely quit the ruling coalition seems positively mild. But I suspect that after last week, 'Madrasis' won't qualify for preferential treatment with home-owners looking to lease.