Chennai: As everybody would agree, a working or an operational simple ‘majority’ of numbers in a democracy is quite different from ‘majoritarian politics’. With the ascendance of right-wing ideologies and deflections from the mixed economy pattern, ‘majoritarian politics’ has tended to become more problematic in recent decades, often faulted for “not being inclusive of ethnic and religious minorities”.
Thus, when we discussed in these columns of the Deccan Chronicle last week how the notion of ‘social justice’, as crystallised in the late rationalist and Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) founder-leader Periyar’s ‘Self-Respect Movement’, had created a space for secular, inclusive and second-order, or what scholars sometimes call a ‘meta’ discourse’ in the history of the ‘Dravidian Movement’, it also impliedly fostered a social paradigm of ‘contestations and consensus’, wherein all voices could be heard and the social contract kept going despite differences.
It was in that sense ‘social justice’ had anchored a vibrant ethos in the ‘Dravidian Movement’ to stave off or keep away ‘majoritarian politics’. The article did not say that the voices of the majority of the people were ignored, but this paradigm of ‘social justice’ has been pivotal for the Periyar-led ‘Dravidian Movement’ to avoid the approach of right-of-center parties like the BJP, which see any reach out to minorities, religious/linguistic /ethnic as ‘policy of appeasement’.
The party’s ‘mantra’ of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas (development includes everyone) since the May 2014 general elections, is itself an indication that the BJP is grappling with this ‘majoritarian’ predicament.
This point, first and foremost needs to be re-emphasised, as one of our readers, Mr. V Kumaresan, in a longish response to DC, has asked how the ‘Dravidian Movement’ could be seen as having ‘staved off majoritarian politics’, when it has been working from the days of the Justice Party (1916) “for the cause of the majority of the population who were neglected historically.” It is a valid query.
But it is precisely in that backdrop the earlier article, ‘How Dravidian Movement Staved off Majoritarian politics’, had sought to explain that the model of ‘contestations and consensus’, grounded in social justice, had enabled the ‘Dravidian Movement’ to be in the vanguard of a long struggle for the rise of the depressed and oppressed classes without having to embrace ‘majoritarian politics’.
The occasion was the birth anniversary of ‘Kudiyarasu’, the journal started by Periyar, placed in the larger context of how a variety of mostly Tamil journals had played a crucial role in development of the ‘Dravidian Movement’.
Prof. S. Pannerselvam’s work, “Cultural Paradigm and Social Critique- A Tamil Perspective”, however, from which this writer quoted, has in fact quite exhaustively listed the journals and Newspapers, including purely literary periodicals, started and edited by a host of eminent Tamil writers, poets and personalities who have played a part in this process.
C. N. Annadurai and K. Veeramani
But given my article’s scope, not all of them could be detailed in one narration. The focus was on ‘Kudiyarasu’ and how it “spread the message of social justice in all its aspects”. The former Philosophy professor of Madras University, does mention how Periyar, besides the Tamil paper ‘Viduthalai’, had later started the ‘Modern Rationalist’, followed by other journals, ‘Revolt’ and ‘Justice’.
Undoubtedly, in the larger basket of journals that carried forward Periyar’s legacy of social justice, after he took over the political leadership of the ‘Justice Party’ in 1944 that was renamed as DK at the historic Salem conference, the present DK leader, ‘Aasriyar’ K Veeramani, associated with the DK from a tender age of nine, has been in the forefront of propagating Periyar’s humanist and rationalist principles.
The DK founder launching ‘Viduthalai’ in 1935, with which the late leader C N Annadurai was also associated, continues to be a torchbearer of the rationalist point of view under Dr Veeramani’s stewardship since 1962. Mr. Kumaresan also points out that ‘Viduthalai’ was also the first e-paper published in Tamil in 1996.
With the DK and the DMK hailed as ‘double-barrel gun’ of the ‘Dravidian Movement’, ‘Murasoli’ started by the DMK leader M Karunanidhi in 1942- the patriarch turns 94 on June 3 — has also played a significant role in advancing causes espoused by Periyar-led ‘Dravidian Movement’. ‘Kalaignar’s letters to his brethren (‘Udanpirappe Kadhithangal’) until recently, and how it braved the ‘Emergency’ is now part and parcel of its evolution.
While acknowledging the role of all these journals in the unfolding of the ‘Dravidian Movement’ would be a separate history by itself, the article’s focus was on one key structural aspect, of how ‘social justice’ as a virtue turned out to be a big game-changer in Tamil Nadu politics being largely inclusive for over a century now.
Very significantly, the pitfalls of ‘majoritarian politics’ have been more elegantly and profoundly captured by the scholarly Vice-President of India, Shri. Hamid Ansari, in his most recent, brilliant address he gave at the University of Warsaw in Poland on April 28 this year.
Aptly titled, ‘Seven Decades of Indian Democracy’, Shri. Ansari, after highlighting various facets of a pluralist, toleration of heterodoxy, quasi-federal and the world’s largest parliamentary democracy that India continues to be, sums up thus: “A Majority, no matter, how overwhelming, does not invalidate opposition.
The one crucial test of a democracy is how it protects and respects the rights of minorities, be they religious, or political, especially in face of populist currents.A democracy only flourishes when divergent voices can be freely heard, without fear of an official or populist backlash.
Democracy is in the end about people.. so long as our people do not succumb to sectarian and communal thought, there remains great hope that our democracy will continue to thrive and inspire others.”
