000			01578nam a22001457a 4500
020			_a9781009197175
082			_a324.254 _bRAJ.R
100			_aRajan Kurai Krishnan
245			_aRule of the Commoner: _bDMK and Formations of the Political in Tamil Nadu, 1949–1967/ _cRajan Kurai Krishnan; Ravindran Sriramachandran; and V.M.S. Subagunarajan
260			_aUK: _bCambridge university press, _c2022
490			_aMetamorphoses of the Political: Multidisciplinary Approaches
520			_aThe 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.
650			_aSouth Asian government _vPolitics and policy
942			_2ddc _cBK
999			_c720217 _d720217