Rule of the Commoner: DMK and Formations of the Political in Tamil Nadu, 1949–1967/ Rajan Kurai Krishnan; Ravindran Sriramachandran; and V.M.S. Subagunarajan
Material type: TextSeries: Metamorphoses of the Political: Multidisciplinary ApproachesPublication details: UK: Cambridge university press, 2022ISBN:- 9781009197175
- 324.254 RAJ.R
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Dept. of Political Science General Stacks | Dept. of Political Science | Non-fiction | 324.254 RAJ.R (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | POL23473 |
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has been singular in heralding and establishing a firm regional polity among the Indian states after the Indian Union was inaugurated as a republic. Academic scholarship has often treated the DMK as a Tamil nationalist or ethno-nationalist formation without conceptual clarity or critical insight. Rule of the Commoner demonstrates with persuasive evidence that the DMK appealed to a federalist and not nationalist imagination. The DMK's combining of the non-Brahmin Dravidian identity and allegiance to Tamil language led to a counter hegemonic formation of the plebes and left populism. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau, the book argues that the DMK achieved the construction of a people as Dravidian-Tamil, with Tamil being the empty signifier of the social whole, Brahmin vs. non-Brahmin divide functioning as the internal frontier leading to the formations of the political. It elaborates the conceptual scheme under the three rubrics of Ideation, Imagination and Mobilization.
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