The anti-Brahmin rhetoric and hate at the core of the Dravidian movement is a matter of common knowledge. What is not common knowledge, however, is the participation of Brahmins in the movement.
After the recent decision to rename Lloyd’s Road in Chennai, which was renamed Avvai Shanmugam Road, to V P Raman Road, now, his memory comes back into the public eye.
What is of interest to us is the life and work of V P Raman as an example of the inability of the elite Brahmins of the time to fully comprehend the nature of the Dravidian movement.
Mr V P Raman’s son and former Advocate General of Tamil nadu, Mr P S Raman, has written a biography of his father- The Man Who Would Not Be King, which is very well-referenced and has a wealth of detail.
Mr P S Raman paints a portrait of a highly intelligent man born into privileged circumstances, who went on to become a brilliant lawyer, well-networked socialite and devoted family man.
With his intelligence and contacts, he could have been one of India’s storied judges or dominated the Bar at Delhi in the most important constitutional cases or in corporate cases working in Mumbai. He, however, chose to take only opportunities that came his way, reluctantly, and the legacy he seems to have left behind are memories of his intellectual brilliance and engaging personality among friends and family, besides his own close-knit, caring family.
V P Raman, Attorney
Mr Venkata Pattabhi Raman was born in 1932 as the only son of a well-off businessman. He received a strict upbringing, mostly under the supervision of his mother, a ‘Tiger Mom’ of those times. He was a straight topper throughout his education and went into legal practice. His performance at the Law College, winning almost every single academic medal possible, is yet to be matched, 75 years on! He was very quick to make a mark for himself. He was made Additional Solicitor General to The Government Of India in 1975 and gave it up to be made Advocate General Of Tamil Nadu in MGR’s first government, between 1977 to 1979.
He was personal friends with six Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu – Rajaji, whom he affectionately called ‘thatha’ (grandfather), Kamaraj, CN Annadurai, MGR, Karunanidhi, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for Carnatic music and cricket and Nedunchezhiyan. Sivaji Ganesan is said to have modelled his iconic role of Barrister Rajinikanth in the classic ‘Gowravam’ on Mr Raman.
Mr Raman would have continued his legal career in Delhi, but he refused to defend Sanjay Gandhi in the Shah Commission, which investigated the excesses of the Emergency. The reason given by Mr P S Raman in the book is that his father was upset by the incidents at Turkman Gate during the Emergency. After a stint as Advocate General, MGR is also said to have cooled to him, not due to professional reasons, but because MGR felt let down by Mr VP Raman’s to continue as Advocate General even after Indira Gandhi had dismissed his Government.
During his tenure as Advocate General of Tamil Nadu, he had occasion to upset another close friend, since he had to participate in the Sarkaria Commission’s investigation of corruption against M Karunanidhi’s DMK Government. Time heals all wounds. True to that, he reconciled with both men in due course of time.
VP Raman’s politics
Many people who came of age at the time of India’s Independence were taken by Socialism. It was true of many countries across the world. Mr Raman was no different from many millions of young people. However, he did understand the principal conundrum in India, in that caste differences play as big a role in inequity as differences in class. Sometime in 1949 or 1950, when a fresh entrant in Madras Law College, he wrote his proposal for changes to the CPI’s manifesto. He wanted bridging caste and religious divides to be as important as the Marxist-Leninist goal of uniting the working class. It is said to have been considered and discussed by the CPI politburo and then discarded. He parted ways with Socialists after this incident.
At this time, the Dravidian movement, particularly the DMK, which was started by C N Annadurai, positioned itself as working to establish an egalitarian society. In 1954/1955, he first came in contact with the founder of the DMK, Mr C N Annadurai at a public meeting in Triplicane, Madras.
As with many other people, such as Karunanidhi and Kannadasan, VPR was left awestruck at Annadurai’s oratory and personality. Breaking with EV Ramasamy’s Dravidar Kazhagam, Annadurai was at pains to point out that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was a movement for the welfare of all people in the Dravida region and did not oppose Brahmins as individuals but only Brahminism and its rituals and practices. This farce has long since been put to rest by the consistent hate speech of Dravidian ideologues, writers, movie makers and politicians, but VPR seems to have taken it at face value. The personality of Annadurai, with his easy camaraderie and ability to build consensus, would have played a big role in this.
