A Case for Caste As a Political Community - Study of the Thevar Phenomenon in Tamil Nadu

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar describes Caste as ‘an Enclosed Class’. But haven’t castes with similar socio-cultural features, mutually opened their doors as an antithetical manifestation of colonial morality? The proposed work is on ‘Mukkulathor’, popularly referred to as Thevars, a federation of three castes - Kallar, Maravar and Agamudaiyar - in Tamil Nadu, India.

Thevar is often misunderstood as a caste, deceptively substantiating this as a homogeneous community through fabled claims insufficient to historicize their common lineage. The paper contends that the conflict between the western morality of the modern State and the indigenous system of socio-political living of the three castes was the prominent phenomenon in shaping the identity of the Thevar, mediating their engagement in the course of modern history with the colonial state, the anticolonial movement, the postcolonial state, and modernity as such. However, understanding this conglomeration as an administrative grouping alone leads to a mechanistic view of such caste formations. One should also study the modes of reciprocation within the communities as to how they perceive and imagine these new formations.

This paper intends to contextualize the coming together of these castes to form, what I would term, a political community by assessing the role of the State and other political modalities in constituting caste dominance, violence and other mechanisms of power. By doing so the paper would set the premise for the necessity to revisit the standard view of caste, foregrounding the significance of political imagination in shaping socio-cultural identities.

In doing so, the paper will attempt to highlight how this potent political imaginary, set in motion by State suppression, transposes ‘Caste’ from its static definitions to connote a ‘Political Community’. Considering the above, the paper is a significant methodological intervention in how we approach such political imaginations and how they formulate into social categories.