Articles by S V Rajadurai

Your editorial “The Pyrrhic Victory” (EPW, 24 January 2009) could not have been more timely, particularly in the context of three sorts of reporting on Sri Lanka in India, particularly in Tamil Nadu – the first kind comprises reports and articles, which appear in certain Tamil magazines.

movement as being uncritical in its language and agenda, allowing for an easy co-option by the hindutva forces. For instance, they cite Flavia Agnes as stating that polygamy and maintenance tend to be highlighted by feminists as problems of Muslim women while problems of upper caste Hindu women such as dowry are universalised as women's problems. On the contrary, as early as on 1975, the status of women report, Towards Equality, brought out by a group of feminists states very clearly that polygamy is higher among the Hindus. This has been reiterated by the women's movement right till the present times. In fact, one of the critiques of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, is that it does not recognise and thus, does not give any legal rights to the second wife, unlike the Muslim marriages.

With the divine blessings of Jayalalitha, the Eighth World Tamil Conference in Thanjavur concluded successfully, showering praise on its patroness. The distinguished participants demonstrated their scholarly disengagement from the world of realpolitik by maintaining a cautious silence about the deportation of their colleagues:

Neo-Brahminism: An Intentional Fallacy?
V SURESH's lengthy exposition on 'causes and portents', with respect to the rout of the DMK in the 1990 assembly elections (The DMK Debacle: Causes and Portents', October 17) raises more questions than answers them: questions regarding the complex, uneven and capricious nature of caste-class relationships in Tamil Nadu and the ideological struggles and material bases of brahminism and the nature of resistance to domination and hegemony in a patriarchal caste society. Suresh's exposition may be seen to fall into three parts: in the first part he has assembled reasons and hypotheses as to the defeat of DMK. The second part focuses on the limitations supposedly evident in the broad-based non-brahmin consensus constructed by the Dravidian movement and articulated as a political strategy by DMK; here, Suresh attempts to analyse the contradictory and, often, antagonistic relationship that exists between the backward castes (BCs) and scheduled castes (SCs). The third part of the exposition is an attempt at a theoretical statement on the play of ideology and power in the caste system as it obtains in Tamil Nadu. We shall examine each of these arguments shortly. It seems to us that in every one of these instances, Suresh displays an amazing insensitivity to the interplay between material reality and consciousness; to the 'ripple' effects of ideology and to the mode of production (and legitimisation) of power in caste Hindu society.

V Geetha S V Rajadurai Its many political compromises notwithstanding, the DMK had served as the focus in Tamil public life for a range of subaltern interests to come together and articulate their concerns and anxieties. Even those who had all along been critical of the DMK, therefore, feel dejected by the bitter end to an era of Dravidian politics.