Chennai: The voice has changed, but the tone and tenor hasn’t. With MDMK general secretary Vaiko losing in the elections, pro-Tamil and pro-LTTE activists are now looking at Tholkappian Thirumavalavan as the only person left to raise their cause in the Lok Sabha.

Thirumavalavan, a staunch supporter of the LTTE and known as a rabble rouser, won the elections from Chidambaram constituency — his first win in three attempts.

Although Thirumavalavan is known for his strong pro-LTTE speeches that angered Congress leaders, DMK chief M Karunanidhi did not drop his Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi (VCK) from the coalition. His Dalit votes were too valuable.

At 47, Thirumavalavan is young to be an icon for Dalits in Tamil Nadu. In the past two decades, he has emerged as a leader by addressing the inadequacies of Dravidian politics. Beyond the revolutionary social reforms decades ago, Dravidian politics was not able to take the process to the lowest level, leading to a situation where Dalits continued to be oppressed, though this time by the backward communities. This resulted in clashes in the rural hinterland.

In the 1980s, when he was a Government employee, well-known Dalit activist Malaichamy, the then convenor of Dalit Panthers of India (DPI), took him under his wing. After the leader’s death, he was the automatic choice as successor in 1989. It was in the 1990s that he shot to prominence, organising Dalit youth to stop oppression, through muscle if needed. The militant nature of the resistance, in the backdrop of years of silent suffering, soon spread across the state.

In those years, the DPI stayed away from electoral politics, criticising both DMK and AIADMK for exploiting the community’s votes. But realising the difficulty in bringing about a change without participating in the democratic process, Thirumavalavan took the leap and contested as a ‘Third Front’ Independent from Chidambaram in 1999. He lost. It was a repeat in 2004, when he contested as a JD(U) candidate. This time, he beat the PMK’s E Ponnuswamy, the same man who beat him the previous two times.

Between 2006 when he was an ally of the AIADMK-led front and now, the Dalit Panthers became the Liberation Panthers Party (Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi). The outfit is trying to grow out of its Dalit-only tag, sharing dais on every Tamil cause.

Thirumavalavan is unlike the average Tamil politician. Even while addressing the lowest strata of society, this bachelor is always in black trousers with his shirt neatly tucked in. Besides his acerbic speeches, he writes extensively on caste issues and Lankan conflict. He maintains a blog that has links to his speeches hosted on YouTube. He has also acted in two movies, one incidentally as a Lankan militant.

By M.R. Narayan Swamy

New Delhi, April 28 : Tamil Nadu's political circus over the Sri Lankan conflict is a virtual copy of the 1980s but for a key difference: the Tamil Tigers were poised to grow then; now they face a deathly crisis.

Once anti-Tamil riots engulfed Colombo in July 1983, the same DMK and AIADMK - the latter ruled Tamil Nadu then - took on one another to show who supported Sri Lanka's Tamils more.

DMK chief M. Karunanidhi was the opposition leader at that time and M.G. Ramachandran or MGR was the AIADMK chief minister.

Riding on the sympathy wave for the ordinary Sri Lankan Tamils, whose plight in 1983 was equally pitiable, MGR quickly took the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under his protective wings.

LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran was an unknown figure just then. A quick learner, he grasped the ways of the Indian political system. Once in the good books of MGR, he ignored Karunanidhi, immensely pleasing MGR.

Proximity to MGR provided a shield vis-�-vis the central government, which the Congress headed even then.

Slighted by Prabhakaran, Karunanidhi showered his favours on a rival Tamil militant leader who the LTTE gunned down in 1986.

But once MGR died in 1987, by when the LTTE had taken on the Indian Army in Sri Lanka's northeast, Prabhakaran extended a hand of friendship to Karunanidhi who eagerly grasped it.

Karunanidhi returned to power in Tamil Nadu in 1989, and immediately turned pro-LTTE. The Tigers had a free run in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi axed his government in January 1991.

So, when the LTTE assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, the DMK paid a heavy price for its links with the Tigers. It was wiped out in the assembly elections.

The AIADMK reaped the political harvest and embraced a stridently anti-LTTE line. Chief Minister Jayalalitha ordered a sweeping police crackdown, breaking up the painstakingly built LTTE network across the state.

Amid popular revulsion over Gandhi's killing, the Tigers went into a shell in Tamil Nadu.

It took some years before Vaiko, who broke away from the DMK to form the MDMK, and PMK's chief S. Ramadoss to start speaking for the Tigers, and vocally too.

In 1997, the Congress pulled down the coalition government of Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral over the DMK's alleged links to the killing of Rajiv Gandhi. In her next stint as chief minister, Jayalalitha jailed Vaiko, then a Lok Sabha member, for 19 long months over a pro-LTTE speech.

Today, the wheels have turned in Tamil Nadu, almost a full circle.

Jayalalitha and Vaiko are now allies. Jayalalitha has declared that only an independent Tamil Eelam state will end Sri Lanka's conflict. The Congress is today a DMK ally.

The DMK is neither here nor there vis-�-vis the Tamil Eelam cause. Even as he sounds pro-LTTE, Tiger supporters spew venom at Karunanidhi.

More than two decades after it earned the LTTE's wrath for signing an accord with Sri Lanka to end Tamil separatism, the Congress is again at the receiving end for pursuing a pro-Colombo policy.

