THESES ON TAMIL NATIONALISM
T.G. Jacob
Organically evolved language, culture, territorial contours, definable economic parameters, particularly manifested in its own market interests and structure, political dynamics with distinct characteristics - all these are considered to be essential conditions for a nationality to be a viable socio-political entity. The history of the formation of such viable nationalities and nation states is universal in nature in the basic sense that no nationality and nation state was a given entity. It always involved high pressure struggles marked by objective compulsions as well as subjective, aspirational pressures consciously exerted by a people with certain minimum common denominators. Of course, as with all social processes of change, the framework in which nation formation can be analyzed is also necessarily abstract and subject to mutations, but it is an abstraction with great potential.
The Tamil land, language, culture and civilization have the hallmark of great antiquity, something clearly decipherable in their contemporary history too. As is the case with the rest of the Indian subcontinent, the epoch of colonialism promoted institutionalized distortions in the organic evolution of a Tamil nation state and the subsequent post-colonial trajectory of neo-colonialism built up on these distortions, although not necessarily in a linear manner.
The following aspects of the Tamil ethnic, national questions should be explored working from political manifestations to class reality and the reverse in their broad sense:
- An epistemology of Ethnicity; Identity; Nationality in the global perspective with specific focus on India and her immediate neighbourhood. Theories have to be explained and evaluated in the light of contemporary experiences. East Bengal/Pakistan can be taken as a case study.
- The decades just before and after the adoption of the Constitution seen through the political ferment among the Tamil-speaking people. The demand for Dravidasthan and the reactions from the political currents in the proposed federating units to such a pan-peninsular sovereign political entity; The structural reasons for deep-freezing the slogan; The positioning of linguistic identities in Constitution based politics; and, Emergence of regional ruling political parties in the form of pressure release establishing a federated but actually unitary Indian republic as smoothly as possible.
- The class basis of the bourgeoisie assuming a uniform character through its imperialist root canals possibly played the formative basis of such a transformation. The neocolonial imperialist capital penetration through its development model with declared universal dominance as the management mechanism is of great relevance. The economic integration of the rising Tamil bourgeoisie manifested through its ever multiplying tie-ups with neo- imperialist capital suffocating for lack of super profits on a global scale is certainly a running thread throughout. The identity of the basic character of this bourgeoisie with their counterpart elsewhere in India is the identity of neocolonial capital. Federalism has changed color and content settling into a constitutionalist mode.
- The great mobility of the Tamil speaking people through ages has created externalities with intense cultural, ethnic bonds. The ‘Tamil issue’ is without any doubt international in nature. In fact, the Tamils of Eelam claim the record of the longest, and probably the bloodiest, civil war in contemporary history. In spite of four wars and horrendous defeats the issue is still very much a high tension wire. The Tamil Diaspora in many other South East Asian countries is also in state of flux and that too is very much historical in nature. These externalities interact with the Indian counterpart as a pan Tamil political psyche. The conflicts and contradictions faced by many of these minorities are far more vicious and arbitrary, and how the Tamils are politically reacting to these developments in Thamizhakam becomes an important pointer to the level of ethnic consciousness.
- Literary articulations, particularly in the medium of the Novel, do reflect on the collective consciousness of society. The novel is a modern medium synchronizing with the Industrial Revolution, and its broad canvas and analytical story-telling form makes it very popular. The novel as an expression of national consciousness became powerful in Europe when the process of industrial revolution was on in full swing. French and English neo realism came up as a very potent consciousness-builder. In India too, freedom struggle gave rise to an impressive mass of literary creations in line with the European neo realist school. A critique of modern Tamil writings can yield valuable pathways towards understanding the reality of ethnic, national consciousness.
- Caste is remarkably exhibiting its resilience on the economic and cultural battlefronts. Caste divisions did play a role in the civil war in Sri Lanka. Caste is clear social division in vast areas of the Tamil land. In many villages upward mobility of the oppressed has itself created newer contradictions and struggle fronts. The role of caste and ethnic minorities as a serious divisive force retarding the consolidation of ethnic, national aspirations is unmistakable. This question has come to the forefront in other places like Punjab too. And this question is soldered to the land question. In political system management caste is a highly significant variable. How all this interacts with the broader Tamil Question has to be clarified.
- Water disputes have become perennial with any number of cases going on in the highest court and tribunals. The predominantly agrarian, service character of the economies of the three leading peninsular States connotes river water disputes not simply as one of equitable distribution of the vital resource of fresh water but it is also imbued with territorial claims and riots targeting components of the Dravidian racial fraternity. Outwardly, in the rhetoric metre of Tamil Nationalism, this is an active manifestation of the core of the same. How far such a conceptualization reflects the core of Tamil Nationalism, or, reflects distortion of the same, becomes important also due to the basic humanistic necessity of maintaining sanity at least to the achievable levels on a broader level. Identification of distortions, every one of them, becomes mandatory for seeing clearly the issues involved.
A framework is conscious act. And consciousness is something that ever develops. Working on these theses can possibly be one endurable link in this development process.
15 July 2015.