The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s decision to admit AIADMK’s former MP V. Maitreyan has attracted an adverse reaction in certain quarters owing to his Brahmin roots. With the Assembly election due next year, it has led some commentators to assume the former MP will be fielded in a suitable constituency. The question, according to such commentators, is whether the DMK can go to such an extent of accommodating the Brahmins. However, not many are aware that B. Munuswami Nayudu (1885-1935), the Chief Minister of the Madras Presidency during 1930-32, made an unsuccessful attempt to admit “willing” Brahmins to the Justice Party, a precursor of the DMK. At the party’s two-day Nellore confederation in October 1929, Nayudu sought to amend the party by-laws, as he felt that the explicit exclusion of one community had resulted in the party not being a “full representative” of the Presidency.
A perusal of reports in The Hindu Archives reveals the change in the rules, as suggested by Nayudu, had triggered a huge debate within the Justice Party, formally called the South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF). The purpose of the organisation was to “promote the political interests of non-Brahmin caste Hindus,” writes Eugene F. Irschick in Politics and Social Conflict in South India (University of California Press, 1969).
