ARIYALUR: While VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan’s victory in the Chidambaram Lok Sabha constituency was cause for much celebration, PMK workers in the region are still struggling to understand how a large number of caste Hindus voted for the Dalit leader, despite their intense campaign against him.
The Vanniyar-based PMK, an ally of the ruling AIADMK, has a significant vote base in the northern districts of the state where there is a concentration of members from the community. While the AIADMK fielded its own member against Thirumavalavan in Chidambaram, the PMK carried out an intense campaign against him, focusing on his status as a Dalit leader. Workers went house-to-house showing videos of his older speeches, claiming that his victory would cause Dalits in the region to become more assertive, and alleging that caste Hindu women were under threat.
The VCK’s ally, the DMK worked day and night to counter this campaign, holding grama sabhas and spreading awareness of the ‘pot’ symbol on which the leader was contesting. The result was a close contest in which Thirumavalavan won by just over 3000 votes. However, to the PMK’s shock, analysis of votes indicated that despite the party’s campaign, caste Hindus including Vanniyars voted for the VCK.
A PMK functionary in Ariyalur pointed to a figure he had attained that reportedly showed over 400 caste Hindus in the tiny village of Ponparappi had voted for Thirumavalavan’s Pot symbol. The village had seen violence on polling day and several Dalit huts were damaged.
“Our village has polled some 3000 votes. Of this, VCK managed to poll about 800 votes and about half of these votes were from non-Dalits,” the PMK worker said, wondering how this had happened when the party had campaigned against the VCK-DMK combine in the village.
“DMK leaders like MRK Paneerselvam and S S Sivasankar were keen on getting as many votes from non-Dalit villages as possible,” one worker rued.
“We hoped that Vanniyar community as a bloc would vote against Thirumavalavan. We expected that most of the DMK members from the community would not vote for him. Though our campaign was so intensive, we failed,” said Aravind, a PMK youth.
While PMK’s personal attacks on Thirumavalavan, aimed at creating prejudice against him, the DMK worked to neutralise it. Still, prejudice was so strong that even painting graffiti in VCK’s favour was a struggle.
“I saw DMK’s Kumaratchi union secretary struggling to convince his relatives at a village to vote for Thirumavalavan. PMK’s campaign created negative opinions among them about the VCK and we had to take extra efforts to persuade them,” VCK’s state deputy general secretary Vanni Arasu said.
The major role played by the DMK was in preventing the PMK from creating an uneasy atmosphere for Dalits to come out and vote.
“PMK had the history of booth-capturing in the 1996 Assembly election at Andimadam. Even during the run-up to this election, the speeches of Ramadoss and Anbumani sparked a doubt of the repeat of the 1996 scenario. The DMK’s village meetings created a comfortable environment among voters who wanted to vote for the Pot symbol,” S S Sivasankar, DMK’s Ariyalur district secretary, said.