Varieties of Political Behavior among Nadars of Tamilnad

Author(s): Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr.

Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 6, No. 11 (Nov., 1966), pp. 614-621
Published by: University of California Press
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VARIETIES OF POLITICAL BEHAVIOR
AMONG NADARS OF TAMILNAD
ROBERT L. HARDGRAVE, JR.

The spectre of caste has increasingly come to haunt both Indian

politics and Indian political analysis. "Caste is so tacitly and so completely
accepted by all, including those most vocal in condemning it," writes M. N.
Srinivas, "that it is everywhere the unit of social action." I Srinivas argues
that the development of modern communications, the spread of education
and literacy, and rising prosperity have contributed, not to the disintegra-
tion of caste, but to its strengthening. As caste solidarity has increased,
caste has been politicized and drawn into the political system as a major
actor. The role of caste in modern Indian politics has been decried, on the
one hand, as a fissiparous threat to national unity,2 and, on the other hand,
lauded as a channel of communication which acts as a link between the
mass electorate and "the new democratic political processes and makes them
comprehensible in traditional terms to a population still largely politically
illiterate." 3
Students of the Indian political scene have come to speak of the "Reddy
vote" or the "Ezhava bloc," just as in the United States we often talk in
terms of the Negro, the Irish, or the Italian vote. To what extent, how-
ever, can we ever meaningfully speak of a caste, as such, as an actor in
politics? What are the factors which affect the political behavior of a caste
or of a religious, racial, tribal, or ethnic group? Is there, in fact, a caste
interest which disposes the members of a caste community to vote in the
same way or to act politically as a united bloc? In order to explore these
questions, let us select a single caste community for analysis, the Nadars of
Tamilnad.
In the course of the past one hundred and fifty years, under the impact
of economic change and social mobilization, the Nadars have experienced
accelerated change. Traditionally, the caste was engaged in its hereditary
occupation as toddy-tappers, climbers of the palmyra palm, and, defiled by
their ritually-impure calling, they suffered the social disabilities of a low-
almost untouchable-community.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Nadars-or the Shanars,
as they were then known-were almost entirely engaged in the cultivation
and climbing of the palmyra, and the community was heavily concentrated
in the "palmyra forest" of the southeastern portion of Madras in Tiruchen-

I M. N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Bombay: Asia Pub-
lishing House, 1962), p. 41.
2See Selig Harrison, India, the Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton: University
Press, 1960).
3 Lloyd and Susanne H. Rudolph, "The Political Role of India's Caste Associations,"
Pacific Affairs, XXXIII:1 (March, 1960), pp. 21-22.

614

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 ROBERT L. HARDGRAVE, JR. 615

dur taluq of Tinnevelly District. In this region, which was their traditional
home, the lands were owned by the aristocratic Nadans, "lords of the soil,"
who constituted among themselves an endogamous sub-caste. In constant
conflict over the land, each Nadan commanded a client group of dependent
climbers. As a Nadan succeeded in acquiring a greater number of men, he
would encroach upon the lands of his neighbor or challenge his right to the
estate through litigation. Thus, each village in this Nadar-dominant area
was divided into opposing client groups. The community was divided by the
endogamy of five sub-castes, as well, and by the basic division between the
Nadans and the climbers. As the almost total lack of roads and communica-
tions facilities precluded the horizontal extension of caste ties over a wide
area, the Nadars were also divided geographically. There was no conscious-
ness of a Nadar community, no sense of unity.
After the introduction of British Rule, the missionaries found a rich
field among the Nadars, and by the 1840's a "mass movement" had brought
a large portion of the community in Tinnevelly into the church. Through
the organization of the mission, the Nadar converts found the strength of
unity, and through educational opportunities, began slowly to advance.
During the same period, in the early 19th century, new economic oppor-
tunities and the development of transportation facilities had led to the
migration of Nadars from southeastern Tinnevelly up into the towns of
Ramnad and Madurai, where they settled as traders and merchants. Here
as a small and threatened minority, the Nadars joined together in each
town in tightly-knit organizations called uravinmurai. Gradually acquiring
wealth and power as traders and money-lenders, the Nadar community in
Ramnad found an increasing gap between its low traditional social status
and its rising economic position. In an effort to achieve a social status com-
mensurate with their new economic position, the Nadars began to adopt
the attributes of the higher castes in the process of Sanskritization. They
advanced claims to high Kshatriya status, asserting superiority second only
to the Brahman, and created a whole new mythology of their origins and
antiquity as the original rulers of the southern districts. With these pre-
tensions, the Nadars, in a series of confrontations with the higher castes,
sought interactional recognition for their claims through entrance into the
temples forbidden to them. These efforts culminated in the late 19th cen-
tury in the Sivakasi riots, in which 5000 anti-Nadars attacked the Nadar
trading town of Sivakasi, and in the Kamudi temple entry case, which went
as high as the Privy Council in London and was decided against the Nadars.
In their growing wealth, the Nadar trading community of Ramnad tried
to disassociate itself from their tree-climbing brethren in Tinnevelly, some
saying that there were, in fact, no connections between the two groups.
Among the Nadars of Ramnad, through their organization in the face of
the hostility of other castes and through their escalating confrontations with
them, a self-consciousness as a community rapidly emerged, with a deep
historical memory and an aspiration for the future. In 1910, these Nadar

