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Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine
- This gritty Dalit woman author has quit the BSP to launch her own party in Tamil Nadu. PC Vinoj Kumar on her never-say-die mantra
- Acclaimed Tamil writer and Tamil Nadu's first woman Dalit IAS officer, P Sivakami, who in November last year took voluntary retirement at age 51 to join the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
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and was made its state general secretary, is launching her own outfit.
Says Sivakami: “The party I plan to launch will take up issues concerning Dalits and the poor.” She found the BSP inactive in the state, but won't comment on the two other Dalit parties -- the Puthiya Thamizhagam and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal.
- In literary circles, Sivakami is considered a strong critic of the Dravidian movement and its ideologue Periyar. When she joined the BSP she was hopeful the party would emerge as an alternative to the Dravidian parties, the DMK and the AIADMK -- which between them have ruled Tamil Nadu for over four decades now. But the BSP failed to upstage the regional giants.
- But that has not caused her to change her views. “Dalits were not the focus of Periyar's so-called revolutionary movement. The Dravidian movement placed more emphasis on the backward classes,” she insists.
- Now the question is, will Sivakami succeed where the BSP failed? Watch this space.
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