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A million mutinies: Here is what's behind the Tamil angst
Ever since the Supreme Court-mandated deadline for setting up the Cauvery Management Board expired at the end of March, Tamil Nadu has been simmering. On Thursday, the anger boiled over during PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Chennai for the Defexpo. An army of vociferous protesters in black took over those areas of the city where the prime minister was supposed to touch down. They released bunches of black balloons into the sky and #ModiGoBack trended on Twitter.
The rallying call for boycott may have been given by DMK working president MK Stalin but those who responded came from all walks of life, from IIT-Madras students to farmers to civil society activists. Yet, this protest is hardly the only one Tamil Nadu is currently in the grip of.
In the port town of Thoothukudi, residents have been protesting for over 50 days against Vedanta-owned Sterlite’s copper smelter which, they say, is responsible for various ailments among people living in the area. The agitation reached its apogee on March 26, when over 2,00,000 people raised their voice against Sterlite.
Near the Bodhi hills in Theni district, too, people are protesting against the proposal to set up a Rs 1,500 crore Neutrino Observatory, an underground laboratory to detect and study neutrinos, in the area. Around 200 km away in Neduvasal in Pudukkottai district, villagers are raring to resume their agitation against ONGC’s proposed hydrocarbon project on their lands.
A million mutinies, it appears, are raging in the state. The common thread running through this multitude of protests is anger over the perception that Tamil Nadu is being discriminated against.
“Whether it is the Sterlite protests or Cauvery, it has consistently been brought home that this is something that is unfair to Tamil Nadu as a state,” says S Anandhi, professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies. “There is an idea that the state’s demands are fair and yet it is being denied its rights. That’s why there is unanimous support for these movements, across social strata.”
The Centre and the projects led by it are thus perceived as impinging on the rights of the citi ..
Then & Now
This keen sense of Tamil identity and prioritising its interests can be traced back to the Dravidian movement led by stalwarts like Periyar, which began in the 1920s. The movement against Brahminical hegemony and caste system also played a crucial role in launching the anti-Hindi agitation of 1937, when the Congress, led by C Rajagopalachari, introduced Hindi as a compulsory subject in schools in the Madras Presidency.
Faced with protests for three y ..
Read more at:
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/63764568.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Ever since the Supreme Court-mandated deadline for setting up the Cauvery Management Board expired at the end of March, Tamil Nadu has been simmering. On Thursday, the anger boiled over during PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Chennai for the Defexpo. An army of vociferous protesters in black took over those areas of the city where the prime minister was supposed to touch down. They released bunches of black balloons into the sky and #ModiGoBack trended on Twitter.
The rallying call for boycott may have been given by DMK working president MK Stalin but those who responded came from all walks of life, from IIT-Madras students to farmers to civil society activists. Yet, this protest is hardly the only one Tamil Nadu is currently in the grip of.
In the port town of Thoothukudi, residents have been protesting for over 50 days against Vedanta-owned Sterlite’s copper smelter which, they say, is responsible for various ailments among people living in the area. The agitation reached its apogee on March 26, when over 2,00,000 people raised their voice against Sterlite.
Near the Bodhi hills in Theni district, too, people are protesting against the proposal to set up a Rs 1,500 crore Neutrino Observatory, an underground laboratory to detect and study neutrinos, in the area. Around 200 km away in Neduvasal in Pudukkottai district, villagers are raring to resume their agitation against ONGC’s proposed hydrocarbon project on their lands.
A million mutinies, it appears, are raging in the state. The common thread running through this multitude of protests is anger over the perception that Tamil Nadu is being discriminated against.
“Whether it is the Sterlite protests or Cauvery, it has consistently been brought home that this is something that is unfair to Tamil Nadu as a state,” says S Anandhi, professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies. “There is an idea that the state’s demands are fair and yet it is being denied its rights. That’s why there is unanimous support for these movements, across social strata.”
The Centre and the projects led by it are thus perceived as impinging on the rights of the citi ..
Then & Now
This keen sense of Tamil identity and prioritising its interests can be traced back to the Dravidian movement led by stalwarts like Periyar, which began in the 1920s. The movement against Brahminical hegemony and caste system also played a crucial role in launching the anti-Hindi agitation of 1937, when the Congress, led by C Rajagopalachari, introduced Hindi as a compulsory subject in schools in the Madras Presidency.
Faced with protests for three y ..
Read more at:
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/63764568.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