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616 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR IN TAMILNAD

traders, seeking the uplift of the community and an association which would
bring together all Nadars, including those in Tinnevelly, organized the
Nadar Mahajana Sangam. The caste association soon became the largest
and most active in all Tamilnad. The Sangam's touring agents went into
the villages to organize the Nadars; panchayats were established for set-
tling disputes within the community and between the Nadars and other
communities; aid was provided through a cooperative bank for the stimu-
lation of business and industry; and schools and colleges were founded,
with scholarships available to worthy Nadar students. In the early years,
the Sangam successfully petitioned the Madras Census to have its name
changed for official purposes from Shanar, which was associated with the
palmyra, to Nadar. The Sangam also sought benefits for the poor climbers
of Tinnevelly, but the association remained for the most part essentially
an organization of the northern Nadar trading community of Ramnad and
Madurai.
The Nadars sought the protection of the British Raj, and the association
pledged loyalty to the King and support to the non-Brahman Justice Party,
which held control of Madras during the 1920's. Throughout the 20's and
into the late 1930's, the Nadars of Ramnad were united behind the Justice
Party in opposition to the Congress. In Kamudi, in the early 30's, a young
Nadar Congress worker, Kamaraj Nadar, was stoned by the community
as a traitor to his caste. While the organization of the Ramnad Nadars
mobilized a solidary support for the Justice Party, the Nadars of Tin-
nevelly continued to be largely divided. Their support, however, went
mainly to the Congress, for in Tinnevelly, the rival Vellala community,
whom the Nadars saw as oppressors, dominated the Justice Party.
Although the community was divided between Tinnevelly and Ramnad-
i.e., the climbers and the traders-the Nadar Christians in Tinnevelly were
responding to educational opportunities, and as lawyers, physicians, and
teachers were migrating to the north, to Madurai, and as far as Madras
City. The Nadar trading community of Ramnad was also rising rapidly
in wealth. The traditional correspondence between economic position and
social status had lost all meaning, for within the Nadar community, there
was an increasingly wide range of occupations and economic positions-
from the toddy-tapper to the trader and businessman and the professional.
The demands of deference to new economic status in the urban areas of
change eroded the hierarchy of ritual purity, and with the increasing dif-
ferentiation within the Nadar community, a dispersion of political support
followed. In the cities, where no single community commanded a dominant
role and where within each community there was a high differentiation in
occupational terms, the political identity of the individual reflected cross-
cutting vertical and horizontal ties and a multiplicity of commitments,
associations, and interests.
In 1937, a Congress leader, Rajagopalachari, was elected as Chief Min-
ister of Madras, and in that year opened the temples to all castes. Nadars
were impressed by the action which enabled them for the first time to enter

