TamilThanmai: A Historical Ethnography Of Public Political Lives in Tamilnadu (1950-1970)

This dissertation is a historical ethnography of Sulur, a town in Coimbatore district of Tamilnadu, India. Through in-depth interviews and archives, both personal and public, of textual and visual sources, I have evolved an analytical framework from which to understand everyday public political lives. Using a spatial analysis, this dissertation has documented the lives of men in Sulur who were engaged in public politics. I have contextualized these life stories in a range of socio-economic and political histories of Tamilnadu during that time. The period between the 1950-70 is when the political parties that were to influence the landscape of electoral power and political discourse in the second half of the 20th C were forming their base in Tamilnadu. This period, before the consolidation of state power and political discourses, is an ideal time from which to understand the history of such political formations from the perspective of the everyday lives of its ordinary members, all of whom are men. Based on this narrative I have identified and explored elements of what I term TamilThanmai. TamilThanmai, I propose is a historically grounded analytical framework which simultaneously describes the essence of public political lives that provided a way of being and sense of self for all those who lived it. This dissertation is a history of and through TamilThanmai. In the dissertation themes of public political life has been explored through three main chapters. These include a focus on Dalit public political lives; the affective ties that hold together the non-Brahmin, non-Dalit men engaged in such lives; and the embodiment of such a politics through physical training culture. This three-pronged exploration is grounded in a critical spatial framework. Through this exploration of TamilThanmai I propose a theoretical framework from which to understand the persistence of caste-based thinking and masculinization of public political lives in Tamilnadu.Ph.D