New year, new post - Reminisces on Friday evening..

 Downed the tools for the day and started looking at WW2 history and defeat of Hitler. Trigger was a video of the movie "Downfall" on youtube. As usual i started digging into the rise and fall of Hitler a recap of old history lessons and but more led by my interest in human psychology that led an entire set of nations to go beyond just nationalistic thinking into destroying entire race of people and go on a campaign to conquer the world. As I went into historical aspects of  Hitler's rise - you can clearly see some analogy to rise of characters like Seeman in Tamil politics. In India, particularly in the south of the country in a state called Tamilnadu,  you have 2 types of Nationalism clearly on a upswing in the country 

1)  Indian Hindu Nationalism led by Conservative right wing politics - using Hindutva card clearly to spread to bases beyond the north like Tamilnadu and Kerala where they have never been strong player post independence.

2) Tamil Nationalism - led by a small time failed Cine director , Seeman, who has well utilized his ability to combine strong oratorical skills and art of storytelling(sometime literals bogus stories) to enthuse a young populace clearly dejected by corrupt dravidian parties of the south.

The lack of job opportunities for the youth post demonetization where small scale industries suddenly found themselves at the wrong end of the stick and constant funding from the Christian missionaries has clearly supported the rise of Seeman and Tamil Nationalism in a traditional conservative south that tilted towards dravidian politics , anti hindi struggle combined with the atheistic leaning of the DK organization. Their Hindu conservative rival organization  RSS and VHP never  really took of in the same scale as in the north in the deeply religious south for a strange reason.

So you may ask what is the link between the likes of Seeman and Hitler's rise that i seek to find analogy of. The pattern is very simple

Both play the victim card - 

What is the analogy to Hitler - Well here is the play - He was utter failure in his life , never rose to do anything worthwhile prior to becoming a politician.He wanted to be a artist , then an architect, enrolled in the army during WW1 which ended in German Defeat but was never successful in converting any of these forays into a proper career till he ventured into politics, using his strong oratarical skills filled with his hate for Jews , German Nationalism on the back of a bruising loss in War and an grandeose Aryan ideology that he was able to into a Nazi political outfit. 

In case of Seeman he uses the Tamil genocide at the hand of Srilankan govt in 2009 which supported both a left of Center, Congress party in power at the Federal govt and an opportunistic DMK at the state which remained a spectator if not a active perpetrator in the genocide.  What he hides behind the rhetoric is his complete failure to be able to do anything worthwhile in his life before a chance opportunity to speak at Cine event boosted his standing as a noteworthy orator with Tamil nationalistic leanings. He clearly used the absence of a strong political leadership in the state to make sure he is not bracketed with the rest of the dravidian parties and create his own following taking over similar minded youth from splintered organizations. His influence is visible. BJP at the center clearly sees him as someone with the potential to make inroads in the dravidian plank creating a weakness that is useful to push forward rising Hindu Nationalism within the southern state so it hasnt really tried to curtail him. With the return of the Rajapaksa brothers in Srilanka who brought down the LTTE leading to the genocide, you will clearly see this rhetoric grow more in Tamilnadu politics.   

Is this the only reason - well No - there are others which I can write about but in subsequent blogs.

Till my next musing...