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ROBERT L. HARDGRAVE, JR. 617

the temples, but they were perhaps more impressd by the changing polit-
ical mood of the times. The days of the British were now numbered, and
soon it would be the Congress Government to whom the Nadar business-
man would have to apply for licenses and to whom they would pay taxes.
In 1940, Kamaraj Nadar, from the merchant town of Virudhunagar in
Ramnad district, was elected President of the Tamil Nad Congress Commit-
tee. He had come up in the ranks of the Congress totally without Nadar
support. "Congress was his caste," the people said. Kamaraj's success and
his prominence within the party could only give luster to the Congress in
the eyes of the Nadars, and in 1940, a dissident group within the Nadar
Mahajana Sangam opposed the association's continued support of the Brit-
ish Government. Forming the National Nadar Association to win support
for the Congress from the Nadar community, the dissidents, at the height
of the "Quit India" movement in 1942, succeeded in gaining control of the
Sangam. By 1947, the overwhelming majority of Nadars supported the
Congress, and the caste association had aligned itself with the party, urg-
ing Nadars to support Congress candidates.
Officially, the Sangam was non-political, but its sympathies were clearly
apparent. The Nadar community, however, no longer had the political
cohesion which had characterized the Ramnad Nadar's solid support of the
Justice Party earlier. A significant portion of the old Justice supporters
quietly transferred their allegiance to the secessionist Dravida Kazagham
or the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (D.M.K.). Younger Nadars and col-
lege students, in particular, were more vocal in their support of the D.M.K.,
a "separatist" party which emphasized Tamil nationalism. Nadar factory
workers in Madurai tended to favor the Communists, while in more recent
years wealthy Nadar businessmen and professionals in Madurai and Mad-
ras have joined the conservative Swatantra Party. Thus, the differences
in occupation and economic position within the Nadar community had
increasingly become more significant than the differences between Nadars
and members of other communities at comparable levels, and this found
expression in political behavior. It became clear that the Nadar Mahajana
Sangam, if it was to continue to represent the Nadar community as a
whole and not merely one pro-Congress section, would have to de-politicize
itself. In 1957, before the Second General Elections, the Executive Council
defeated a motion that the Sangam support Nadar candidates in the elec-
tion. The way a man votes, the Sangam said, must be a matter of personal
conscious, and the association must not extend its support to any candi-
date on the basis of caste or party. In that year, P. R. Muthasami, Gen-
eral Secretary of the Sangam and an active Congressman, worked for a
non-Nadar Congress candidate in the Parliamentary election in opposition
to the Vice President of the Nadar Mahajana Sangam who ran as an
Independent sympathetic to the D.M.K. Muthusami also opposed the suc-
cessful candidacy of a Communist Nadar for a seat in Parliament from
Madurai constituency.
In the analysis of the historical changes within the Nadar community,

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618 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR IN TAMILNAD

