Taming the Dalit Panthers

Although Dalit orators and slogans threaten (or promise) to ‘turn Tamil Nadu on its head’, the 2006 state elections offer Dalit analysts pause for thought. In compromising its principles and allying with established parties, the Dalit Panther Iyyakkam (Movement), the largest Dalit movement in the state, has come full circle since 1999. In alternately backing the two dominant parties in the state (the DMK and the AIADMK), the DPI appears to be increasingly institutionalised. Excavating the future of Dalit action from past trends and contemporary politics, I suggest that Dalit parties are following an established political repertoire in which a phase of militant activism gives way to ‘politics as normal’. In the face of this analysis the paper asks whether such an approach is sustainable or can carry the majority of Dalits with it. If Dalit politics is a continuation of hegemonic politics, it argues, the liberatory promises of Dalit activism will have been betrayed.