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Relating to leadership in the Tamil nationalistmovement: C.N. Annadurai in person‐centredpropagandaPamela Price aa University of OsloPublished online: 08 May 2007.
To cite this article: Pamela Price (1999) Relating to leadership in the Tamil nationalist movement: C.N. Annadurai inperson‐centred propaganda, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 22:2, 149-174, DOI: 10.1080/00856409908723369
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South Asia, Vol. XXII, no. 2 (1999), pp. 149-174
RELATING TO LEADERSHIP IN THE TAMILNATIONALIST MOVEMENT: C.N. ANNADURAIIN PERSON-CENTRED PROPAGANDA1
Pamela PriceUniversity of Oslo
POLITICAL COMMENTATORS IN INDIAN NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES ATTHE end of the twentieth century bemoan what seems to be theincreasing personalisation of politics, focus on the person of the leader
in political mobilisation and organisation.2 It is difficult from a scholarlypoint of view to confirm their observations as to the increasing intensity ofthe focus since there is relatively little writing on the topic. Some writing hascome from the field of political science. Atul Kohli drew attention to thisphenomenon with a book published in 1990, discussing it in relation toprocesses of deinstitutionalisation of political parties through the 1970s and1980s.3 Manor has written in this regard:
But during the 1970s, the principle source of discipline withinmost political parties ... had become the personal authority ofleading politicians. Parties had become personal fiefs and
1 The Norwegian Research Council funded the field research upon which this article is based. Ihave presented the paper at the School of Oriental and African Languages, London, and theInstitute for Economic and Social Change, Bangalore, and am grateful for comments I receivedon both occasions. Thanks goes to Arild Ruud for reading and commenting on the penultimateversion.
2 Based on a reading of English-language newspapers and magazines in Bangalore in the winterand spring of 1997-98.
3 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability (Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1990).
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factions, or clusters of such entities and had lost most of theircorporate character and substance.4
It has become common to associate the emergence of processes ofpersonalisation in post-colonial politics with Indira Gandhi's authoritarianstyle of rule and her attempts to undermine regional bosses in the CongressParty.5 However, Robert Hardgrave's work on the importance of Tamilfilmstar M. G. Ramachandran in the politics of Tamil nationalism showedthat person-centred politics had emerged as a major phenomenon in TamilNadu at least by the 1960s, suggesting that the phenomenon had earlyregional expression as a form of Indian political practice.6
We need to turn to other genres of scholarly production to explore thedynamics of person-centred politics, in particular, history and anthropology.Work which has come out of South Indian studies is promising in terms ofboth empirical discoveries and methodological guidelines in investigating thisphenomenon. Considerations of space make it necessary to focus on recentwriting by myself, Mattison Mines and Vijayalakshmi Gourishankar and SaraDickey.
I have argued elsewhere that person-centred politics in Tamil Country isan expression of the existence of monarchical cosmologies, albeit infragmented form, in a long trajectory reaching from at least the seventeenthcentury to the present.7 In a study of two little kingdoms in southern TamilCountry I discussed ideologies of lordship in institutions of worship and rulein the nineteenth century and concluded briefly that in the twentieth centuryideologies in institutions of worship and kinship have played important rolesin reproducing symbols and values of personalised authority.8 In institutionsof social and political segmentation, authority is first and foremost associatedwith persons, with lordship in domains of control, influence and prestige.
4 James Manor, 'The Electoral Process amid Awakening and Decay: Reflections on the IndianGeneral Election of 1980', in P. Lyon and J. Manor, (eds), Transfer and Transformation:Political Institutions in the New Commonwealth (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1983),p. 105. His italics.5 See, for example, James Manor, 'Parties and the Party System', in Partha Chatterjee, (ed.),State and Politics in India (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 92-124, appearedoriginally in Atul Kohli, (ed.), India's Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-SocietyRelations (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987), and Sudipta Kaviraj, 'A Critique ofthe Passive Revolution', in Chatterjee, State and Politics in India, pp. 45-87, appearedoriginally in Economic and Political Weekly, special issue (1988), pp. 2429-44.
6 Robert L. Hardgrave, 'The Celluloid God: MGR and the Tamil Film', South Asia Review, Vol.4, no. 4 (1971), pp. 307-14.
7 Pamela Price, Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India (Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996).8 Price, Kingship, pp. 199-202. I elaborate on the ideology of the administration of kin relationsin the paper, 'Aspects of Political Culture in Electoral Politics in South India: Suggesting aMethod', presented at the European Conference of Modern South Asian Studies, Prague(1998).
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While Mines and Gourishankar share some of my interest in Tamilinstitutions and values of kingly rule, their focus is on a cultural model whichthey suggest underlies monarchical cosmologies. This is the model of theperiyavar, 'big-man' or 'great one', or - another variant - periyadanakaarar,'big-wealthy-person'.9 Their elaboration of this argument involves a majorfocus on institutions of redistribution which a periyavar dominates in theconstitution of his/her domain of influence. Thus they prefer to talk about the'institutional big-man'.10 Mines and Gourishankar illustrate their argumentswith two cases, including intriguingly that of the renouncer head of one ofthe major maths in India.11 Perhaps to emphasise the pervasive nature of theperiyavar model, in outlining the construction of the institutional context ofthe big-man they borrow Tambiah's model of galactic polity and hisutilisation of the symbol of the mandala, rather than Burton Stein'sdiscussion of the segmentary state - used often by historians when discussingdominance in South India.12
Mines and Gourishankar do not discuss the periyavar in formal politics.However, using their observations, along with my work on kingly models inpolitical behaviour,13 Dickey has initiated a process of elaboration in whichshe makes a distinction between adulation politics, which is a function ofactivities of service by those specially devoted to a charismatic politician (inthis case, M. G. Ramachandran), and patronage politics, which is a functionof political activity channelled through party organisation and electoralprocesses.14 She argues for the importance of institutional support (in thiscase, the fan clubs of M. G. Ramachandran) and at least the appearance ofservice and support, particularly of poor people in the consolidation of thepolitics of adulation. Dickey discusses redistribution in actual or symbolictransactions as a major prop in person-centred politics.
9 Mattison Mines and Vijaylakshmi Gourishankar, 'Leadership and Individuality in South Asia:The Case of the South Indian Big-Man', The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 49, no. 4 (1990),p. 762.
1 0 Mines and Gourishankar, 'Leadership', p. 762.1 1 Mines presents other cases in his Public Faces, Private Voices: Community and Individuality
in South India (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1996).1 2 Mines and Gourishankar, 'Leadership', p. 763, refering to S. J. Tambiah, World Conqueror
and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand Against a HistoricalBackground (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976). The alternative is the article byBurton Stein, 'The Segmentary State in South India', in R. G. Fox, (ed.), Realm and Region inTraditional India (Durham, Duke University Press, 1977), pp. 3-51.