He plunged into the movement, and campaigned for the fledgling party in all elections. He stayed in the movement to see his friends, Annadurai, Karunanidhi, Anbazhagan, Mathizhagan and others assume office. In 1958, when the party decided they needed to put in place a formal constitution, a drafting committee led by N V Natarajan and with party ideologues EVK Sampath, Era Sezhiyan, Karunanidhi and VP Raman was formed. For a 26-year-old lawyer like VPR, this was quite an unexpected acknowledgement.
VPR was also appointed Assistant Editor of the DMK’s English publication – ‘Homeland’, which he used to write on many topics. One of his articles on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, published in 1958, was recently reproduced by the party, to demonstrate the consistency of their support to the Tamils of Sri Lanka.
The DMK also garnered a major advance in electoral politics, when it bettered the performance of the Congress in the 1959 Madras Municipal Corporation elections. At this time, war clouds were gathering on the China and Pakistan fronts. The country would go on to fight a debilitating Himalayan war in 1962.
Against this backdrop, VPR wanted to revisit the party’s demand for Dravida Nadu, an independent union of States in the Southern part of the sub-continent within a loose federation called India. Earlier, in 1957, at the Trichy party conference, this same topic had been discussed, with VPR, EVK Sampath, Era Sezhiyan and Kannadasan in favour of renouncing the demand and affirming faith in the integrity of the Indian Republic. At the 1957 conference, Annadurai had firmly made his preference known for continuing with the Dravida Nadu demand.
In 1959, VPR called for a meeting of the Executive Committee, without consulting Annadurai. Annadurai abstained from the meeting and a resolution towards integrating with the rest of the country and firming the national fabric was carried, due to support from Era Sezhiyan and EVK Sampath. Annadurai was upset at what he perceived as high-handedness and indiscipline. The resolution was withdrawn and the demand for Dravida Nadu remained. VPR had no option but to quit his party. This was his last engagement with direct politics.
The experience left the other leaders with a bad aftertaste. Due to this, and other contributing factors, EVK Sampath and Kannadasan left in 1961.
In any case, due to revised laws that would disqualify separatists from holding office as elected representatives, Annadurai would renounce the demand in 1962, but not before he gave a speech to announce his tactical retreat.
Evaluating his political legacy
We will not delve too deep into VPR’s legal career. Our focus shall be the short period of 5 to 6 years when he was a part of the Dravidian movement.
To begin with, we shall lay to rest any doubts that his period of engagement had anything to do with power and pelf. He joined the movement when they were a fringe movement and left just as they began to gain political credence. His family was wealthy enough that his father, Mr A Venkata Raman sold his house on Lloyd’s Road to MGR at a price that MGR could choose and let MGR pay him whenever he could. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister of today, Mr M K Stalin purchased his current residence on Chittaranjan Road from VPR’s in-laws.
His appointments as Law Officers were made by Indira Gandhi and MGR. In any case, his reputation was such that he was destined for high office. In his first brief at the Supreme Court, he appeared before then Chief Justice PB Gajendragadkar. His performance so impressed them that they called them to their chambers and half-jokingly asked him if he would take up an offer to become a judge. Since he did not have even 10 years in the Bar, the offer could not be followed through. He never attempted to take a place on the Bench, since he felt himself temperamentally unsuited for the job.
Thus, one can safely assume that VPR was a member of the Dravidian movement out of conviction. To understand how VPR and other elite Brahmins of the era never really opposed the Dravidian movement, one has to understand the zeitgeist.
Until the 1960s, Brahmins in Tamil Nadu had good political representation and until the 1980s, were well represented in the bureaucracy, academia, business and judiciary. The elites in the community did not feel the threat of the movement.
Annadurai and his consensus-building, people-friendly personality was a big factor in the creation of a respectable image for the DMK.
VPR and many Tamil Brahmin elites hailed from the Kaveri Delta region, where due to a combination of a strong proportion of the population in the 1930s and land ownership, the Brahmins felt a kinship with other dominant castes that led the DMK. This continues to this day, to some extent, with a non-trivial percentage of Brahmin votes in Kaveri Delta districts going to the DMK.
Many of the leading academics, politicians and intellectuals of the Dravidian movement reside in the same neighbourhoods as the elite Brahmins, frequent the same clubs and are followers of the same religious heads. It is but natural that these strong personal relationships cloud the true character of the Dravidian movement.
In the final reckoning, the tribalism of leaders from the lower middle class like Rama Gopalan, a Swayamsevak who dedicated his life to the Hindu cause or H Raja, the BJP leader who rose from origins as the son of a small-town PT instructor, may get far more dignity for the average Tamil Brahmin in their own homeland.
