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Twice born in Tamil Nadu

In substance the Dravidian movement as envisaged by its preceptor E V R Periyar is all but dead. On the one hand is the pantomime played out by foes-turned-friends-turned-foes Jayalalitha and Subramaniam Swamy. The other inheritor of the mantle, M Karunanidhi and his Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, seem to have strayed even further from the original legacy, what with its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The DMK's move is not as damaging as it appears and has interesting implications. But the fundamental question remains. How could Tamil society, which during the Self Respect movement saw the raising of such a potent challenge to patriarchal structures -- notably where emancipation of women and exposing devotion as a daytime disguise were concerned -- slide into the current morass?

Or more precisely, how could, to paraphrase a query made in a similar context, the New Woman have turned into the Nazi Mother (or almost)?

The premise of the above question is that the Jayalalitha phenomenon is less an aberration, born out of an individual's caprice or charisma, than the logical outcome of the suspension of disbelief that is endemic to the Tamil masses.

The latter, as is manifest with disturbing regularity, are driven by an emotional need for a collective transference of ego to and a recognition of an ideal self/situation in some fascinating object or person, what Periyar, without mincing words, called the thai pal paithyam or mother fixation, which in sociological parlance is 'primary narcissm.'

Such a proclivity itself arises from repressive material conditions like perpetual caste and gender oppression, illiteracy, ambivalent economic conditions etc but seeking refuge in a subjectivised universe only reinforces the very same conditions. A vicious circle in short.

The Dravidian discourse epitomised by Karunanidhi is certainly cognisant of this fundamental failing of the polity. But two factors inhibit an effective response.

Firstly, the exigencies of electoral politics which preclude determined efforts at structural change. Second, and more basic, is the Dravidian discourse's total delinking of bhakti -- its leitmotif -- from the Sanskritic tradition.

Bhakti, as a secular sensibility, has constituted the Tamil identity at least since the beginning of the classical or Sangam period. And Sanskrit, with its brahmanism, was a presence against which this identity defined itself though not always defiantly.

Sanskrit was never the language of the family or folk. It furnished no unconscious symbols. Some of the literal meanings of Sanskrit are ''remade, cultured, perfected, confected.'' The Vedas and the Upanishads, which belong to the same tradition, can be roughly translated as, respectively, ''that which is known'' and ''that which is learned by sitting at or near the feet of a teacher.'' All these, incidentally, represent passive, receptive modes.

Bhakti, on its part, prefers the active mode: to the namalvars or Shaivite seers god or knowledge is not a hieratic second language, a Sanskrit to be learned, to be minded lest one forgets its rules, paradigms and exceptions but a mother tongue. To lose this mother tongue is to lose one's beginnings, one's bearings, to be exiled into aphasia or the hell of lost memory.

More than intelligence, bhakti strains the sensory modes, especially the near senses -- touch, taste and smell. There is the story of Sabari who offered fruits to Ram when he visited her in the Sahayadri hills but only after first tasting them to determine the choicest. Similarly, Andal the legendary Vaishanavite poetess, was called cuttik kottuta nacciyar or 'the lady who offered flowers to the deity after first wearing them herself.' Such intimacy would be unmistakable 'pollution' in the Sanskritic tradition.

The essential experience of bhakti is not ecstasy or entasy but an embodiment; neither a shamanic flight to the heavens nor a yogic autonomy or withdrawal of the senses, but a partaking of the universal, what the French call the participation mystique, i e, reveling in the joy of being alive.

The degeneration of bhakti -- manifest in the primary narcissm mentioned above -- brought about by Dravidian practice stems from carrying the defiance of the Sanskritic tradition too far, to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

The DMK-BJP alliance could begin to change this. At last a space is sought to be created which seeks to reconcile hitherto opposing Sanskritic and Dravidian identities. It is obvious that the protagonists themselves have not seen it as anything more than electoral expediency. But that doesn't preclude the alliance from lasting, maturing and taking on interesting dimensions -- most significantly as an experiment in engineering a Hindu recrudescence with a radical social content.

To be sure, the long history of mistrust between the backwards and brahmins cannot be underestimated.

If an elite is defined by exclusiveness then there can be few who are more complete in this respect than Tamil brahmins. If their trackrecord in Tamil Nadu politics is anything to go by -- very active during the freedom struggle which carried over as support to the Congress in the ensuing decades but uninvolvement and antipathy towards the Dravidian movement -- they are totally uncontaminated by guilt.

This is remarkable. In states like Maharashtra, Kerala and Bengal, brahmins, consumed by varying degrees of guilt for society's lasting inequities, have had strong links with subaltern movements, or at least have maintained an ambivalent attitude towards them.

Even the overt violence brahmins in north Indian states or Andhra perpetrate on lower castes can be explained as a distorted and extreme consequence of their often unconscious guilt and its corollary, a deep sense of déjà vu.

Not so the Tamil brahmins. Exceptionally confident -- or exceptionally defensive depending on how you see it -- as a community, they have extracted their historical pound of flesh in far more refined ways -- the most effective of which is their insularity. It's a continuation of the traditional untouchability towards the Shudra, but unilateral and without social sanction, and therefore all the more dangerous for what it implies.

This again could be changing with the DMK-BJP tie-up. For the first time after the freedom struggle it gives the brahmins in the state a chance to emerge from their shell and provide creative leadership.

It's a chance for the Sangh Parivar to move away from, what sociologist Ashis Nandy calls, 'syndicated moksha' -- a pale imitation of the Semitic creeds which are well-bounded, monolithic, muscular and capable of sustaining the ideology of an imperial state -- that it purveys in the north to a process of samskarisation where high status and ritually pure forms of behaviour are consonant with samskar, literally funeral rites but also alteration of substance or fundamental change.

This process is inherent to brahminism and is what gives it genuine legitimacy. And what captures it better than the very initiation ritual of every brahmin, where the preceptor symbolically swallows and disgorges the initiate who thereby gains new life and becomes twice born.

Anil Nair