1 3 Price, 'Kingly Models in Indian Political Behavior: Culture as a Medium of History', AsianSurvey, Vol. 29, no. 6 (1989), pp. 559-97.
1 4 Sara Dickey, 'The Politics', p. 367.
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In this essay below I focus less on the institutional construction ofperson-centred politics than on historical context and ideological content. Ipresent a case of devotion by a provincial propagandist which spanned twoperiods in the existence of a political party, a first period of (cultural)revolutionary mobilisation and a later period which began with theachievement of control of the apparatus of the state. In the first period theobject of special attention, C. N. Annadurai, founder of the Federation for theProgress of Dravidians, (DMK), led an emerging party apparatus, but had nosubstantial patronage to dispense. Devotion to Annadurai could not beconstructed in displays of charitable/protective transactions. The propagandistfocused on issues of morality and heroism as he represented Annadurai. In thelater period, when the DMK had been in power for several years, therepresentation of Annadurai in the hands of the same propagandist wasgreatly altered. In the transformation from challenging authority toconsolidating and protecting it, the nature of his adulation for Annadurairadically changed. A preoccupation with honour characterised both periods,but in the latter period it was the honour of a lordship touched with divinity.
Evidence which I present below suggests that personalisation inconnection with C. N. Annadurai was an important element in provincialmobilisation in the early 1950s. My focus is on a provincial propagandist, M.R Ganesan, and his treatment of Annadurai, a man who is not usuallyassociated with aggrandisement of the person in politics.15 Ganesanperformed in the early 1950s with a travelling troupe before turning tomaking speeches as his main activity. I will examine two types of writing,songs that he wrote in the 1950s and a play that he wrote after the death ofAnnadurai. I will also comment on his speech-making, to the extent that thatis possible.
Ganesan's own career in politics was not hugely successful. His storygains interest for us partly because it is so closely tied to politicaldevelopments in Madurai city, a cultural and industrial center of Tamil Nadu.Ganesan was one of the four founders of the DMK in Madurai. He wasdevoted to the cause of a cultural revolution16 and, in the songs which hewrote during the early years of the DMK, he exhorted his audiences to daringaction, challenging established authority. However, cultural revolutionreceived less focus in the DMK from about 1962, as the party acquired moreseats in the Madras Legislative Assembly. Most of my informants argued thatthe period of cultural revolution ended when the party came into power after
15 I carried out ten interviews with Ganesan in the course of research in Madurai City in 1991.We spent at least twenty hours in discussion. I feel extremely fortunate that he was willing toshare his knowledge and experiences with me. Velraj P. acted as interpreter for eight of theseinterviews and translated the tapes.16 For use of the term 'cultural revolution' in connection with the DMK mobilisatioin see my'Revolution and Rank in Tamil Nationalism', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 55, no. 2 (1996),pp. 359-83.
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the election of 1967.17 Annadurai was the first DMK Chief Minister. After hedied in 1969, M. Karunanidhi manoeuvred successfully among claimants ofthe position to become Chief Minister. While in the early 1960s Annaduraihad become a 'God on earth' for some DMK adherents18, cultish attachmentto Karunanidhi did not develop. However, when MGR became Chief Ministerin 1977, adoration of the leader reached new heights.
I describe M. R. Ganesan as a provincial propagandist because Madrasnever became a base for his activities, even though he attended partyfunctions in the city and had important political connections there. Ganesangrew up in a village fifteen kilometres from Madurai city. He came from theReddiar caste, originally a Telugu-speaking group. The family was well off,owning lands, although the fortunes of Ganesan and his mother began todecline after his father died.
Ganesan began reading Annadurai's newspaper, Dravida Nadu, in theearly 1940s because he liked the politician's style of writing. He was,however, an Indian nationalist politically and joined the Congress Party whilehe was still living in the village. After a factional quarrel over a SubhasChandra Bose library he had started in the village, he moved to Madurai. Hehad the resources to open a 'hotel', a modest restaurant, on a major road inMadurai city. He was still a member of the Congress Party, but retained hisinterest in major figures in the Dravidian movement. Without thinking muchabout the consequences, Ganesan permitted a painter to paint the portraits ofthe two main leaders of the Dravidian movement, E. V. Ramaswami Naicker(known as EVR or Periyar) and Annadurai, on the walls of his restaurant.
Madurai in the 1940s was a stronghold for the Congress Party, partlybecause of the large Saurashtrian (Gujarati) community in the city. EVR'siconoclastic movement, the Dravida Kazhagam (DK), had a small following.Not surprisingly, those who visited Ganesan's restaurant thought that he mustbe a follower of EVR - he was taken for 'a DK man' - and people withDravidian movement sympathies began to frequent the spot.
17 I interviewed fifteen men and one woman in Madurai in 1991, thirteen of whom either hadbeen involved in the DMK mobilisation in the city or had a serious interest in the history of theDMK. Most of the interviews were in English. I used translators in talking with threeinformants. Dr. Sethuraman of Madurai Kamaraj University undertook two interviews withtwo persons. All of my informants were middle-class and all, with one exception, were non-Brahmin. Most of them were associated with institutions of higher education in Madurai.Others were in business (1), in politics (2), in publishing (1) and in folklore (1). I am gratefulfor the interest which Professor Vijaya Venugopal and Dr. Seturaman of Madurai KamarajUniversity took in this study.
18 Marguerite Ross Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India (Princeton,Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 233.
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Included among them was Muthu, a former textile factory worker whowas known as a fearless streetfighter. Muthu - later known as Madurai Muthu- had earned a reputation as a thug in the course of his duties as a debt-collector for a moneylender. At the time he met Ganesan, he was working asa strongman for the DK, hired by Nadar caste businessmen who supported theDravidian movement in Madurai. Political competition in Madurai wascharacterised by violence and the DK needed someone who was not afraid ofappearing in public in support of the party. Physically tough and skilled inthe use of a knife, Muthu advertised DK meetings by 'drumming,' goingaround the city calling people's attention to the time and place of a function.Muthu had read DK publications before he took this job and, in the in thecourse of this work, he became a DK man himself. Muthu started going toGanesan's 'hotel' because he took the latter to be a supporter of the DK.There the two men talked politics.
In 1949 Annadurai established the DMK with the intention of buildingan organisation which would have more popular appeal than that of the DK.Ganesan and Muthu travelled to Madras to attend the inaugural meeting of theDMK and both of them joined the new party. Muthu, Ganesan and two othercomrades of modest means - Rajaman and Ayyasami (a barber) - organisedthe inaugural meeting of the DMK in Madurai at a popular movie theatre.Among the four Muthu quickly emerged as the organisational talent. Thistalent, coupled with his willingness to fight and his capacity to relate togoondas, gave him the necessary qualifications to become the leader of theDMK in Madurai. Ganesan assisted Muthu with party activities, such asholding taluk, district and state party meetings in Madurai district andorganising demonstrations and processions.
