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To Believe or not to believe in God is the question in Tamil Nadu,
the state where politics has been shaped by the anti-religion
ideology of the Dravida movement. Elsewhere in India, nobody would
bat an eyelid if a chief minister's son visited a temple: but in
Tamil Nadu, the simple act of paying obeisance to God gets noticed.
Particularly as the chief minister happens to be the well-known
atheist M. Karunanidhi, and his son, M.K. Stalin.
To make matters worse, he is being equated with the son of 'God'
-at least by DMK cadres of Madurai who recently plastered the city
with posters hailing Karunanidhi as "God". The chief minister was
livid: "I am a human being, that's why I act when you make an
appeal. Do not render me inactive by calling me God," he
thundered, and got the posters removed. But he could not have
missed the writing on the wall that the growing religiosity in
Tamil society has seeped into the DMK.
This is the party that has always been anti-God because Hinduism
was considered the preserve of Brahmins. The DMK's social-justice
agenda was therefore enmeshed in a firm commitment to rationalism.
But with Brahmin hegemony having been broken after 30 years of
continuous rule by Dravidian parties, the DMK has started softening
its stand on Hinduism. it has clearly decided to adopt a more
pragmatic approach to religion.
Today, several DMK ministers have no compunction about openly
participating in temple functions-which would have been
sacrilegious a decade back. K. Pitchandy, the housing minister, and
Pulavar Senguttuvan, minister for Hindu religious and charitable
endowments, even pulled the temple car at Tiruvanmalai some months
ago. And more and more MLAs-such as T.C. Vijayan and T.
Rajendar-and party functionaries are making the annual pilgrimage
to the Sabarimala shrine in the Kerala hills.
There are even examples of DMK local units organising religious
functions. On January l4, a Pongal function at the Vridhakeeswarar
temple at Vridhaclam had the party's patronage. Backward Classes
Minister M.R.K. Pannerselvam looked on in pious devotion as 108
litres of milk, curd, coconut water and sandalwood paste were
poured on the idols. Contrast this with 1971 when, during its first
term in power, the party looked the other way when activists of the
Dravida Kazhagam (DK) - the parent body founded by E.V. "Periyar"
Ramaswamy Naicker, from which the DMK broke away in 1949 - threw
chappals at Lord Ram's pictures.
But the piece de resistance came on January 24 this year, when
Stalin visited the Melmaruvathur Adi Parasakthi temple. The son of
the rigid rationalist actually prayed before the deity and accepted
prasadam. And PWD Minister Durai Murugan proudly proclaimed that
he had become a minister only after visiting the temple. All this
would have been unthinkable a decade back, says DK General
Secretary K. Veeramani. "The DMK used to frown upon its cadres for
being even covertly religious. Today, it silently accepts leaders
displaying their religious beliefs."
Consider the DMK's choice for Speaker of the Assembly - P.T.R.
Palanivelrajan, an openly religious lawyer from Madurai. With
vibhuthi (holy ash) and kumkum on his forehead, he is the
antithesis of the DMK old guard who stood for Periyar's atheism and
Annadurai's agnosticism. Admits Palanivelrajan: "The number of
non-believers in the party has definitely come down. The new
generation has not been tempered by the views of Periyar or Anna.
But they've been shaped by a society which has become more
religious."
Deputy Speaker Paruthy Elamvaruthy perhaps best represents this
change. His father, V. Ilamparuthy, a Dalit MLC, had remained a
firm non-believer till the very end. But Paruthy openly worships
Lord Muruga and does not mind his wife Lalitha going to church.
The drift from the rationalistic ideology of the Dravidian parties
was most visible during MGR's rule, says S. Thiagarajan, a DMK
commentator and writer. The DMK was forced to be a silent spectator
from l977 to l987, when the AIADMK effectively watered down the
Dravida ideology, replacing it with populist gestures. MGR's
religious endowments minister R.M. Veerappan gave state support to
a spate of temple renovations, while MGR himself regularly visited
the Moogambika Temple near Mangalore. Says RSS ideologue S.
Gurumurthy: "MGR de-Dravidised the polity of Tamil Nadu as he knew
it was easier to take on Karunanidhi in a duel of charisma rather
than ideology."
Besides, the past decade has witnessed the long march of the
Hindutva movement. In Tamil Nadu there is the Hindu Munnani which
has been carrying on a strident campaign declaring the DMK as
pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu. The DMK has obviously realised that a
safer way to consolidate its own Backward Caste vote bank is to
prevent it from being divided on religious lines. Moreover, a
political party cannot but keep pace with the beliefs of the people
it represents. (And there is little doubt that Tamil society is
becoming increasingly religious.) As a senior minister puts it, "A
decade back we could do an election campaign without visiting a
temple. But today, voters expect us to stop at every roadside
temple. When your intention is to get votes, your ideology has to
take a back seat."
But in all fairness to the DMK leaders, the two cults that are
finding special favour with them are exceedingly popular with the
lower castes. The temple that Stalin visited, for instance, was
part of the Adi Parasakthi cult. Founded by Bangaru Adigalar, a
schoolteacher from the backward Vanniyar caste, the cult has a huge
following among rural women. One reason for its success is the
manner in which it has channelled resources into education and
charitable works. Till now, few Hindu institutions in the south
have supported charities, unlike their Islamic and Christian
counterparts.
"The new religiosity, like the Ayyappa or the Adi Parasakthi cult,
incorporates a democratic and cadre-based character quite akin to
the DMK, and the cross-influx between the party and such cults
becomes difficult to contain," says M.S.S. Pandian, a research
fellow at the Madras Institute for Development Studies. The
Ayyappa movement too has no caste barriers. Even some Christians
and Muslims make the pilgrimage to Sabarimala. The growth of the
Ayyappa and Adi Parasakthi cults has neutralised the hard-core
Dravida philosophy that Hinduism is the pocket borough of Brahmins.
That makes God much more acceptable to the DMK rank and file. But
it's not as if all remnants of rationalism have been abandoned.
Party functionaries still go through the reformist weddings
introduced by the DK, which are 'socio-political functions' minus
all religious trappings.
Moreover, party supremo Karunanidhi remains an incurable atheist.
He has kept his secular image intact by regularly hobnobbing with
Christian leaders and attending Iftar functions during
Ramzan-though Hindu religious leaders continue to be taboo. But
this has not stopped his partymen from adopting a more open
approach towards Hinduism. Clearly, this time round, Karunanidhi
will have to struggle against the god within.
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