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TN returning to the days of 'jungle raj'?

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Kannan, a petty thief who was known as such, was beaten to death by the people of a village near Usilampatti, otherwise known for its female infanticide, a couple of days back. Dripping from the sickle in his hand was fresh blood, of a 70-year-old man, Ramu Thevar, and a 60-year-old woman, Angammal. And their crime? Just inquiring of Kannan, who was not even known to them, why he was running so feverishly, as the villagers were chasing him at a distance, for a petty crime he had attempted earlier.

This one is a near-similar incident, only that the focus of the people's fury was not a petty-thief. In a village near Vellore, the locals did to death a man who had killed two others. They stamped him "lunatic, and gave him a lunatic's death". However, doubts remain whether he was a lunatic in the first place, or if was just a build-up against an undesirable element, over whose extermination the village did not want 'good people' to suffer at the hands of judiciary.

The two incidents occurred in two different parts of Tamil Nadu, separated by hundreds of kilometres, but they happened within days of each other. It may sound ominous, but rural Tamil Nadu seems to be going back to the days of the 'jungle raj', and a frustrated citizenry is losing faith in the established systems of the democratic republic. While it is all for a good cause, there are early signs of the 'law of the jungle' coming into play.

"People in big cities don't seem to have realised the import," says a professor of sociology from a government college near Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu. "Ever since the 1996 elections re-invested the faith of the people in the system, and their own power to make and unmake governments at will, that too when the state was rapidly turning into a 'jungle raj', they are swinging to the other extreme. Of demonstrating their own power, in a more physical and more decisive way."

Whether it is villagers blocking the road after a bus accident, if only to reinforce their claim that they needed a speed-breaker, or gheraoing officials, demanding drainage or water, power or bus service, it is all happening in rural Tamil Nadu. Only, they are all spontaneous, unconnected events, where the hands of a common socio-political force, if any, is invisible, yet. But it is also the clime in which a new force could emerge, a new forging could be tried.

"It is this kind of restlessness and frustration of the public that the Dravidian movement canalised into a powerful socio-political force in the sixties," says a veteran of the movement. As he points out, "While social disparities might have been the base for the movement, it was the political focus it gave the anti-incumbency factor even then working against the ruling Congress party in Tamil Nadu, that provided the cutting electoral edge. This way, the DMK edged out the communists, whose ideology and agenda were limited."

It had happened even earlier, and there is a pattern to it. Through the just-concluded twentieth century, the socio-political identity of an emerging and enlightened Tamil Nadu had taken a new turn with each passing generation, or thereabouts. It was thus the non-Brahmin movement of the Justice Party variety in the teens of the twentieth century, followed by the more broad-based socio-political movement of the Congress party, under Mahathma Gandhi, in the 1937 elections.

The DMK 'arrived' in 1967, a full 30 years, or a generation, later. However, the Dravidian socio-political identity has since lost its vigour and vitality, as is seen by the free mingling of the AIADMK first, and the DMK, later, with the BJP, which was once considered antithesis to everything the Dravidian movement stood for.

"In a way, the state is standing at the cross-roads, and the youth are as restless as ever," says the sociologist from Madurai. A clearer picture of their numbers and background would be known with the Census 2001, but history has shown that whenever the youth population had crossed 20 per cent of the population, revolutions of some kind or the other had just happened.

"There is no denying that the older generation is getting increasingly frustrated with the failure of the system in which they had reposed their faith," says the Dravidian veteran. "And the younger generation remains uninitiated, as it had been in the thirties and the sixties, as the earlier revolution had delivered its fruits and was approaching redundancy."

This politician at least sees a streak of nationalism, vis a vis regionalism, returning to Tamil Nadu, with the advent of the new generation. "It maybe slow, and less visible, but it is happening," he concedes. "For one thing, the Dravidian movement has outlived its socio-political utility, having achieved some, and given up some, while in power for all of 33 years since 1967."

The 'Jayalalitha phase' of overactivity, and now the Karunanidhi phase of inactivity has disheartened the new youth of Tamil Nadu, whose imagination and nationalism have also been fired, to an extent, by the BJP's media-handling of the past few years on the one hand, and the Kargil-Kandahar kind of nationalist issues, on the other.

The changing mood of the populace is reflected by Tamil cinema, as has always been the case in the state. Many a film, reflecting social issues, and the people's involvement in solving them, have run to packed houses. So have themes involving nationalism and nationalist issues. If Kamal Haasan's Indian involved a veteran nationalist taking law into his hands, Gentleman of a few years earlier, revolved around the reservations issue -- again, a frustrated youth taking law into his hands and 'returning' it all to the society which was cruel to him.

More recently, it was Desiya Geetham, starring faceless stars, that ran to full houses across the state. In this film, frustrated youth of a forgotten village, kidnap the chief minister of the state, with his family members, if only to show him the benefits of development and democracy that had been denied them. Likewise, you now have Mudalvan, where a journalist becomes a revolutionary chief minister, booted and suited -- and thus, going with the changing times.

Some film observers even see a changing pattern in this: a decade earlier, it was the macho policeman -- better if he is sacked, or has resigned in disgust -- taking on the big bad man: it could be the one who smuggled children, or depraved people of their kidneys for selling them abroad, sandalwood smuggler, or even a plotter against the prime minister of the land. Now, it is more subtle, more humane, where even a movie on an old, nationalist cinema hall owner, giving his life while saving the lives of innocents, brought tears to the eyes of the viewer -- who patronised the film for a long run.

"But the periphery remains, and is getting expression in real-life situations," says the sociologist, recalling the revival of the Naxalite movement in Dharmapuri district in recent months, if not years. A few incidents of militants setting buses afire, and the police recently killing Ravindran, an alleged Naxalite, in a shoot-out, are proof enough.

Cautions the sociologist in this context: "If mainstream socio-political forces do not direct the flow of youth in the coming years, and inspire their imagination and confidence, which will require greater efforts than under similar circumstances in the past, there is the danger of the periphery becoming the mainline. Though, at this stage, it may look preposterous."

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