AS Panneerselvan is The Hindu’s Readers’ Editor and the author of Karunanidhi: A Life, a recent biography of former Tamil Nadu Chief Mini...
AS Panneerselvan is The Hindu’s Readers’ Editor and the author of Karunanidhi: A Life, a recent biography of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, who led the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam for half a century till his death in August 2018.
While the book is presented as a biography of a political leader, it is also a tale of the Dravidian movement, whose political offshoots have ruled Tamil Nadu for over 50 years. The story of Karunanidhi’s political journey animates certain important characteristics that Tamil Nadu has come to be identified with: federalism, state autonomy, secularism and social justice.
In an interview to Scroll.in, Panneerselvan talks about the limitations state parties face, how the Dravidian movement has negotiated the homogenising attitudes of the Centre and on developments within Tamil Nadu that seem to pose challenges to the Dravidian ideology. Edited excerpts:
Two terms recur throughout your book. One is conciliation and the other is compromise. You point to several instances. There were the differences between former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister CN Annadurai and Dravidian ideologue Periyar that led to the launch of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in 1949. And then the example of the DMK getting into an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1999 and they justify their...