it is possible to distinguish three stages of political behavior along the

continuum from the more "traditional" to the more "modern": the paro-
chial, the integrated, and the differentiated. The solidarity of political
behavior of the community is seen to be a function of (1) the elaboration
of caste ranking, or differentiation with regard to other caste groups, and
(2) the degree of differentiation within the Nadar caste itself.
The first, or parochial, stage in the community's political behavior may
be seen in the Nadars' traditional homeland in Tiruchendur. Here the
caste was so predominant in numbers that elaboration of caste ranking
was minimal in interactional terms. At the same time, the caste was dif-
ferentiated by sub-caste and, more significantly, by the division between the
climbers and the Nadans. Politics took place within the Nadar community,
between factional client groups.
The second, or integrated, stage is seen in Ramnad, where the Nadars
were confronted by a high elaboration of caste ranking, as a minority com-
munity. At the same time, there was minimal differentiation within the
Nadar community. The distinction between Nadan and climber was no
longer significant among the traders, and the sub-castes divisions dis-
appeared. Tightly organized in defense of caste interest, politics was pri-
marily a facet of caste, in which the Nadars acted as a cohesive unit.
The third stage of differentiation emerges with urbanization. The very
success of the Nadars in their rise in social and economic status led to the
increasing differentiation of the community. In the urban areas of Madurai
and Madras City, where the community was only one of many communities,
each highly differentiated, the elaboration of caste ranking declined as
differentiation increased. The caste became politically heterogeneous,
reflecting a multiplicity of cross-cutting ties.
In the analysis of the contemporary setting, it is evident that one cannot
speak meaningfully of "the Nadar vote," for there is by no means a distinct
and viable Nadar interest. The varieties of political behavior among the
Nadars in Tamilnad today reflect the historical experience of the com-
munity. Let us look briefly at four different contemporary political environ-
ments in which the Nadars figure prominently.
In the Tinnevelly constituency of Tiruchendur, the Nadars are the dom-
inant caste. Here, as in the past, they follow their traditional occupation
as tappers. The changes which have brought wealth and prominence to
their mercantile caste fellows in Ramnad and Madurai have little affected
their marginal economic existence. Politics in Tiruchendur is factional,
and each group is dominated by Nadars. The candidates of each party are
Nadars, and there is little caste interest, as such, to which any could
appeal. The aura of Kamaraj has drawn the majority of Nadars to the
Congress, and they have returned Congress candidates in the Legislative
Assembly in all elections. The Congress in Tiruchendur, however, is split
into two factions. One group supports Kosalram, the Nadar political leader
of the region who was for many years president of the Tinnevelly Congress

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ROB E RT L. H A RD G RAV E, J R. 619

Committee. The anti-Kosalram faction emerged in 1963, when Kosalram

sought to elect his own candidate, a Nadar, a president of the Tamil Nad
Congress Committee. Kamaraj opposed the move, and he was backed by
the Speaker of the Assembly, a Maravar from Tinnevelly. Kosalram was
forced to resign as president of the Tinnevelly Congress, and his Maravar
opponent, the Speaker, gained control of the District Committee. As he
did so, the Tiruchendur taluq Congress Committee, under Kosalram's con-
trol, was superseded and anti-Kosalram convenors-all Nadars-were
appointed. In the elections to the taluq committee in 1965, the Speaker's
supporters in Tiruchendur gained ascendency, and the Kosalram faction
was brought into line. What appeared on the surface to be the traditional
conflict between Nadar and Maravar was in fact not a caste dispute at all,
as Kosalram's defeat revealed.
In the Ramnad constituency in which Kamudi is located, politics is
characterized by a conflict between castes, as far as the Nadars are con-
cerned. Kamudi is a small merchant town, where the Nadar traders form
only a minority of the population. The dominant caste is the M1aravar, tra-
ditional antagonists to the Nadars' aspirations for higher status. Until his
death in 1964, the leader of the Maravars was Muthuramalinga Thevar, a
turbulent follower of the small Forward Bloc party. Before independence,
Muthuramalinga had been a major Congress leader and carried his district
for Congress in each election. The Nadars, to the last man and under
orders from their local caste organization, voted for the Justice Party, in
opposition to the Congress and its Maravar leader. In 1947, Muthura-
malinga aligned with the Forward Bloc, and the Nadars, threatened by
Maravar dominance, switched to the Congress. In the constituency, both
the Forward Bloc and Congress candidates were always Maravars. When
Muthuramalinga and his men were in Congress, their Maravar factional
opponent, the Raja of Ramnad, was a Justice leader. With Independence,
the Raja extended his support to Congress and placed his own men as Con-
gress candidates against the winning Forward Bloc. The Nadars, as a
caste, supported the weaker Maravar faction. In 1964, after the death of
Muthuramalinga, the Congress Maravar candidate, with Nadar support,
won the by-election.
In the cities, the locus of economic change and social mobilization, no
single caste predominates and each is largely differentiated occupationally,
representing a wide range of economic pursuits. In Madurai, the largest
city of the southern districts of Tamilnad, the Nadars are a major mercan-
tile community and are concentrated primarily in two wards of the city.
In both, each party selects Nadar candidates for the city council elections.
Congress candidates have been returned so far, but in the last election
in one of the wards, a non-Nadar D.M.K. candidate received a substantial
portion of the Nadar vote. In the wards around the Madurai Mills, the
Nadar mill workers are more likely to vote Communist along with the
Maravar workers than they are to vote for Congress, despite the con-

