Tamilisai Soundararajan: The Antidote For Dravidianist Misogyny

“You are going to elect a fair and beautiful candidate”, Udayanidhi Stalin, heir of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) supremo, said in an election rally at South Chennai, introducing the DMK candidate ‘Tamizhachi’ Thangapandiyan, to the constituency. The crowd cheered.

What Udayanidhi Stalin was appealing to is a dominant sentiment in the Dravidian collective psyche arising from a deep seated complex which considers those with fair skin as somehow being superior. While the pre-colonial notions of beauty never bothered about any colour and sang praises of both, those fair and those dark, equally, with the onset of colonialism, the beauty of woman was centred on her skin colour and a definite body shape. Since then, women in Dravidianist politics have almost always been made to submit to one of these two Dravidianist requirements - the skin colour and/or the specific body type.

Any woman who decides to stand on her own merits and achievements is body-shamed.

Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan is perhaps the first major politician in the state who has demolished this unwritten code and garners respect based on her own achievements, acts and deeds. She is the daughter of famous Gandhian Congress politician and Tamil orator, Kumari Ananthan. Though a Congress politician, he had fought against the Emergency of Indira Gandhi and was later with Janata Party. Later, in the 1980s, he eventually returned to the Congress.

That Dr Tamilisai had started appreciating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was not entirely acceptable to her father. However she, in turn, had her own reservations and prejudices about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). An incident in Tanjore medical college changed her perspective about the organisation when a ward boy informed her to approach the RSS for blood donation when a patient in a critical condition needed a specific blood group.

Later, she was to join the BJP. Kumari Ananthan was so upset that for a prolonged period the father and daughter did not speak to each other.

Thus Dr Tamilisai came up in politics, through her own struggles. She never positioned her gender in the centre of her politics and nor did she play the victim when the so-called progressives in Tamil Nadu went silent after pro-DMK and pro-Congress meme creators and even politicians of that dispensation tried to body-shame her. Instead, she pointed out the fallacy of their way of looking at women. ‘I am beautiful in my own way’ she said once.

In the history of Tamil Nadu no other woman politician has faced as much ridicule as Dr Tamilisai has. But the way she bears it and yet takes on her opponents is a quality that sets her apart in Tamil Nadu politics.

Known for her honesty and stinging remarks against political opponents, she is contesting this time from the Thoothukudi parliamentary constituency. Pitted against her is Kanimozhi - a woman who is almost an antithesis of Dr Tamilisai.

If Dr Tamilisai went against the tide of dynasty politics, even going against her own father, Kanimozhi rides the dynasty wave.

Dr Tamilisai is known for her honesty. Kanimozhi is known for her ‘feminist poetry’ that was promoted through elite power circles.

Kanimozhi displays hypocrisy of the Dravidianist kind when she ridicules the Tirupati temple while at the same time paying obeisance at the famous Thiruchendur temple in the constituency. Dr Tamilisai, on the other hand, displays ideological commitment and consistency.

Kanimozhi went into silent mode when Sri Lankan Tamils faced a great tragedy in 2009. Worse, her picture with Rajapaksa, where she is seen smiling, still haunts the memory of Tamils. As against this, Dr Tamilisai did not mince words when she was reacting to insensitive remarks made by Dr Subramanian Swamy. She called his bluff by terming them as his own statements and made a complaint about it to the central government.

Thus Kanimozhi and Dr Tamilisai stand for completely different and opposing value systems. Dr Tamilisai exemplifies the new woman - liberated, not an object in the eyes of men as Dravidianist politics demands them to be. She does not ride on the ‘legacy’ of a patriarchal dynasty. She is honest and upright and has ideological commitment but not blinkers. She never hesitates to raise her voice against what she considers injustice. If Dr Tamilisai gets elected, we can be sure the good doctor will be the best antidote to the Dravidian neurosis that plagues Tamil Nadu and belittles and body shames women.