Ganesan's his own skills and interests lay with party propaganda, writingand performing songs and making speeches. Being an effective writer andspeaker was commonly perceived to be a route to leadership in themovement. In 1950 he decided to follow the suggestion of Annadurai thatDMK activists reach out to the public through music.19 He organised amusical troupe which he called kalai viruntu, feast of art. According toGanesan such troops became common in the 1960s, while it is possible thathis group was one of the first in the movement. The troupe included, usually,five or six people: Ganesan, a singer, and musicians. Ganesan was the onlyparty activist in the troupe because, he explained, fellow activists wereunwilling to take his lead. Kalai viruntu toured provincial Tamil Nadu forfive years when, in 1955, Ganesan disbanded the group.
The year 1955 was a bad one politically for Ganesan. He stopped being amember of both the party organisation in Madurai city and of the DMKGeneral Council. Problems of cooperation in the party were the main reasons,
19 Ganesan, interview, 13 Mar. 1991.19
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it appears, for his disbanding the troupe. Ganesan had given speeches as partof the program of kalai viruntu and continued to receive an income as atravelling public speaker for the party.20
Before discussing Ganesan's propaganda in the 1950s, I will elaborate onthe context for his work with a few comments about Muthu, who was duringthis time on his way to becoming, as I mentioned above, DMK boss of thesouthern region of the state. This material is important in understanding someof the elements which appeared in Ganesan's representation of Annadurai atthis time.
Violent and low status constituents of leadership in Madurai in the 1950s
Madurai city and the surrounding district were not strong areas of support forthe DMK in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the general elections of 1957 and1962, no DMK candidate from the district was elected to either the Assemblyor the national parliament. The Congress Party and the Communists were themajor political forces in the city.
According to my informants, support for the DMK in Madurai city inthe 1950s came from two social groups, working class youth and high schooland college students, many of whom came from middle level, land-holdingpeasant families. For the most part, urban middle class adults in the city andrespectable land-holding peasants considered the DMK to be disreputable. Itwas bad enough that DMK men were believed to be atheists. Whatcompounded the party's negative image was that a relatively large number ofits leadership were associated with the film industry and used the cinema anddrama to spread the 'principles' (kolkaikal) of the DMK. Actors were widelybelieved to be immoral people. Congress supporters in particular found proofof moral dereliction in the habitual card-playing of the DMK leadership,since gambling was considered sinful. It did not improve the moral standingof the DMK that Annadurai made scathing, humorous speeches about thesexual exploits of the gods in puranic myths. This he did in his attempt toencourage 'rationalism' in matters of religion. Making references to sex inpublic was taboo at that time.21
As I indicated above, political interaction in public arenas in Maduraicity was tense. Criticism of a person's political affiliation could easily resultin physical conflict, and partisans of different parties could be bitter enemies.The Congress hired rowdies as part of its political practice and Communists,
20 During the 1950s he supported his wife and children out of a small investment and his earningsas a performer.
2 1 Vijaya Venugopal, interview, 3 Feb. 1991.
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who had a strong following among factory workers and the poor, usedviolence to intimidate political rivals. Several informants argued that anessential element in Muthu's success was the fact that he did not shy awayfrom the use of violence.
Muthu had an able, simple style as a public speaker, though he washandicapped to a certain extent by his lack of formal education. (He camefrom a low-caste Pannickar family, who were agriculturalists with nearbonded status.) He was sociable and could talk easily with people of differentbackgrounds. The man of violence had a capacity to charm.22 Studentactivists in Madurai met with him frequently and accepted his encouragementof their efforts.
This encouragement could be more than words of approval on Muthu'spart. Incidents reported by an informant who was active as a student in theearly 1960s may be illustrative:
Muthu ... encouraged the youngsters and injectedperseverance in their minds ... On one occasion when thestudents staged a DMK flag in that [working class] area[where Communists were a majority in the population], theyfound that the flag was cut and removed on the next day.When they reported it to Muthu, he ordered his gang to cutflag staffs of the Communists immediately. When the samething occurred on another occasion, the hands of fifteenCommunists and Congress people were cut. Cutting here doesnot mean the removal of the hand. In those days they cut theflesh up to the bone level.23
In his work for the DK, before the DMK was established, Muthu assistedwith the organisation of meetings to which notables from other parts of thestate were invited. One of his duties was to provide protection againstattempts at disruption of the meetings by the thugs of rival parties.Opposition groups would, among other tactics, drive snakes and other animalsinto the meetings. The solution for Muthu was to organise, among others,rickshaw wallas to work as guards for the meetings. Another one of Muthu'sjobs was to ask merchants to make donations for party activities. Solicitingmerchants for financial support became one of his regular partyresponsibilities.
In 1946 the enemies of the DK succeeded in burning down theconference platform at a major DK conference in Madurai city. Muthu hadplayed a decisive role in protecting both Annadurai and EVR, coming thus tothe notice of the state-wide party leadership. When Muthu joined the newly
2 2 Vijaya Venugopal, interview, 3 Feb. 1991.2 3 Sethuraman, interview with Raphael, 11 Feb. 1991.
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formed DMK, the party conference which he organised shortly thereafter inMadurai was larger than any meeting attempted by the Madurai DK.24
Madurai Muthu had great resources of energy and organisationalimagination. Besides organising demonstrations and party conferences, he andhis group took responsibility for public meetings, membership campaigns, theestablishment of reading rooms and cultural programs. Muthu was able tosurvive as a fulltime party worker partly by selling DMK magazines andnewspapers. This he had to do 'with a knife in one hand' because of Congresshostility.25 To avoid the disruption of DMK public meetings and conferences,Muthu and his group held the sessions indoors. This also meant that theycould sell tickets to functions. DMK orators who were invited to speak at themeetings were an attraction. Troupes like Ganesan's kalai viruntu were hiredto perform. Muthu and his group also staged the plays of DMK actors andplaywrights, either as part of the entertainment at a conference or as a money-making tactic. By 1952 there were thirty-two DMK branches in MaduraiDistrict.26
In 1955 the Madurai party leadership organised an important two-dayconference which over five thousand people attended. An important draw wasmovie-actor M. G. Ramachandran (MGR) who had become wildly popular inMadurai city and district. Muthu and MGR became close associates duringthis time, with Muthu serving as MGR's main contact in the district. TheDMK state leadership generally became convinced that, in Madurai, 'nothingcould be done without Madurai Muthu'.27 In Madurai itself Muthu wasacquiring a reputation as a man who could do anything.28
Love, honour and morality in Ganesan's early propaganda
It is important to keep in mind the hostile political environment in whichGanesan and other DMK propagandists worked. Until 1953, members of theaudience might throw stones at the kalai viruntu troupe as it performed.However, using a singing troupe as a propaganda device was evidentlyperceived as successful because Congressmen started organising their owntroupes, which they called kalai nikazhcci (art event).
2 4 Ganesan, interview, 24 Feb. 1991.2 5 Sethuraman, interview, 22 Jan. 1991.
