Conservatives Vs Conservatives

The scourge of Tamil Nadu

One lasting effect of the Second World War on politics of the countries all over the world was to divide political parties into 2 broad classes- conservatives and liberals. The fanatical nationalist movement in European countries especially in Germany created an set of ideals which advocated narrow minded patriotism. These ideals could be put to practice anywhere and could be translated to any culture and hence such groups emerged everywhere forming similar (and hence opposing ) factions. Through the war and the period of cold war that followed, this class was usually opposed to the socialist parties of the respective countries and hence were given the name "Right Wing", as opposed to "Left Wing" (The term "Left" itself does not have any communist basis, it just means "radical". Since the communist movement was some thing of a sea change compared to the existing capitalist hegemony).

Ever since, political groups have almost always identified themselves either as Right or Left at least by principle- Republicans and Democrats in US, Conservative and Labour (or now, Liberal Party) in UK, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Germany, Christian and Democrats of Italy, Republicans and Socialists of France and so on- and these groups confront each other in elections based on principles which can be more or less be categorized as "conservative" or "liberal".

India has had a strange history as far as this kind of grouping is concerned. The freedom struggle was led by the Congress Party which heavily borrowed from Marxist ideals especially under the leadership of Nehru and it worked with CPI in the national movement. Soon after Independence, however, as the Communist parties competed with Congress in elections, the nation moved a bit toward the 'right' and the economy was termed to be 'mixed'. And hence, Congress became the largest 'centre' party of the world. In the 70s, the Janata Party movement gained momentum and Hindutva Ideology as we know it today was born which advocated a Hindu nation. This emergence of extreme conservatives led Congress to move back toward 'left' and hence today it can better categorized as 'centre-left'. These neo conservatives in the form of the Sangh Parivar, with their involvement in scores of communal disturbances in the nation since independence and with their 'commercial' advertising of political agendas, have indeed have formed a sort of strong Right Wing in the country. We have redefined Right and Left in our own indegenious way- In India, consevatives are those who preach religion on the political arena and liberals are those who are secular. Regional parties in all states also have come to classify themselves on this basis and ally themselves with parties at centre with similar ideology.

All states but one. Try as much, I have not been able to find any basis of such classification in Tamil Nadu. There just doesn't seem to be any principle or characteristic, based on which one can distinguish between DMK and ADMK. Both parties carry out the same kind of political campaigning and propaganda which depends on arousing the feeling of regional and linguistic fanatism among people, both parties have a common history in the Dravidian movement and both parties, when in power, perform the duties of moral policing. Based on the Indian definition, hence, can we term both the factions as conservatives?

This puts us in a funny situation doesn't it? That these two parties actually have no real ground on which they can contest elections. The high rate of incumbency in the state ascertains this fact. Since there is no real ideology, people in the end have no real inclination toward any party and hence keep electing the opposition everytime hoping for some change. We have a perfect statistical paradise with mathematical precision in this state- every election is like throwing an unbiased coin. And perfect randomness in ensemble means each toss should give alternate results each time for a fairly long period. And it DOES happen here!!! One can easily postulate that if things remain the same for next thousand years, and that the elections results for those thousand years are plotted, they would very closely resemble the output of a pseudo random bit sequence generator they use in CDMA receivers!

It all started in 1912. Indologists discovered that the grammatical and phonetical structures of the languages north and south of the Vindhyas are strikingly different. This led to speculation that people of the south are a different race, Dravidian ("Dravida" = South in Sanskrit), which probably existed before Aryans arrived. The discovery of ruins of a magnificient urban civilization at Mohen-jo-daro gave rise to an even more controversial idea- that it was the Dravidians who started this civilization and that the invading Aryans burnt their houses down and drove them south. Early indologists, Max Muller being the prominent, termed this phenomenon as Aryan Invasion Theory. These ideas inspired the contemporary intelligensia of Tamil Nadu and filled them with pride about their own legacy. The flip side- it divided people.

Periyar started the Dravidian movement with legitimate interests of putting the superstitions and caste based attrocities prevailing in the society to an end. His struggle was indispensable in removing the Brahmin tyranny and creating equal oppurtunities for all in the state. But the very rationalism he advocated was infested with the highly irrational idea that 2 different races existed in the country, that the Brahmins in the state were unwelcome Aryan immigrants and hence should be expelled and that the North Indians were 'barbaric' Aryans who displaced 'civilized' Dravidians. What was supposed to be a completely academic debate was fought on the political arena. While his strive to reform the Tamil alphabet, and get it declared as classical language is commendable, his opposition to teaching of Hindi in schools was unwarranted. In a country like India divided by languages and cultures, the concept of national language is the only thing which can bind it as a nation. The other southern states were relatively untouched by these movements and have assimilated Hindi very well over the time. Periyar's claim for a separate 'Dravida Nadu' and his boycott of Hindi, which was carried on by his followers, has created a vast cultural gap between the state and the rest of the country which exists even today.

Mitochondrial-DNA analysis has today proven beyond doubt that the darkest south indian is no more closely related to his nearest African ancestor than his fairest counterpart. There is no separete race in this country. The dark complexion issue which is usually quoted is but a mere adaptation to life closer to the equator. This should have been obvious even during Periyar's time, even without DNA studies- 5000 years of coexistence cannot leave a trace of separate races in any country. Intermixing is a very rational process. Infact, South Indians have historically been the best preservers of Vedic Traditions while the North had been under the influence of Buddhism and Islam. His conservative campaign created a vast number of people ignorant of the national language and intolerant of other cultures and languages. It created regional fanatics.

DMK which formed on the ruins of Periyars movement took the Dravidian cause further and eventually became popular on the basis of a lie- probably a democratic version of Hitlers Aryan propaganda. After ADMK split from DMK, they ended up as the only dominant parties of the state. Having nothing to say against each other in principle, they swapped alliances and used nothing but populist measures to oust each other. What else can explain the Left and Right wingers at the centre switching loyalties between the two parties almost EVERY single election for about a decade? There seems to be only politics of convenience in TN, no politics of ideology.

When a northie hears the word 'chennai' he hears it as 'culture'. But it also brings to his mind the intolerance of people here. Winston Churchill said, "Even conservatives have to change with times if they want to remain relevant". This mess, though created by fanatic politics, can only be cleaned by a new generation of liberal rationals. Its time to open up.