During his one-day visit to Chennai, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pressed all the right buttons to woo the people of Tamil Nadu ahead of this summer’s Assembly elections.
He quoted two Tamil poets, praised farmers for their record rice production, reassured fishermen about instant intervention and relief in their long-standing dispute with the Lankan navy but more importantly he reached out to the Devendra Kula Vellalar (DKV) community – an important sub-sect of Dalits in the state.
Describing the DKV community as one that is proud of its Tamil and historical heritage the Prime Minister said that their demand that they be united under a single community name rather than be classified under seven different sub-sects under the Schedule Caste list was fully justified. Modi further pointed out that a bill was tabled in Parliament on Saturday to carry out this change and that it was a fulfilment of the promise made to the DKV community made in 2015.
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The then BJP president Amit Shah had attended a conference organized by the community in Madurai which had passed a resolution to this effect. Subsequently they had also met Prime Minister Modi to reiterate their demand. The BJP has viewed the DKV community as a crucial vote bank in South Tamil Nadu and has backed their demand even though there had been objections from other communities like the Kongu Vellalar community to which Chief Minister K. Palaniswami belongs.
Other communities with the Vellalar surname did not want a SC community to also sport a similar name. But the BJP chose to respect the sentiments of the DKV community and even the present Tamil Nadu government recommended the alteration sought by the DKV community. “One of the reasons the AIADMK could win the lone Lok Sabha seat in 2019 from Theni constituency was due to the support of the large number of DKV voters there. The support of the community located mostly in the South becomes all the more important as Sasikala could erode the AIADMK’s Thevar votes in this area. That way the bill to reclassify the community and the importance given by Modi in his speech is a very clever strategy by the BJP,” pointed out political analyst Raveenthran Thuraisamy.
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The PM’s visit was mainly aimed at rolling out a slew of projects in the state, many of them Central government funded, but he used the platform to indirectly answer his critics form the state by addressing the soft spots that his rivals use to target the BJP – the attacks on Tamil fishermen by the Lankan Navy, the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils and the imposition of Hindi. Modi pointed out that no single Tamil fisherman was in any Lankan jail and many of their boats had been returned and the rest would also come back to them. Similarly as the only Prime Minister who had visited Jaffna he assured the Tamil audience that the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils would be protected by his government.
To address the Tamil sentiment he quoted Tamil poet Avvaiyar to emphasize the importance of agriculture in nation building and the lines of Bharatiyar to stress on self-reliance from defence to industry to education. “He definitely has a better grip of Tamil literary works and uses them in the right context compared to any North Indian leader,” pointed out writer Maalan.
The only political message that Modi sent out from the dais was when he held the hands of Chief Minister Palaniswami and his deputy O. Panneerselvam aloft to demonstrate how strong the alliance between the BJP and AIADMK was. And the praise showered on Modi’s leadership by EPS and OPS proved one more thing – Modi is the latest recipient of unabashed hosannas from AIADMK leaders who in the past had reserved them only for Jayalalithaa.