26 Ganesan, interview, 22 Feb. 1991.2 7 Ganesan, interview, 3 Mar. 1991.2 8 Ganesan, interview, 24 Feb. 1991.
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Ganesan said that he picked the name viruntu, or feast, from a story in'history' which was well known. A poet from the (medieval) Pandyankingdom travelled to the Chola kingdom where a powerful rival poet had himimprisoned. The Pandyan poet suffered, but he was protected by royal andcommon women. Keeping his presence of mind in a tense situation, thePandyan poet finally won over his Chola rival with his songs. When theChola poet came home, he told his wife 'I do not want to eat, as I had a feastat the court'.29
Like many of my informants, in our interviews Ganesan told (hi)stories- narratives of events which he believed to have occurred in the past - to getacross several points simultaneously. This appears to have been his approachto speech-making, both in his kalai viruntu days and afterwards when he washired as a speaker. There are suggestions in this style of discourse of a mythicsensibility or of modes of expression influenced by growing up at a timewhen lessons from life experiences were discussed with references to localand pan-Indian figures (divine and human) and myths and (hi)stories aboutthem.
The kalai viruntu troupe would be hired by DMK branch organisationsin town and city wards and in villages through-out the state. The main aim ofthe troupe was to provide enlightening entertainment which was popular incontent and not intellectually strenuous. All social groups in a locality, exceptfor the rich, would be represented in the audience of a performance of kalaiviruntu, but the people who stayed the whole three hour period ofperformance were boys from the age of thirteen to sixteen years.30 It washoped that they would be DMK supporters when they were older, or, better,eventually become activists in the cause of Tamil nationalism.
The singer, with musical accompaniment, and sometimes joined byGanesan, would first sing songs which Ganesan had written to the words ofpopular film tunes. Then Ganesan would give a speech. In both his songs andhis speeches, Ganesan appears to have followed the common pattern ofexpression on which Barnett comments:' ... the DMK was famous for homeyanalogies and illustrations as the basis of complex political argumentation'.31
In 1991 Ganesan still had two collections of songs which he hadpublished from the period when he led the troupe, one from 1951 which heentitled (in Tamil) 'Dravidian Songs of Reform', and one undated entitledsimply 'kalai viruntu'. The 1951 collection contains ten songs and theundated collection contains eighteen songs.32
2 9 Ganesan, interview, 13 Mar. 1991.3 0 Ganesan, interview, 5 Mar. 1991.3 1 Barnett, Politics, p. 124.3 2 Velraj P. translated these songs for me.
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I will discuss below several of the messages which the audience couldtake away from performances of these songs, as single items and in thecontext of Ganesan's speeches. For the most part, standard writings of partyideologues appear to have provided the material from which Ganesan selectedhis themes. These were:
Dravidam is rich in resources, so why is there poverty? Poverty anddifficulties come from ignorance perpetrated by immoral men ofreligion.
Or, alternatively, Dravidam suffers poverty because it is looted bypeople from Northern India.
Deliverance from poverty and hardship will come from knowledge, loveand morality. Anna shows the peaceful way of love for the achievementof Dravidam and a good life.33 Feeling love, Tamils will heroically jointogether to gain Dravidam.
Tamils are the heirs of the heroes of the glorious Tamil past and,therefore, can heroically throw off prejudice and ignorance and bravelyjoin in love in a struggle to achieve Dravidam.
The songs have a somewhat unexpected juxtaposition of propositions.
• Deliverance will come with Tamils uniting in love and peace, with (moral)Anna showing the way.
• Tamils will make the sacrifices needed to achieve Dravidam by actingheroically, like their forbears. Attached to both propositions are two others:a) Like the ancient Tamil kings, Tamils will be/are people of honour andb) deliverance will be achieved by peaceful and honourable/moral self-sacrifice and struggle.
There are several issues to consider here. DMK orators carried a strongmessage of deliverance from poverty and talked of the DMK as being'socialist'. (One of Ganesan's songs contains a reference to socialism.)However, it was important to distinguish the DMK 'principles' fromCommunism, since Communists had a reputation, among all social groups, asbeing prone to violence and seeking violent solutions.34 Ganesan appears to
3 3 Anna is a popular way of referring to Annadurai. The word means older brother in Tamil.3 4 Ganesan, interview, 5 Mar. 1991.
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have attempted to counteract the Communist effect with generous referencesto Annadurai as a man of love and peace.
References to honour and love appear in the context of doing what wasmoral, with Anna as the exemplar and guide. Ganesan thereby attempts tocounter the reputation of the DMK as being morally reprehensible:
From song number 7You the heroFollow the moral pathoffered by Anna;You the hero,Abolish discriminationTo form the guiltless rule;
Oh the valiant TamilTamil is valiantAndValiant is Tamil.35
From song number 16Let us acceptThe moral ways, andthe golden wordsof AnnaTo receive DravidamSoon with joy.36
From song number 18Our [ancient king] Che van isThe indescribably valiant,The hero who won the north
He ruled and professed,'Women and menseeking love through moralityare the ones needed', and'Let there not becolour-differentiation' ,37
3 5 Ganesan, 'kalai viruntu', Madurai (undated).36 Ganesan, 'kalai viruntu'.3 7 Ganesan, 'kalai viruntu'.
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From song number 5... Let us - the Dravidians - uniteAnd sing our anthem.With our knowledge clearedAnd with the assistance of love,We will serve.38
There is a subtext to the emphasis on love and peace - the immediatedangers of taking public stands for the DMK. What was one to do about theactual dangers of challenging the Congress regime and competing with theCommunists? How far would love and peace get one there? Madurai Muthuwas not the only provincial leader with violence attached to his name, even ifthat violence was an essential element in building support for the movement.At approximately the same time another, similar authority-figure - AnbilMarmalingam - had become or was on his way to becoming the DistrictSecretary of the DMK in Tiruchinopoly, the district to the north ofMadurai.39
References to heroic sacrifice and images of ancient valiant kings wereone way Ganesan - and, presumably, other propagandists in the period - gaverecognition and moral status to the hazards involved in taking a lead in publicexpressions of support for the movement. Such references to valiant figuresof the past were appropriate, given practical contingencies, at the same timeas they proved satisfying to young men searching for political identities in anew (Tamil) nation.40
We can assume that many of the people in the villages and town wardswhere kalai viruntu performed knew something of the risks incurred byyoung men taking public stands in support of the DMK. Many would knowthe dangers involved in confronting both local representatives of the Congressparty and Communist competitors for influence.
Ganesan's selections from DMK ideology seem tactical here. Myinformants appeared to agree that Annadurai made a powerful impact in hiswritings and speeches because he was (popularly conceived to be) the firstpolitician to focus on the Tamil past. Annadurai did not emphasise heroicexploits of battle to the exclusion of other representations of social life in hisdiscussions of ancient Tamil Country. He talked, also, about Tamil society ashaving once been egalitarian and about Tamils as having once been 'rational'people who acquired their hopeless superstitions and notions of caste
3 8 Ganesan, 'tiravitala marumalarccip patalkal', Madurai (1951).3 9 Sethuraman, interview, 4 Mar. 1991.4 0 Price, 'Revolution'.
