Cambridge University Press
Rule Of The Commoner - DMK and the Formation of the Political In Tamil Nadu, 1949 - 1967
Rule Of The Commoner - DMK and the Formation of the Political In Tamil Nadu, 1949 - 1967
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Rule Of The Commoner - DMK and the Formation of the Political In Tamil Nadu, 1949 - 1967
The 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.
![rule-of-the-commoner-dmk-and-the-formation-of-the-political-in-tamil-nadu-1949-1967 Rajan Kurai Krishnan| Ravindaran Sriramachandran|V.M.S. Subagunarajan](http://www.criticalquest.in/cdn/shop/products/rule_of_the_commoner_dmk_and_the_formation_of_the_political_in_tamil_nadu_1949_-_1967_500_fe289a17-1e8c-45cb-baef-0503afc221eb.jpg?v=1688544580&width=1445)