Dravidian Politics vs. Gandhian Ideology
GANDHI’S TRAVELS IN TAMIL NADU by A. Ramasamy. Translated from the original Tamil by P.C. Ramakrishna Orient BlackSwan, 2023, 673 pp., INR 1995
THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL NATIONALISM IN SOUTH INDIA by Marguerite Ross Barnett Princeton University Press, 1976, Indian subcontinent print edition, 2022, 386 pp., INR 899
August 2023, volume 47, No 8

A Ramasamy’s Thamizhnaatil Gandhi, published in 1969, is a tender love story between the Mahatma and the Tamils.  According to Ramasamy, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s affection for the people of Tamil Nadu originated in South Africa, where he first met—and later grew close to—young Tamil martyrs to the satyagraha cause, like the 16-year-old Valliammal, 20-year-olds—Nagappan and Narayanasami, among several others.  In fact, Gandhi’s first encounter with a badly abused Tamil contract labourer, Balasundaram, within a few months of his arrival as a practicing lawyer in South Africa in 1893, was a cultural breakthrough of sorts, by introducing him to a member of an unfamiliar community.  Gandhi finally won this pro bono case. 

Ramasamy’s book meticulously tracks every single journey by Gandhi to different places in Tamil Nadu, from October 1896 to January 1946.  While the obsessive chronicling of the many personalities present at all the places visited by Gandhi can get a tad tiresome, the overall narrative is not without entertainment.  Ramasamy’s intention may have been to celebrate the many virtues of the Mahatma.  What the reader in the 21st century gets is a measure of the man, MK Gandhi.

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