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differences from the northerners, 'Aryans', who came south and oppressedthem.
In Ganesan's songs, however, it was valour and honour which one tookas the most identifying part of one's inheritance. The ancient warrior, not thephilosopher, provided the substance of a modern Tamil's identity. Oneshowed valour by striving for education and enlightened thought and becamea person of honour in rejecting 'Aryan' notions of caste distinction. Therewere references to caste discrimination in the songs as well as to theimmorality of the gods.
The sense of honour which Ganesan calls on has absolute moral qualitiesand is manifested in one's willingness to reject the false promises ofnortherners in Delhi and to struggle for Dravidam. Ganesan's honour here isthe 'self-respect' which EVR propagated in his Dravida Kazhagam. It is notdependent on the respect which others show one. This kind of honour wasnot, as was conventional, context-specific.41 In this way the ideology of theDravidian movement broke radically with the complex values and rules inTamil society attending shows respect to established authorities on the basisof age, gender, caste status, wealth and social and political position.Interviews in 1991 with village men who were closely tied to the DMKmobilisation in the 1950s and early 1969s indicate that appeals tohonour/respect (manam) and self-respect (tan-manam) made a major impactin their thinking about the meaning of their engagement in the movement.42 Iwill return to the theme of honour in discussing the play that Ganesan wroteabout Annadurai in 1970-1971.
Ganesan reported that in his speeches he talked about the DMKprinciples, about the meaning of the party motto of 'duty, dignity anddiscipline', and about acquiring 'rationality' in one's life. As I pointed outabove, he made his points through stories and he appears to have beenconscious of his use of this technique. Often Ganesan took his stories fromnovels, plays and screen-plays written by Annadurai and other DMK notables.One theme to which Ganesan returned again and again in our interviews washis effort - both in the kalai viruntu period and later - to dispel what heassumed to be common assumption that Annadurai could not be a moral manand a fitting leader for the DMK, because his mother came from a line ofdevadasis. Ganesan had a range of rhetorical devices which he put to thecause of disabusing people of their prejudice. He told stories about gods andsages who mated without the benefit of marriage and asked people, if youaccept such behaviour in your gods without thinking less of them, why shouldyou think less of Annadurai?
4 1 Loc. cit.42 Loc. cit.
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In my kalai viruntu I used to refer to the stories of the Vedicsages like Viswamitra, Parasumram to explain how the samemistake is perceived differently.
Viswamitra controlled all his senses and meditated to attainthe celestial status. Fearing that he may attain [it], the celestialking sent the woman dancer (Menaga) to seduce Viswamitraand thereby disturb his meditations. She did it. Visvamitrafell in love with her the moment he saw her and the result wasa female baby called Shakuntala. Her son was Bharath andour country is named after him, who had the derogatory birth.In that case, is it justice to abuse Anna for his birth? When Isaid this, people used to applaud heartily.43
Ganesan would point out: Annadurai has not lied about his background;he is an honest man. In this context Ganesan might tell, at great length,incidents from the novel which Annadurai published in 1945, RangoonRadha, and which Ganesan argued was the politician's tribute to the sufferingwhich his own mother had endured in her life at the hands of evil men. 44
Annadurai did not fit conventional models of a respectable person inother ways besides his birth. For example, he was careless in his appearance.Ganesan had a story to deal with the prejudice which might arise on thispoint, as well. With this (hi)story, he tried to explain as well one of themeanings of the DMK focus on 'discipline' in the party motto:
Anna was an M.A. graduate. He was a friend of P.Balasubramaniyam, who ran the English daily called theSunday Observer. P. Balasubramaniyam got Anna a job as aP.A. [personal assistant] to Sir Muthiah Chettiyar. Those daysan M.A. graduate was expected to dress in a suit. Anna's jobdemanded it. But Anna would not wear a suit and so he leftthe job. The same way he quit his job as a personal assistantto Raja Panagal. What I am trying to say is the discipline ofAnna. He washed his clothes himself. He never cared abouthis dress. He used to wear even torn clothes. Somebody hadto point it out when he bought ready-made clothes ... withoutlooking for the right size. That sort of reducing one's desiresis the mental discipline.45
4 3 Ganesan, interview, 20 Mar. 1991.4 4 Ganesan, interview, 12 Mar. 1991. Ganesan reported that, when Rangoon Radha was made
into a movie, Karunanidhi (later DMK Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu) wrote the script, takingliberty with a few detail to make the book palatable to a wider audience.
4 5 Ganesan, interview, 20 Mar. 1991.
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A (hi)story such as this was also a vehicle for Ganesan's argument that,in his simplicity, Annadurai was as great as Gandhi, that he was the Gandhiof the south. Ganesan had a quote from Annadurai or a story concerning thepolitician for a wide variety of occasions or situations about which he wantedto comment.
This focus on Annadurai is an example of the important role ofpersonalisation in the DMK movement. The characteristic of personalisingpolitical institutions and forces becomes important in view of ideologicaldevelopment later in the DMK and in the AIADMK, MGR's party. Eventhough Ganesan saw himself as working in the cause of (cultural) revolution,in neither his songs nor his reports of his speeches, does he make reference tothe efficacy of institutions in either creating change or the basis for change inTamil society. He discusses reform in terms of honourable acts on the part ofsingle persons, not in terms, say, of legislation to regulate the size oflandholdings. Apart from a brief reference to 'plans' in a song (presumably areference to five-year planning for development), Ganesan focuses onpersonal development and the efficacy of faith in Anna and following his wayof love and learning.
Tamil nationalism was in many ways about creating new persons whowere appropriate to live in the new political domain.46 Congressmen inlocalities could campaign banking on their personal prestige as having playeda role in the movement for independence. These acts had helped bring anation-state into existence. The DMK, in turn, claimed Dravidam, a vaguelydefined nation-state in the making. Here Ganesan and, it appears, otheractivists campaigned on issues of personal emancipation from ignorance andthe northern/Congress-supported caste order. The governing institutions ofthe posited state were not outlined. Dravidam was a domain which could existwhen Tamils became once again men and women of honour, as were theirancestors in ancient Tamil Country.
An example of the personalisation of the cultural revolution is to befound in the party rhetoric about the DMK as a family, with Anna as theolder brother and his party fellows as his little brothers or tambis. Thecollectivity was a set of personal networks. In a society in which kinshipconstituted the basis for many kinds of relationships and in which friendsreferred to each other as 'cousin-brother', it does not come as a surprise thatmetaphors of kinship articulated issues of leadership in the national domain.The cults of leadership which later developed are partially founded inpersonalisation in the cultural revolution, as opposed to discussion ofpossibilities which lay in institutional bases of change.
