The emer­gence of a third force in any state of In­dia has been a long drawn out process as de­thron­ing the en­trenched lead­er­ship un­der the two-party regime is a her­culean task. Fol­low­ing the plank of Tamil­ism, for­mer ac­tor-di­rec­tor See­man’s Naam Tami­lar Katchi party has swelled its num­bers in Tamil Nadu, reach­ing the third po­si­tion in many con­stituen­cies. This party owes its suc­cess to See­man’s vi­sion, party lead­er­ship’s clar­ity, hard work of party ranks and ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port of the Tamil Di­as­pora to keep the Tamil spirit alive af­ter the 2009 mil­i­tary de­feat in Sri Lanka. WSN pre­sents this analy­sis by ace jour­nal­ist Dhar­shan Ra­jakobal.

Field­ing can­di­dates on the ba­sis of their com­mit­ment and earthy back­ground rather than their pop­u­lar­ity in cin­ema and be­ing the only po­lit­i­cal party in In­dia to have a 50 per­cent reser­va­tion for women by nom­i­nat­ing 20 men and 20 women for the 40 par­lia­men­tary seats of Tamil Nadu, party leader See­man and his Naam Tami­lar Party have dented the DMK-AIADMK stran­gle­hold and have emerged a force to reckon with.

Naam Tami­lar -We the Tamils, was born to up­hold Tamil iden­tity soon af­ter the 2009 geno­cide of na­tive Tamils in Sri Lanka. Tak­ing up the task of re­ju­ve­nat­ing the Tamil spirit to fight back in the face of death and de­struc­tion, See­man with his band of ded­i­cated ac­tivists toured the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu. Rekin­dling the as­pi­ra­tion for Tamil na­tion­al­ism, See­man went to every street cor­ner, talked and in­spired peo­ple to up­hold the unique­ness of Tamil lan­guage, arts and cul­ture.

NTK is com­mit­ted to the sov­er­eignty of the state, its lan­guage, its cul­ture and the rights of the state – the build­ing of a dis­pen­sa­tion which pro­tects the rights of all sec­tions of the Tamil peo­ple.

Though scep­ti­cal at the out­set, as peo­ple saw See­man and his par­ty’s pres­ence at protest demon­stra­tions and po­lit­i­cal ral­lies for causes dear to the peo­ple, the sce­nario changed.  Naam Tami­lar Party which con­tested its first par­lia­men­tary polls in 2014, se­cured barely 4 lakh votes across the state. Now in 2019, they have polled 16 lakhs plus votes, a four-time in­crease and an in­di­ca­tor of the times to come.

The Naam Tami­lar Party is work­ing on the idea of Tamil De­siyam, a con­cept ear­lier rub­bished as in­com­pre­hen­sive and un­achiev­able and was even dubbed as di­vi­sive. The peo­ple of Tamil Nadu, es­pe­cially the poor­est of the poor eas­ily seem to have ac­cepted the idea.

In every elec­tion, money plays a big part in Tamil Nadu pol­i­tics. Even this year, huge chunks of money were con­fis­cated by the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia, so much so that the only con­stituency in the whole of In­dia, where elec­tions were can­celled was Vel­lore in Tamil Nadu, where a huge cache of un­ac­counted cash, con­sid­ered to meant for buy­ing votes was held.

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This money game in elec­tions makes it ex­pen­sive and ul­ti­mately fu­els cor­rup­tion in pub­lic life.  The Naam Tami­lar Katchi has al­ready set a new trend by con­test­ing with­out much fan­fare and fol­low­ing a man to man peo­ples’ out­reach cam­paign method­ol­ogy.

In Tamil Nadu, there were two huge al­liances -one AIADMK and BJP  and an­other  DMK and Con­gress. While the ma­jor state po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­tested this elec­tion with al­liances, Naam Tami­lar party con­tested sin­gu­larly with faith in the party ide­ol­ogy.

As hap­pens with those mov­ing against the wind, Naam Tami­lar faced a me­dia block­ade too. Yet they man­aged to get a 5 per cent share of the votes polled.

As the youth ral­lies around See­man and Naam Tami­lar Katchi grows from strength to strength, a new chap­ter of Tamil na­tion­al­ism his­tory is be­ing writ­ten. Tamils are proudly up­hold­ing their dis­tinct iden­tity

Dhar­shan Ra­jakobal is a Jour­nal­ist, Doc­u­men­tary film­maker, Writer, So­cial Ac­tivist, Po­lit­i­cal An­a­lyst and Geneva Cor­re­spon­dent for Hu­man Rights Con­ven­tions of the United Na­tions.