Movies and Shakers

Why the cinematic orientation of Dravidian politics is no happenstance

How is it that when Bollywood superstars like Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna have been such utter flops in politics, the Tamil silver screen has so long dominated the politics of Tamil Nadu?

This is not just happenstance, but deeply embedded in the politics of the Dravidian movement. The movement began in the first decade of the last century but really took off in the 1920s, when profound mass dissatisfaction at Brahmin domination first found its political voice in the Justice Party. The British were only too happy to encourage the Brahmin/non Brahmin divide in the south as they had the Hindu-Muslim divide in the north. But while at the political level, the Congress was able to counter the Justice Party in the 1937 elections, with C. Rajagopalachari prevailing, the ideological battle was taken to another and more influential level by E.V. Ramasamy Naicker, revered as ‘Periyar’, the wise elder.