46 Price, 'Revolution'.46
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In 1958 Ganesan left the DMK. He suggested in our interviews that hismajor problem in DMK politics was Muthu. According to Ganesan, Muthuwas jealous of competition for leadership in Madurai and would block peoplehe perceived as rivals. Frustrated, Ganesan left the DMK in 1958, along withthe other co-founders of the party in Madurai, Ayyasami and Rajaman. Themen joined the Congress, partly with the idea that the local party organisationwould protect them from Muthu.
Ganesan reported that he never stopped believing in the 'principles' ofthe DMK and that, because he still spoke of Anndurai as a great man, 'theCongress people never took me for a real Congress man' .47 He said that hecould not stand as a candidate for election because he did not have thenecessary financial resources. Whatever the case may be, Ganesan left theCongress in the course of the sixties, disillusioned, he reported, with factionalstrife in the party. For a period of time, Ganesan did not associate himselfformally with any political party. However, he maintained contact with theDMK through MGR, whose wealth and popularity had become, by the 1960s,major props of the party. It appears that MGR was personally fond ofGanesan, whom he would visit during his trips to Madurai.
When the DMK won the General Election in 1967, Ganesan returned tothe party and began propaganda work again. In the course of his party workhe criticised the Congress, offending his former party fellows. In the midst ofelectioneering in the town of Nagarkoil in 1969, Congress thugs attacked thecar in which Ganesan was travelling. Four jeeps filled with men were used toblock his way. Ganesan was badly injured, with broken bones in a wrist, butcontinued his campaign work until MGR heard about the incident andbrought him to Madras to be treated by an orthopaedic surgeon. MGRsupported him for a month of convalescence in Madras.48 Three years later,when MGR left the DMK to form his own party, the AIADMK, Ganesanbecame a member.49
Divinity, honour and established authority in the 1970s
In 1970-1971, after the death of Annadurai, Ganesan wrote a play whichcelebrated the political message and person of the party leader. He entitled theplay, 'Anna Is Our God' (anna nam teyvam). At the time Ganesan was still amember of the DMK and the play was meant as well to be a vehicle for
4 7 Ganesan, interview, 16 Mar. 1991.4 8 Ganesan, interview, 20 Mar. 1991.4 9 During the time of his association with MGR, Ganesan acted in several MGR films, playing
the part of Annadurai.
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Karunanidhi. When MGR won at the polls and became Chief Minister,Ganesan reworked parts of the play to make thinly disguised attacks onKarunanidhi and his regime and to present MGR as the authentic heir ofAnnadurai's position in Tamil politics. Ganesan gave me the later version tocopy.
I gather from his comments that the scenes in which Annadurai appearswere not reworked, though this detail does not appear relevant to the issuestaken up below. I will not attempt to discuss the play from the point of viewof Tamil dramaturgy, a field in which I have no competence.
The focus of this discussion is the meaning we can attribute to therepresentation of Anna as a teyvam, a god, and the ways in which Ganesanattempts to give the person of Anna this quality or status. These two issuescannot, of course, be separated. Below I will briefly outline major elementsof Ganesan's presentation of Annadurai and then comment on them.
The first scene of the play opens with a statue of Annadurai whichGanesan identifies thus: 'The statue of "Great Scholar" late Anna is shown'.It thus appears contradictory, given the title of the play, that the only actionin this scene is the recitation offstage of the following lines:
Hear, you fools who go in search of athousand gods! The only God is pure knowledge.50
The next scene51 takes place in a park in 1972 with MGR unveiling the statueof Annadurai and giving a speech. His first lines are:
Yes. Knowledge alone is God. Subramanya Bharathi, thepeople's poet and revolutionary poet, strongly emphasised theidea that knowledge is God, which has been said by manygreat persons among our ancestors. Anna lived with us with asmiling face, as an embodiment of knowledge, made personsout of us and, in a manner that astonished the whole world,made the DMK ... the ruling party in a mere eighteen yearperiod and took charge of the government!52
Having thus personalised knowledge, MGR/Ganesan praises Annadurai'sadministration as having been free of corruption and asserts that, 'He didaway with all the evils like poverty, scarcity, illiteracy, and intouchability ...He found a place as a good man in the hearts of all people from various walks
5 0 Ganesan, 'anna nam teyvam' (1978), p. 1. The page references here are to the typed translationof the play done by Sundar, the Department of Folklore, Madurai Kamaraj University.
5 1 There are twenty-five scenes in the play and no acts.5 2 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 1.
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of life.'53 MGR then speaks of the charges of corruption and malpracticeswhich have been lodged against Karunanidhi's administration and declaresthat party members must show themselves to be 'unstained' and make publictheir accounts.
What follows is a pastiche of scenes, backflashes, some showingAnnadurai in his early years, some showing ordinary citizens talking aboutthe principles which Annadurai supported, some illustrating familiar scenesand themes from Annadurai's writings and some showing ordinary citizenssad and concerned because Annadurai is in the hospital and is very ill. Whatis particularly interesting in the context of this study are a series of scenes -numbers fifteen to seventeen - which take place at the hospital and in whichValluvar (the ancient Tamil writer on ethics), Mahatma Gandhi and Bharathi(the popular nationalist Tamil poet) each in turn visit Annadurai. They arenot represented by actors, but by shadow figures on a screen.
In each case Annadurai, in his greetings, asks the figure to 'bless' him.Most of the dialogue in these short scenes is spoken by the figures, explainingthat it is more appropriate that Annadurai bless them and that they will 'bowbefore' him. Each explains to Annadurai why he thinks that the politician wasa great man and the ways in which he is indebted to Annadurai. A majorelement in each figure's regard for Annadurai is that the politician carried outwork begun by him, bringing the figures' moral ideas to fruition.
Each scene ends with a speech by one of the 'great men' explaining whyhe thinks that Anna is a god {teyvam). Issues of honour and respect are majorthemes in their statements.
Valluvar ... I said, 'One who lives a contented life will beplaced among the gods in heaven'. You did not live adirectionless life ... You respected those whom you shouldrespect. You could have opposed them at times. But you didnot forget the respect ... [Reiterates that Annadurai will 'beplaced among the gods in heaven'.] ... Your name and famewill remain as long as the skies remain. Therefore you are thegod of the skies. I bow before you ... You said it is thepeople's power that is god's power. I join the people in this:
'Anna is our god'.'Anna is our god'.'Anna is our god'.
