Captains of industry in Tamil Nadu are worried that migrant workers, spooked by the spectre of physical violence, may not return to work after Holi. Their concern stems from a spreading scare among the migrant workers — over 10 lakh, according to the state labour department — following videos that recently surfaced on social media purportedly showing mobs attacking Hindi-speakers in the state. The panic among families of the workers, especially in Bihar, apparently compelled Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to send a police team to Tamil Nadu. The videos turned out to be entirely fake or speeches and visuals edited out of context. On Sunday, the DMK government in Chennai booked the state BJP chief, K Annamalai, on charges of inciting violence and spreading enmity between groups for a tweet in which he accused ruling party leaders of slandering north Indians. The episode has sobering lessons for all parties — DMK, BJP and JD(U).
First, migrant workers are the backbone of the Indian economy: No region or sector is immune to dependency on them. Tamil Nadu, an industrial powerhouse, offers a competitive environment for manufacturing especially because of the availability of cheap labour. Workers from relatively poorer states in the country’s north and east have migrated to the southern state because it offers relatively better work conditions. Textile and hosiery hubs like Tiruppur have flourished because of migrant labour which has also contributed to the efforts of the government in Chennai towards building a welfare state. In this context, any attempts to frame migrations in nativist categories, and depict migrants as “outsiders”, can potentially upset the economic equilibrium in the state. As the party in government, the DMK must keep political chauvinism at bay. The BJP must desist from harping on linguistic and ethnic fault lines to further its political goals in the south. Stoking fear and intolerance that can wreak long-standing damage to the social and economic fabric is a short-sighted approach to expanding the party’s footprint in the region. Nitish Kumar’s response has also shown an unbecoming alarmism. The JD-U government should have reached out to its counterpart in Chennai and worked with it to reassure the workers, instead of giving credence to rumours.
The nativist agenda has long held appeal for political parties — the Shiv Sena, Telugu Desam Party and Asom Gana Parishad built much of their political fortunes on it. It was a major strand of the Dravidian Movement, too, though the anti-Hindi politics it nurtured has focussed more on Tamil pride than the targeting of non-Tamils. A thin line separates nativism and chauvinism, which can be breached at any time. All three parties — BJP, DMK and JD(U) — need to ensure that this doesn’t happen. Because if it does, all three, and the nation, stand to lose.