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 620 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR IN TAMILNAD

tinuing charisma of Kamaraj, while the young Nadar students are drawn
by the appeal to Tamil nationalism into the D.M.K.
As the Nadars represent a fairly small percentage of the assembly or
parliamentary constituency populations, they have little weight as a caste in
the elections. No Nadar has been selected by a major party as an Assembly
candidate from Madurai, but in 1957 and 1962, the Communist Party can-
didate for the Madurai Parliamentary constituency was a Nadar from a
town near Madurai. The Communist won in 1957 and enjoyed wide support
from most communities, including the Nadars. In 1962, however, when
the Congress put up a particularly strong non-Nadar candidate, many
Nadars in Madurai who had previously voted for the Nadar Communist
now voted for Congress. The pattern was the same for other communities
throughout the constituency and the Communist lost.
In Madras City, the process of occupational and economic differentia-
tion is even more evident than in Madurai. In no constituency of the city
are Nadars sufficiently concentrated to dominate local politics. They are
spread throughout the city and are highly differentiated, with a range
which includes tappers, coolie laborers, government clerks, small shop-
keepers, physicians, lawyers, teachers, and wealthy businessmen with trad-
ing interests all over the world. The differences within the caste have become
increasingly more significant than the differences between the individuals of
different castes sharing similar social and economic backgrounds. The de-
cline in the barriers of ritual purity in the cities has allowed the individual
to form new interests and associations, cutting across caste lines. In Mad-
ras, the highest percentage of Nadars is in the Washermanpet constitu-
ency, and in 1962, a Nadar Congressman was returned to the Assembly.
Had he appealed to "caste interest," however, he could never have won,
for the Nadar traders who reside in the area hardly command sufficient
numbers to secure a majority among themselves. Indeed, a number of
Nadars in the constituency did not vote for their own caste man, but sup-
ported the D.M.K. candidate, a man of the fisherman caste. In the 1957
election one Nadar was elected to the Assembly from the Thousand Lights
constituency in Madras City. He was a D.M.K. candidate, elected from a
constituency that was predominantly Muslim.
In Madurai and Madras, caste has by no means ceased to be an impor-
tant factor in determining political behavior, but it is only one of a multi-
plicity of variables which affect the individual voter's decision. The political
party may choose its candidates from the dominant caste of a particu-
lar constituency, but it does no more than the American city boss who
seeks to aggregate the support of ethnic communities by offering candi-
dacies to their leaders. Few politicians in India can afford to court a single
caste, for in most constituencies no single caste community so predomi-
nates as to command a majority alone. Though they may seek to gain the
support of a caste by appealing to its particular interests in a given situa-
tion, they must do so without alienating other communities. Among the

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ROBERT L. HARDGRAVE, JR. 621

twelve Nadar members of the Madras Legislative Assembly, not one has
been active in the Nadar Mahajana Sangam although all support its activ-
ities. Kamaraj, for example, has never had any association with the
Sangam and goes to great lengths to identify himself with the broader com-
munity. The appelation of "caste man" would severely limit the political
horizon of an aspirant office-seeker.
The role of caste in Indian politics is changing, but as it has operated,
it is not a unique phenomenon. The process by which an atomized and
divided community gains consciousness and unity, entering the political
system as a major actor is one familiar to the broader processes of political
behavior. The very success of the Nadars, however, has led to an increasing
differentiation occupationally which has manifest itself in concomitant
dispersion of political support. Although they have one of the largest and
most active caste associations in India, the Nadars are not united politically.
That it was possible at one time, or even today in certain constituencies,
to speak of "the Nadar vote" only underlines the situational and temporal
character of caste as an actor in politics, for there has never really been,
nor is there now, a partisan Nadar interest.

ROBERT L. HARDGRAVE, JR. is an Assistant Professor of Government at Oberlin

College.

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