53 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 1.53
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(Lights off)End of scene.54
Gandhi is grateful to Annadurai for following his principles, whichGandhi admits he took from Valluvar in the first place! Gandhi is mostgrateful to Annadurai for giving a centenary speech in honour of his birth inwhich he argued that the most fitting monument to Gandhi would be theenforcement of prohibition in India:
Gandhi: Can I forget your task of thus protecting the principlewhich myself and many other learned people upheld? ... Youtried to save the principle that was so dear to me. You tried tosave my honour. To protect is the work of god. You are mygod. The Bhagavan said that he worships the dust under thepeople's feet. You, who worked for the welfare of the people,are my god. I am one of the people. I say this to them:
[Gandhi repeats three times, 'Anna is our god' and the scenecloses as before.]55
Bharathi's comments are perhaps the most interesting. After Annaduraiasks him to bless him, Bharathi states:
Bharathi: Yes. I am the one who does not bow before anyone.I criticized those who go in search of a thousand gods. I didnot hesitate to criticize people who thought of going toheaven after life. But I bow down before you now. Iworshipped knowledge. But knowledge was never found to beembodied in a person. I was worshipping the air, the ocean,the fire, the mountain ... Only now have I found you as anembodiment of knowledge. That is why I bow before you.
Annadurai: No. I will bow before you. You [should] blessme.56
After speaking of Annadurai as one who did his duty, among otherthings, changing the name of Madras state to Tamil Nadu, Bharathi exclaimsagain, 'I respect you who are an embodiment of knowledge,' and closesreiterating 'Anna is our god' three times.57
The play ends with MGR giving an address at his swearing-in ceremonyas Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1977. The last paragraph of his address,closing the play, begins, 'Anna is our god. We will not hesitate to give up
54 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 27.55 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 29.5<* Ganesan, 'anna', p. 30.57 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 30.
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even our lives to implement his.'58 Shortly thereafter come six new 'Slogansof the people', calling for a long life for the new Chief Minister and for thefame of Annadurai.59
Ganesan's play has a devotional character. The formal manifestation ofthe devotion appears in terms of honouring, of showing honour to Annadurai.Unlike his treatment of the head of the movement in the early 1950s, hereGanesan is suggesting that the way to recognise Annadurai as a leader is, insense, to bow down (figuratively, at least) in recognition of his greatness. Wecan contrast this stance with that in the songs in the 1950s in which onefollows Annadurai's lead by carrying out his principles in one's own life. Inthe play Annadurai is great because he supported the principles in his own lifeand because, as Ganesan has MGR blithely assert, succeeded in solving themajor problems of the Tamil Country during his regime. One showsallegiance to Annadurai by honouring him as a 'great man'.
This notion of honour has both absolute and contextual elements.Annadurai is shown to have achieved honour by his own actions and oneshould show him honour because the greatest men in the Tamil pantheonshow him honour. The fire of the Dravidian (cultural) revolution still burnedin Ganesan's heart. However, the device of having Valluvar, Gandhi andBharathi bow down to Annadurai combines the absolute moral values ofEVR's self-respect with the more conventional notion of showing honour inrecognition of a person's superior authority.60 Dead or alive Annadurai is thehighest authority in Tamil nationalism.
As I indicated, the play is a series of scenes which are unconnected in thesense of plot development. Annadurai appears in the play in the context ofbeing praised for his character and intellect and of having respect beingshown to him by others. There are no illustrations of Annadurai being facedwith situations which require his making difficult, courageous choices. Hemostly reiterates his principles. The other characters similarly face littleconflict of choice in the course of the play but discuss what they have heardabout Annadurai's teachings.
There was no economy of words on Ganesan's part in trying to explainto me his meaning in writing that Annadurai was a teyvam. At no time did hecome with a concise, all-encompassing formulation. He provided a serious offormulations. At first Ganesan tried to explain his meaning in what I take tobe ways he thought I would find appropriate. He talked about the different
5 8 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 47.5 9 Ganesan, 'anna' , p. 47.6 0 Price, 'Revolution'.
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senses with which a person might use the term god with reference to anotherperson. For example, in seeing a friend one has longed to have contact with,one might say, 'It's like seeing a teyvam'. Or a patient might say to anattentive doctor who was committed to making the patient well, 'Doctor, youare like a god to me'.
At this point the issue for Ganesan seemed to boil down to theproposition, 'A person is supposed to help fellow humans as far as possible.If he does so, others feel that he is a superior person and they think of him asteyvam and worship him'.61
What is closer, I think, to Ganesan's intent with this play comes from hisargument that he had done something innovative. He had not made Annaduraia god, but our god. This is because a teyvam conventionally is an entity whichbelongs to a single person:
See, Gandhi, Valluvar and Bharathi - all of them say, 'Annais our teyvam', which means that Anna is not only the deityfor me, but for all of us. Anna becomes the greatest of humanbeings.62
A teyvam is different from a kaduvul, an all-creating god.63 Uneducatedpoor people might see a film star as a teyvam, because, as with MGR, theysaw him protecting people and fighting evil in his movies and thought that heprotected or would protect them.64 For people with greater material andintellectual resources, a teyvam can be a person in one's family who has died.Ganesan agreed that, conventionally, a teyvam was a deity which hadoriginally been a person's dead ancestor or relation, as in trie designationkulam teyvam, the god or goddess which protects a kin line. A teyvam in thissense has played a part in creating the person and belongs only to that person(or his/her kin). Ganesan argued that Annadurai, Valluvar, Gandhi andBharathi were all 'grandfathers' of the Tamil nation. So, he explained, 'Yourteyvam is someone you are a part of. And he asserted, 'When someone saysAnna is a teyvam, he thinks that he [Anna] has helped people as if he weretheir ancestor and that is why they worship him' ,65
Making Annadurai 'our' teyvam was, in Ganesan's experience, culturallyinnovative, because he saw himself putting the former leader in the context ofprotecting, not just persons, but the entire Tamil nation for all time.Annadurai was the protecting family deity for the Tamil/DMK family.Annadurai went from being the protecting older brother of his tambi DMK
6 1 Ganesan, interview, 20 Aug. 1991.6 2 Ganesan, interview, 20 Aug. 1991.6 3 Ganesan, interview, 20 Aug. 1991.6 4 Ramasamy, interview, 8 Sept. 1991.6 5 Ganesan, interview, 20 Aug. 1991.
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adherents to being the kulam teyvam of the Tamil people whom, as was oftenrepeated, he created.
In a wider context, however, Ganesan continued the convention from hiskalai viruntu period of personalising politics.
