Deep Moats of the Dravidian Citadel

Will the BJP's desperate efforts to splinter the people along caste, religious, regional and linguistic fault lines bear fruit in Tamil Nadu's western districts?

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PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has made seven visits to Tamil Nadu in the last forty days, trying hard to woo Tamilians with every trick in the book. He's spoken about his love for the Tamil language, his love for dosas, his love for this ancient civilisation. One of his roadshows in Coimbatore was conducted in the same Hindu locality where the 1998 bomb blasts happened-a lame duck bid to revive the communal polarisation that tore through the city.

The national and international media attention and speculation on Coimbatore has been bizarre and cloying the ad nauseam belief that Western Tamil Nadu (the Kongu belt) would find itself electing a BJP candidate contesting over two Dravidian opponents is jarring. Those who know the history of Tamil Nadu would know that the man who reshaped this state's trajectory, Thanthai Periyar, was born in Erode, the same region where the BJP is fantasising about its victory.

A life-size statue of Periyar stands in front of the Gandhipuram office of the Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam, an organisation committed to propagating his views of social justice, rationalism and feminism. "The idea of Kongunadu is itself associated with a caste identity," says Kovai Ramakrishnan, the founder-leader of this Periyarist organisation. He explains, "No other group except the Kongu Vellala Gounders (KVG) lay claim to this specific regional identity. The BJP thinks that it has some potential to try and win them over. They may not have much traction among the people, but the upper crust of this community might be attracted to them out of sheer opportunism."