http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Anna-The-man-who-saw-the-future/articleshow/5652994.cmsAnna: The man who saw the future
Amrith Lal, Mar 7, 2010, 03.38am IST
Before cutouts and 'cooling' glasses captured the Dravidian movement
and the imagination of the Tamil public, there was Anna.
Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai or Anna (elder brother in Tamil) to
admirers and followers, is a seminal figure in Indian politics. He was
a mass leader who spoke of social justice and linguistic nationalism.
He saw the potential of the mass media, especially theatre and cinema,
to spread the political message and mobilize people. His work
radically transformed power equations in Tamil Nadu. R Kannan's
biography is a sensitive portrayal of the man and the movement he led.
Anna belonged to a political tradition that gave precedence to social
reform over political freedom. The Dravidian movement suspected Indian
nationalism as represented by Congress of wanting to emasculate
regional, ethnic and linguistic communities. It interpreted pan-Indian
nationalism as an Aryan project to subdue Dravidians. In many ways,
the Dravidian movement anticipated the national struggles that emerged
in independent India, especially in the northeastern region.
Kannan begins his story by analyzing the political trends that
prepared the ground for Anna's career. The early decades of the 20th
century were a time of political and social upheaval in south India.
Madras was the political centre of south India. Brahmins dominated the
bureaucracy, just as they did other spheres.
It was natural for the struggle for representation to acquire an
anti-Brahmin thrust. A non-Brahmin manifesto issued in 1916 said caste
and class distinctions would have to disappear before self-government
could become more satisfactory. When the Justice Party, the main
vehicle of non-Brahmin politics, gained office in Madras Presidency in
1920, it issued the communal government order that demanded more
non-Brahmin representation in all government departments. Later, it
gave priority to non-Brahmins and backward communities in recruitment
and promotion. This was six decades before New Delhi accepted the
Mandal Commission recommendations.
It is impossible to separate Anna's story from the history of the
Dravidian movement and the life of Periyar EV Ramasamy Naicker.
Periyar began his political career as a Congressman but joined the
Justice Party after he was convinced that social reform must precede
political reform. He transformed the Justice Party into a mass
organization. Anna, born into a family of weavers, became his trusted
ally. According to Kannan, there could not have been two more
different men. "EVR spoke the bitter truth without mincing words and
was extreme in his views....Unlike his iconoclast leader, Anna, the
genteel disciple, chastised Aryanism, caste, ritualistic religion,
unethical pontiffs, feudal landlords and the heartless rich in a much
more acceptable manner and consequently doors hitherto shut to the
movement opened to him," he writes.
Together, the mentor and his disciple spearheaded the anti-Hindi
protests of the 1930s. This phase of mass mobilization saw the advent
of Tamil linguistic nationalism, which was a combination of the social
reform agenda and pride in the Tamil language and culture. Soon, it
became a cry for a separate Dravida nation. But what was that?
According to Kannan, territorially unworkable and ethnically
amorphous, the project was no more than a medley of ad hoc theses and
arguments.
Periyar and Anna split ranks on the question of state power. Unlike
Periyar, Anna thought electoral politics necessary. They parted with
bitterness. Kannan betrays a nuanced understanding of the complex
relations between Periyar and Anna. His narration is sensitive.
The DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), formed in 1949, refused to accept
the Indian nation state's primacy but aspired to public office. It
held to the demand for self-determination till 1962. Anna's
explanation for abandoning this demand was simple: "We need to get our
(Dravida Nadu) from Pandit Nehru. Not from the Chinese." Attempts to
make Hindi the sole official language in the 1960s provoked language
riots in Madras. Emotions ran high as DMK leaders used the issue to
mobilize people and self-immolation began. Kannan writes that Anna
didn't approve of the suicides and said, "they should fight injustice
by living; to die is wrong. There should be no such thoughts." The
mobilization helped the DMK win office in Madras in 1967.
Anna was chief minister only for two years. He died in 1969 at the age
of 60. By then, he had skillfully convinced a party founded on a
separatist platform to embrace the idea of a federal India. The
failure to invent a radical agenda after it exhausted the limited
goals of political representation prevented the party from looking
beyond identity issues. Excessive dependence on an emotional agenda
crippled the party's ability to foster a democratic public culture.
That, in the end, led the movement itself to decay.
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