Chumma va vandathu sudanthiram; ethanai ethanai thadi adiyai thaanginar; ethanai ethanai chekkirzhuthu vadinar; thookumedai erina kaaliyargal ethanai; thaakukindra gundunale uyirirandor ethanai…

ahimsa

Cut to 2019

(did Freedom come easy; how many brutal assaults they suffered; how tired they got yoked to the oil press like an animal; how many youths were hung; how many lost their lives to bullets…) The verse that fires the ‘Hindu rashtra (nation)’ rhetoric at RSS indoctrination camps has been getting strident across Tamil Nadu in the past two years.“Our history books harp on. But, what the RSS tells our future karyakarthas (functionaries) is that violence was an intrinsic part of the freedom movement,” said 69-year-old RSS ‘ganda sangachalak’ C Velayaudham, who is playing a small part in the grand plan to revamp the BJP’s Tamil Nadu strategy. Lent to the BJP by the RSS for the 1996 assembly election, he was the first party candidate to win the Padmanabhapuram seat in Kanyakumari, against the DMK-TMC wave in the wake of corruption charges that shook the J Jayalalithaa regime.: As the DMK tide swamped Tamil Nadu in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections , a quiet RSS-sponsored programme that indoctrinates teenagers into Hindu ideology has picked up pace to breach the Dravidian bulwark.Velayudham’s victory wasn’t the first for the Sangh Parivar in Padmanabhapuram, a small temple town and erstwhile capital of Travancore. In the 1984 assembly elections, when AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran’s popularity was at its peak, the Hindu Munnani backed an independent, advocate KV Balachandran and won. The Hindu Munnani was formed at the peak of the Meenakshipuram conversions when hundreds of dalits in the village in Tirunelveli converted to Islam. This was two years after the Mandaikadu riots between Hindus and Christian fishermen. Six fishermen were killed in police firing, and the seeds of communal polarization had been sown.So, years later, why is the BJP still floundering in southern waters? The Muslim-Hindu divide has been sharper in the northern states closer as they are to Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh, say senior BJP leaders. “In Tamil Nadu, it is difficult to understand the psyche of the Tamil people – both culturally and their language,” said a Delhi-based senior BJP leader. “So many barriers have been created by others, by us – the north-south barrier; Aryan-Dravidian; Brahmin-non-Brahmin...“We need to understand better the relationship between the different demographic segments. Like, why do Tamils love to sing Hindi songs but don’t want to read Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas,” said the Delhi leader.Former BJP Rajya Sabha MP L Ganesan is fond of reiterating that Tamil Nadu is a land of Alwars and Andals and the BJP should gain ground in this ‘Bhakti Bhoomi’ with ally AIADMK by its side. “We have at least 40,000 beneficiaries of Central schemes in every constituency. We and our allies failed to take this message to the voters,” said Ganesan.“We need to identify the DMK as our enemy and counter their hate-Modi campaign on social media effectively,” said BJP state secretary professor R Srinivasan. But, senior journalist and analyst H Ramakrishnan dismisses the theory of an anti-Modi campaign demolishing the Tamil Nadu BJP as a myth. “Why didn’t BJP counter it? What the party lacked was a strong regional leader,” he said.