The LTTE in the 1980s was a guerrilla group whose future growth into one of the world's deadliest insurgent outfits no one had predicted.

The same Tigers are now battling for survival.

But then as now, Tamil Nadu, separated from Sri Lanka by a strip of sea, has proved to be a lifeline for the LTTE.

Despite decades of quotas and reservations and a sustained movement against caste domination, caste has stubbornly refused to go away from Tamil politics. And it invariably surfaces during elections. As political parties roll out campaigns, caste outfits, too, are holding brainstorming sessions and charting strategies to consolidate votes that will benefit their communities.

With a clear understanding of the caste mix in each seat, parties choose candidates that will help leverage caste, as they do in the Hindi heartland. Given the possibility that most candidates in the fray for a particular seat may be from the same caste, caste outfits may seem redundant. But, many say such organisations do have a say in electoral poll outcomes.

‘‘It does not matter whether the political party fields the candidates from our community in constituencies where we form the majority. We want to see which party fields our men even in places where we are not present,’’ says Allur Srinivasan, Tiruchi district president of Pasumpon Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam, a Thevar outfit formed recently.

Thevars are numerically strong OBCs and, obviously, much higher in the caste hierarchy than the Dalits. Srinivasan points out that they analyse the importance given to their community at various levels in each party before deciding to vote for the candidate, if all the contestants were from their caste.

Caste and politics have been inexorably linked in Tamil Nadu over the years, initially centering on leaders from mainstream parties like Congress, which had a powerful leader in Kamraj, and who was seen as an icon of the Nadars. Subsequently, castes themselves gave rise to political parties.

The earliest leaders who used caste identity to mobilise support were the late S S Ramasamy Padayachi and Manickavelu Naicker, both from the Vanniyar caste, now designated ‘most backward’. They, as leaders of Vaniyar Sangham, were the progenitors of Patali Makkal Katchi, or PMK.

DMK emerged as an inclusive party of all ‘lower’ castes and, to some extent, weakened the political dependence on caste for mobilising votes, but even that party, and its offshoot, the AIADMK, have had to bear caste equations in mind on key issues like forming a representative Cabinet, allotting party tickets during elections and naming public institutions after various leaders.

In the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, delimitation may impact significantly on the caste factor. With urban areas getting more seats after delimitation — because population was the basis for the adjustment of constituency borders — the influence that some castes wield in certain constituencies may have been transformed.

For instance, Sriperumbudur, formerly reserved for Dalits, has not only been de-reserved, but has a predominantly urban profile. One reserved constituency in the western region (Rasipuram) does not even exist, but there is a new Scheduled Caste seat in the north (Villupuram) where the Vanniyars are strong. There have been some changes in south Tamil Nadu as well, impacting on the relevance of castes like the Thevars and Nadars and southern Dalit sects. While the effect of these changes will be seen only after the polls, some caste organisations are busy pushing their agenda. Some have extended support to one alliance or more.

The Bhargava Kula Sangam, an umbrella outfit of OBC Udayar, Moopanar and Nayanar communities, sent feelers to parties that it would back any party that fields more candidates from these castes. ‘‘We have not yet decided on any party. But we have met CM M Karunanidhi and appealed to him to field candidates in as many places as possible from our community,’’ said T Parivallal, youth wing secretary of the association.

The Mutharayars and Dalits, who form a large chunk of voters in central TN, are also waiting for their community leaders to find a place in the list, even as they continue to put pressure.

Chennai, March 16 : AIADMK boss and former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalitha Monday said she was not in the race to be prime minister, “at least for now”, and that the Third Front grouping has a “bright future”.

“While we are not in the race for the prime minister’s post, at least for now, our opinion that the prime minister should be elected only after the elections remains unchanged. Anyone can aspire to be prime minister because someone has to be the leader after all,” Jayalalitha told reporters.

“The need of the hour for the nation is a political grouping that is equidistant from the Congress and the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). In our opinion, the Third Front has bright future,” the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly said.

Asked to react to the prime ministerial ambitions of BSP leader Mayawati and Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, she said: “Those are the opinions of the parties concerned.”

She was speaking to media persons at her residence after handing over a cheque for Rs.21.2 million to officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

New Delhi, Feb 20 : In a major reshuffle in the key committee of the ruling Congress party Thursday night ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, senior leader and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was recalled as party general secretary.

Azad has been given charge of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Puducherry as the party reshuffled Congress Working Committee (CWC), its highest decision-making body.

V. Kishore Chandra Deo has been dropped from the post of general secretary and Karnataka leader Mallikarjun Kharge inducted into the CWC.

The work allocation of the nine general secretaries has also been changed.

Rahul Gandhi will continue to look after Youth Congress and National Students Union of India (NSUI) and Digvijay Singh remains in-charge of Uttar Pradesh. He will also look after the publicity.

Mohsina Kidwai has been given the charge of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh while Mukul Wasnik will be in-charge of the party affairs in Delhi, Rajasthan and would also look after Sewa Dal.

Prithviraj Chavan will continue to be AICC general secretary in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir. In addition, he has been made the party in-charge of Haryana.

Janardan Dwivedi will continue to look after organisation. He also gets new charges like organisational elections, training and programme implementation.

Congress treasurer Motilal Vora gets another responsibility as party in-charge of administration.