In the 1950s M. R Ganesan spoke to personal feelings and the need tochange personal experience, not institutions, in making challenges to daringaction among his audience. Two decades later the principles to guide this(moral) action were personified and personalised in the figure of Annaduraiand made into a political tradition which demanded appropriate respect fromcitizens. Citizens should show this respect by honouring the legitimate heir ofthe personification of the tradition. At the end of his play Ganesan has MGRemerge as the new focus of honour. The slogans that Ganesan brings into usehere suggest that the devotion which he is promulgating is rooted in traditionsof honour shown to a royal figure, divine or human:
Long live late Anna's government!Long live Honorable Chief Minister!Long live the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu!Long live Puratchithalaivar [MGR as Revolutionary Leader]!Long live Honorable Puratchithalaivar!Long live Anna's fame!66
Conclusion
Examining the content of Ganesan's propaganda and setting it in its historicalcontext suggests that the nature of focus on the person in politics can alterdepending on whether the person is the leader of a movement challengingsocial and political authority or has become the embodiment of establishedauthority. Taking a cue from Sara Dickey's distinction between adulationpolitics and patronage politics, I suggest the possibility of restraint politics,politics which is based importantly on the appeal of the self-restraint of acharismatic leader. In this context we can examine the implications ofGanesan's iteration of the common appellation of Annadurai as the 'Gandhiof South India'. Mines and Gourishanka point out that mahatma is anotherterm for Big-Man.67 When we separate Gandhi from the particularcircumstances of his fame as the originator of satyagraha and the founder ofthe Indian National Congress as a mass movement, he becomes perhaps thefirst example of mass adulation in the twentieth century. As is well-known,early in Gandhi's career in India there was a group of younger men who
6 6 Ganesan, 'anna', p. 47.6 7 Mines and Gourishankar, 'Leadership', p. 762.
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became his 'lieutenants' and who did organisational work in connection withnationalist agitations. Other men in the provinces and districts worked onoccasions to spread Congress propaganda and to organise activities ofsatyagraha. The extent to which the activities of social service were widelyand consistently sustained in the 1920s, even after Gandhi put emphasis on'constructive work', is debatable.68 In the early period of Gandhi's gainingfame as a mahatma, then, it is arguable the extent to which he could appearpersonally as a symbol of the benefits of redistribution. I am suggesting, then,that it may be necessary to distinguish between the benefits people believedwould come with the new millennium which they thought Gandhi wouldusher in and a view of him as a focus for protective redistribution.Constituents of Gandhi's image appear to have included importantly hissimplicity, morality, concern for and identification with the poor, and hiscourage in challenging the colonial government.
What is not usually elaborated in writing on Gandhi is his movement ina social and political universe underlined by relations of honour. Not only didhe consistently place emphasis on compromise solutions 'to save the face andhonour of all concerned',69 he was concerned with abstract issues of honourin politics. Brown argues that Gandhi challenged the 'izzat, prestige, andlegitimacy' of the colonial government and quotes him writing that he wantedto protect India's 'national honour'.70 Showing honour to Gandhi was aexpression of popular adoration. In the course of his tenure as de facto headof the Congress movement, when he appeared amidst crowds often he couldhardly move because of the great numbers who wanted to touch his feet.
When we examine the nature of person-centred politics concerningGandhi in connection with that of Ganesan's Annadurai in the 1950s, it isstriking that personal simplicity and morality emerged as importantconstituents of representation in the context of courageous challenges to socialand political authorities. Annadurai appealed explicitly to heroic, malehonour, with his references to the glorious Tamil past - as well as to valuesof equality and brotherhood. As the case of Madurai District and City shows,party activists were involved in dangerous activities of propagating theideology of the DMK movement and making available the writings andnewspapers of its leaders. Like Gandhi, Annadurai did not construct hisleadership on displays of personal largess; he could not appear as a source of
68 Judith M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Delhi, Oxford Univerity Press, 1992), passim.See, for example, Jacques Pouchepadass, 'Local Leaders and the Intelligentsia in theChamparan Stayagraha (1917): a Study in Peasant Mobilisation', in Contributions to IndianSociology (NS), no. 8 (1974), pp. 67-87, and Shahid Amin, 'Gandhi as Mahatma: GorakpurDistrict, Eastern UP, 1921-2', in Ranajit Guna (ed.), Subaltern Studies III: Writings on SouthAsian History and Society (Delhi, Oxford University Press Press, 1989), pp. 1-61.
6 9 Brown, Gandhi, p, 121.7 0 Ibid., p. 129. Brown quotes a letter to Montague dated 1919.
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(protecting) patronage. These observations recall W. H. Morris-Jones'formulation from 1963 of 'saintly politics' as an idiom in Indian politics:
Admittedly it affects men's actual behaviour very little ... Itsinfluence is rather on the standards habitually used by thepeople at large for judging the performance of politicians. Inmen's minds there is an ideal of disinterested selflessness bycontrast with which almost all normal conduct can seem veryshabby. I do not imply that such a standard is appliedcontinuously or to the exclusion of other standards. I wouldargue, however, that it contributes powerfully to several veryprevalent attitudes to be found in Indian political life: to acertain withholding of full approval from even the mostpopular leaders; to a stronger feeling of distrust of and disgustwith persons and institutions of authority; finally, toprofoundly violent and desperate moods of cynicism andfrustration. I repeat that I am not making 'saintly' politics asole cause of these sentiments; I am only indicating how it canadd, as it were, a certain bitterness and 'edge' to them.71
Perhaps the term 'saintly' is mystifying and it would be better, as I suggestedabove, to posit the existence of the politics of personal self-restraint, theinstitutional base of which is found in the organisation of mobilisation againstsocial and political authorities. In exploring further the issue of restraintpolitics in the terms of Morris-Jones, we would have to investigate theexistence of popular moods of 'cynicism and frustration' in the face ofconventional authority, against which the moral superiority of the charismaticleader is (explicitly or implicitly) posited.
When the DMK captured state power in Tamil Country, Ganesan'srepresentation of Annadurai, the leader as a model for love/brotherhood andmorality in one's own life, was eclipsed in the creation of hierarchicalranking in which the former Chief Minister appeared at the top. However, wedo not need to see this contrast as contradictory, at least when we are talkingabout figures who have reached remarkable heights as objects of publicdevotion. In monarchical cosmologies the king has periods of asceticwithdrawal as an essential part of the ritual process through which he makeshimself fit to rule. As we see with Dickey's discussion of the appeal of MGR,elements of selflessness were important in the representation of a figurewhose popularity as Chief Minister borrowed much from popular notions of a
71 Morris-Jones, 'India's Political Idioms', in Thomas R. Metcalf (ed.), Modern India: AnInterpretive Anthology (London, The Macmillan Company, 1971), p. 280. Originally publishedin C. H. Philips (ed.), Politics and Society in India (London, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd,1963), pp. 133-54.
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divine ruler. In twentieth century political cosmologies there have beenconstellations in which respect for self-restraint72 is in complementary tensionwith appreciation of the power generated by abundance. In his article onpopular images of Gandhi in the early 1920s in United Provinces, ShahidAmin pointed out that 'Gandhiji ki jai' became, in more militant phases ofNon-Cooperation, 'Gandhiji Maharaj ki jai'.73 Indo-British P. Spratt wrotethat at Annadurai's death, 'A Congress paper wrote, "Even his worst enemiesrespected Sri Annadurai for his essential, basic goodness, humanity andtolerance.'" 74
7 2 Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: PoliticalDevelopment in India (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1967), 'Self-Control andPolitical Potency', pp. 192-216.
7 3 Amin, 'Gandhi as Mahatma', p. 53.7 4 P. Spratt, D.M.K. in Power (Bombay, Nachiketa Publications Limited, 1970), p. 146-7.
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