Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T03:30:43.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revolution and Rank in Tamil Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

Pamela Price
Get access

Extract

From the 1920s to the late 1960s, Tamil nationalism in India was characterized by elements of radical innovation which made the Dravidian movement a mobilization for cultural revolution, in Tamil terms, as well as for the defense of Tamil interests vis-à-vis the central government. In the last twenty years concern for the ordinary person has manifested itself in extravagant displays of state largess and the encouragement of personality cults directed toward Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu. I delineate below major ideological themes of the nationalist cultural revolution and argue that these ideological elements, while representing change in Tamil political culture, were in many ways deeply anchored in prerevolutionary political concerns supported by institutions and symbolic systems with precolonial antecedents. I link these ideological elements to the dissolution of radicalism in Tamil nationalism and to the emergence of a style of governance which has undermined standards of public administration.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , May 1996 , pp. 359 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1981. Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1978. “King, Sects and Temples in South India, 1250–1700.” South Indian Temples: An Analytic Reconsideration, edited by Stein, Burton. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. and Breckenridge, Carol A.. 1976. “The South Indian Temple: Authority, Honour and Redistribution.” Contributions to Indian Sociology (N.S.) 10.2:187–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, Susan. 1989. Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barnett, Marguerite Ross. 1976. The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Blomkvist, Hans. 1988. “The Soft State: Housing Reform and State Capacity in Urban India.” Ph.D. diss., Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Breckenridge, Carol A. 1976. “The Srī Minaksi Sundarēsvarar Temple: Worship and Endowments in South India, 1833–1925.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison.Google Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas. 1982. “The Pasts of a Pālaiyakārar: The Ethnohistory of a South Indian Little King.” The Journal of Asian Studies 41.4:655–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas. 1987. The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frankel, Francine R., and Rao, M. S. A., eds. 1989 and 1990. Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order. Vols. 1 and 2. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Geetha, V., and Rajadurai, S. V.. Forthcoming. Untitled. In Social Change and Political Discourse in India Since Independence, edited by Sathyamurthy, T. V.. Vol. 3, Religion, Caste and Gender in Contemporary India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1994. “Recuperating Masculinity: Hindunationalism, Violence and the Exorcision of the Muslim ‘Other’.”Paper presented at the conference “Comparative Approaches to National Identity in Asia,” Copenhagen. Elaborated in “The Saffron Wave: Hindunationalism in the 1980's: A Case Study of Maharashtra.” Ph.D. diss., Roskilde University, Denmark, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Hardgrave, Robert L. 1969. The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of a Community in Change. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Harriss, John. 1982. Capitalism and Peasant Farming: Agrarian Structure and Ideology in Northern Tamil Nadu. Bombay: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, George. 1975. The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and the Sanskrit Counterparts. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Heidemann, Frank. 1991. “Respekt als Ausdruck sozialer Bezeihungen bei den Badagas in Südindien.” Beiträge zur Ethnologie Mittel-und Süd-Indiens, edited by Laubscher, Matthias S.. Munich: Anacon.Google Scholar
Hellman, Eva. 1993. “Political Hinduism: The Challenge of the Viśva Hindū Pari⊡ad.” Ph.D. diss., University of Uppsala.Google Scholar
Hiltebeitel, Alf. 1988. The Cult of Draupadi. Vol. 1. Mythologies: From Gengee to Kuruksetra. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hiltebeitel, Alf. 1991. The Cult of Draupadi. Vol. 2. On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Irschick, Eugene. 1969. Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahmin Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916–1929. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kohli, Atul. 1990. Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). 1988. Tamilnadu Economy: Performance and Issues. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mosse, C. D. F. 1986. “Caste, Christianity and Hinduism: A Study of Social Organization and Religion in Rural Ramnad.” Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Nandy, Ashis. 1991. “Hindutva—I: Secularism's Disowned Double.” Indian Express, January 31.Google Scholar
Narayana, Rao, Velcheru, , Shulman, David and Subramanyam, Sanjay. 1992. Symbols of Substance: Court and State Nāyaka Period Tamil Nadu. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 1978. The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926–34: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pandian, M. S. S. 1992. The Image Trap: M. G. Ramachandran in Film and Politics. New Delhi: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Swami, Praveen. 1995. “Back with a Blast: Terrorists Kill Beant Singh.” Frontline, 22 September, 4–13.Google Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1979. “Resources and Rule in Zamindari South India: Ramnad and Sivagangai as Kingdoms under the Raj, 1802–1903.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1989. “Kingly Models in Indian Political Behavior: Culture as a Medium of History.” Asian Survey 29.6:559–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1990. “The State and Representations of Femaleness in Late Medieval South India.” Historisk tidsskrift (Oslo), no. 4:589–97.Google Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1991. “Acting in Public versus Forming a Public: Conflict Processing and Political Mobilization in Nineteenth Century South India.” South Asia, New Series 19.1:91–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1993. “Democracy and Ethnic Conflict in India: Precolonial Legacies in Tamil Nadu.” Asian Survey 33.5:493–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1994. “Honor, Disgrace and the Formal Depolitization of Women in South India: Changing Structures of the State under British Colonial Rule.” Gender and History 6.2:246–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1996. Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 1993. “Engendering Language: The Poetics of Tamil Identity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35.4:683–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. Forthcoming. “Battling the Demoness Hindi: The Culture of Language Protest in Tamilnadu, 1938–1965.” Culture as Contested Site: Popular Participation and the State in the Indian Subcontinent, edited by Freitag, Sandria B.Google Scholar
Rudolph, Lloyd I. 1961. “Urban Life and Populist Radicalism: Dravidian Politics in Madras.” Journal of Asian Studies 20:283–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Rudolph, Susanne. 1987. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rudolph, Susanne. 1987. “Presidential Address: State Formation in Asia— Prolegomenon to a Comparative Study.” The Journal of Asian Studies 46.4:731–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, T. 1991. “The Woman as Communal Subject: Rashtrasevika Samiti and Ram Janmabhoomi Movement.” Economic and Political Weekly 26.35:2057–62. Quoted in Hellman, “Political Hinduism: The Challenge of the Visva Hindu Parisad.”Google Scholar
Schalk, Peter. 1992. “The Concept of Martyrdom and Resistance of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).” Background Material Including Papers: First Nordic Conference for South Asian Studies Organised by NASA. Vol. 2.Google Scholar
Schalk, Peter. 1994. “Women Fighters of the Liberation Tigers in Tamil Īlam: The Martial Feminism of Atēl Pālacinkam.” South Asia Research 14.2:163–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schalk, Peter. Forthcoming. “‘Birds of Independence’: On the Participation of Women in Armed Struggle for the Fortifying of Tamililam.” To appear as part of his book Tiyākam: The Concept of Martyrdom of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).Google Scholar
Stein, Burton. 1977. “The Segmentary State in South Indian History.” Realm and Region in Traditional India, edited by Fox, R. G.. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Lexicon, Tamil. 1982. Madras: University of Madras.Google Scholar
Wadley, Susan, ed. 1980. The Powers of Tamil Women. Syracuse University: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Washbrook, David. 1976. Emergence of Provincial Politics: Madras Presidency, 1870–1920. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washbrook, David. 1989. “Caste, Class, and Dominance in Modern Tamil Nadu: Non-Brahminism, Dravidianism and Tamil Nationalsim.” In Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order, edited by Frankel, Francine R. and Rao, M. S. A.. Vol. 1. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar