100 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Thus, E.V. Ramaswamy's concept of politics freed history from any notion of Saivite Utopia, invoked a number of inferiorised identities and as a result expanded the realm of politics to include a range of oppressed groups, and, above all, invested them with active political agency. More importantly, it had the quality of being perennially contestatory: the teloes of history and rationality were interminable and hence there could be no certitude about the finality of any political resolution. Struggle had to go on. In short, the political discourse of E.V. Ramaswamy stood in sharp contrast to the early 'Dravidan* ideology of the Vellala elite; and his break with them was substantial and qualitative. This is what accounted for his success in mass politics, and not his 'unprecedented styles' or 'populist stance'. But if history stood on his side, he also knew that it would invalidate him sooner or later. [I am grateful to V. Arasu, Venkatesh Chakravarthy, J. Jeyaranjan, S. Neelakantan, P. Radhakrishnan, Padmini Swaminathan and A.R. Venkatachalapathy for their comments on an earlier draft.] NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Vellalas were a dominant landowning caste in the Tamil countryside, known for their strict adherence to a 'Brahminical' form of Saivism with vegetarianism as one of its key tenets. However, given their intimate links with cultivation, they were treated as Sudras within the fourfold division of caste system. In pre-colonial Tamilnadu, they drew their power from land control, access to bureaucracy especially at the village level, and strong alliance with Brahmins. 2. See also (Irschick, 1969: Chapter 8; Kailasapathy, 1979; and Sivathamby, 1979). Srinivasan (1970; and 1986) has also characterised other intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Tamilnadu, like Suryanarayana Sastry and V.V.S. Aiyar, in a similar fashion. 3. The Self Respect Movement was launched by E.V. Ramaswamy, after he broke ranks with the Indian National Congress. His active sojourn in the Congress came to an end in November 1925 when two of his resolutions seeking 'communal representation* (i.e. caste-based reservations in favour of the non-Brahmins) were disallowed in the Kancheepuram conference of the Tamilnadu Congress. Thereafter, he declared his political agenda to be 'no god; no religion; no Congress; and no Brahmins. For accounts of the Self Respect Movement, see (Chidamparanar, 1983; Visswanathan, 1983; and Arooran, 1980:152-251). 4. See also (Irschick, 1969: 13-16 and 42). 5. For an introduction to the Gramscian concepts of civil society and political society, see (Simon, 1988: 67-71). 6. For details of the controversy, see (Suntharalingam, 1980:151-156). 7. Through a reductive mono-causal argument, it is often represented that the Dravidian Movement sought its political fulfilment merely in getting a share of government jobs for the non-Brahmins. Such an argument elides the important question of the configuration of power under colonialism and the location of the Brahmins in the same. 8. In the early 1940s, when Thandapani Desi^ar Sang in Tamil during the Tiruvaiyaru music festival, the next singer, a Brahmin, refused to sing unless the