CHENNAI: From being the leader of an outfit that boycotted polls to the leader who was key to the formation of the Third Front of Tamil Nadu ahead of the Assembly election in May, Thol Thirumavalan, the alliance’s candidate from Kattumannarkoil has grown in stature over the years.
The boy from Anganur village in Ariyalur who had to travel about 40 kilometres every day to reach his school in Thittagudi in neighbouring Cuddalore district completed his graduation in Chemistry from the University of Madras and Masters in Criminology from Presidency College, Chennai.
He was the first from the village to finish college. Inspired by the ideologies of Ambedkar and Periyar, Thirumavalavan began writing about caste atrocities in a local magazine, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal. But it was in 1988, while working as a scientific assistant in the State Forensic department in Madurai that he was formally introduced into Dalit politics by a famous Dalit lawyer Malaisamy through the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) movement.
A year later, in September 1989, Malaisamy died and the DPI leadership was passed to Thirumavalavan, who had built a reputation for himself among Dalits in and around Madurai by then. He was young and fiery, and spoke with passion, urging Dalits to hit back when they were stamped upon. Under his leadership, the DPI grew and attracted supporters from northern districts too. In the late 1990s, Thirumavalavan renamed DPI as Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (Liberation Panthers).
After staying away from elections till 1998, the party entered the fray in the Lok Sabha polls in 1999, and Thiruma, the Third Front candidate at Chidambaram, polled an impressive 2.25 lakh votes. But after the alternative front fell apart, he took the party to the DMK camp amid much criticism of joining a party that was a staunch rival till recent days. But he won from Mangalore on DMK’s symbol, which he resigned in protest in 2004 when the DMK kept him out of the alliance that went on to become the UPA. In 2009, he won from the Chidambaram Lok Sabha seat, and lost it in 2014. The party lost both the seats it contested in the 2011 elections.
Often described rather reductively as the leader of the Dalit community, Thirumavalavan has gained much larger stature in the recent past through his efforts to patiently stitch together the alternate front in Tamil Nadu where power has always remained with the main parties, DMK and the AIADMK, ever since CN Annadurai snatched it from Congress decades ago in 1967.
The party is keen to shed the image of a ‘Dalit’ party to one that represents all oppressed, and Thiruma’s politics in the recent days was indicative of the change. Kattumannarkoil is a seat where the party believes it has an edge. Will it accept his ring?