7 - Political Parties

Summary

In 1951 Thanjāvūr's politics were dominated by three political parties: the Indian National Congress, the Drāvida Kazhakam, and the Communist Party of India.

The Congress Party

The Indian nationalist movement, spearheaded by the Congress Party, became active in Thanjāvūr about 1900. In Tamil Nadu it was perhaps inevitable that Brahmans should lead it, for they had provided the ministers, the bureaucracy, and the religious leadership of the Tamil Hindu kingdoms in pre-British times and had not forgotten their loyalty to the native Rajas. At the same time, it was chiefly Brahmans who acquired English education and flocked into the learned professions and government service in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This gave them expertise in modern education and government and strengthened their desire for an independent India. As carriers of the Sanskrit tradition, Brahmans had an all-India consciousness that tended to be lacking in the other castes. As the plan for national freedom unfolded in the 1930s, some Brahmans learned Hindi in preparation for an independent government with an all-India national language.

Thanjāvūr journalists were especially active in the nationalist movement. G. Subramania Iyer edited both the English nationalist paper The Hindū and the Tamil Swadēsamitran in the early 1900s. He was followed by Kastūri Ranga Iyengar, who hailed from a Brahman village close to Kumbapeṭṭai. In addition to the Brahman professionals, the Congress Party gradually gathered strength among Veḷḷalar and other white-collar workers and among rich farmers, traders, industrialists, and other businessmen of Thanjāvūr's towns and its larger villages.