Why was Jayalalithaa, like several of the state’s chief ministers, buried, not cremated, and what is Dravidianism? A look at the political religion of Tamil Nadu, who follows it, and why it died. When the late actor-turned-politician MG Ramachandran (MGR) walked out of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) back in the seventies and floated his own outfit, he christened it the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam—the prefix Anna (elder brother) invoking the DMK’s founder CN Annadurai. If the new party was to be Anna’s own DMK, some ideological exposition was also called for in order to make it look different. So, MGR declared ‘Annaism’ would be his guiding light. When...
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