Caste and Politics in Tamil Nadu

Caste and Politics in Tamil Nadu M S S PANDIAN (August 31) has repeated the same arguments put forward earlier by Geetha and Rajadurai. Are Tamilian?; so stupid as all these authors say? If indeed the less than 3 per cent of a population can lord it over and bend the will of the 97 per cent of the rest, they must be superhumans: The tragedy of this argument is that it is the mirror image of the BJP argument according.to which India's troubles are due to the people of the Islamic faith who form barely 10 per cent of the total population. These arguments fail to take into account the fun- damental internal contradictions of the Indian (and Tamil) society. Pandian does not mention the upper caste atrocities against dalits at all although he is concerned about the problems of the Eelam Tkmilians. Accusing brahmins is a convenient ruse to hide one's own ugliness. Manu's most faithful followers these days are the thevars and nadars of chidam- baranar. Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts.