TAMIL NADU, July 1: Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has harked back to a past that sounds more distant than just three decades ago in pressing recently a demand for a "Dravidian university".

Details of the proposal strongly endorsed by former Union Minister C. Subramaniam for an academic experiment to be undertaken and administered by the Andhra Pradesh government with the assistance of others may deserve separate attention. What merits special notice, however, is the attempted revival that the idea may represent of an ideology and outlook presumed to have been abandoned and become obsolete.

It was in 1967 that the era of Dravidian power began in Tamil Nadu after the undivided Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam under C.N. Annadurai had abandoned the platform of Dravidstan or Dravidanadu. The decision was due to the DMK's perception of not only the electoral opportunity that compliance with the Constitution offered. It was also the result of recognition that the slogan could just not sell. Or that power remained a remote objective so long as the platform was retained in its pristine unreality.

`Dravidianism' may have been defined in regional terms, to begin with. But, it did not take long for the idea to acquire contradictory connotations. The parent of `Dravidian' politics, the Justice Party, was an all-South forum, but the offspring did not inherit the character.

The Dravida Kazhagam, the direct descendant of the party, led by E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, started out as a social reform spearhead but ended up as a camp for exclusive Tamil interests (excluding those of the Brahmins among the Tamils as well). The iconoclastic organisation was, towards the end of the EVR era, an ally of the Tamil Nadu Congress of K. Kamaraj identified as the Pachchaiththamizhan (True-bred Tamil). This was a logical corollary to the movements leading to the end of the Madras Presidency and the creation of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, a memorable high point being the supreme sacrifice of Potti Sriramulu giving birth to the latter State (called upon to launch the `Dravidian' university of Karunanidhi's dreams).

It was, however, under the DMK, the party which sought power where the parent DK only wanted to be a prop, that Tamil Nadu came to be delimited as the sole constituency of 'Dravidianism'. The DMK demogogues did not stop talking about an ancient Aryan-Dravidian divide, but the alliterative orations were all addressed to a strictly Tamil audience. And, not only because the diction was too difficult for others.

Vocabulary alone would not have given wider relevance to rhetoric that had nothing to say to, or about, the non-Tamil parts of the `Dravidian' nation of the original definition. The cry of `Dravidianism' was supposed to be an articulation and assertion of a culture of the South. But, it soon became only an aggrandisement, carried often to absurd lengths, of a Tamil brand of the commodity as developed, patented, promoted and marketed by the DMK.The gulf only grew wider with the pure-Tamil movement promoted by the new politics. While Tamil was being sought to bebfreed of all alien traces, especially of the early Aryan tongue, the other Southern languages were all undergoing further Sanskritisation. The divergence made it certain that there could be no anti-Hindi platform of an all-`Dravidian' description.

The cultural aspect of `Dravidianism' had its economic counterpart.

Annadurai coined the catchy slogan, Vadakku valargiradhu, therku theygiradhu (The North waxes, the South wanes), but the DMK agitprop revealed no all-South developmental concerns. It wanted a steel plant in Salem, but not a Silicon Valley in Bangalore.

The exclusivism could not but lead inexorably to a conflict of economic interests with little role and indeed lessened relevance for the cultural question. The perennial Cauvery dispute shows how little even coexistence of their ruling parties in a Central coalition can help to create a `Dravidian' harmony among the Southern States in such matters.

Karunanidhi and Subramaniam have urged AP Governor Krishan Kant to sanction the `Dravidian university' and stop treating it as a dangerous idea. They are right. It can produce its degrees and doctorates, but cannot easily revive a political dream of such proven distance from reality.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.