Panthers in Parliament: Dalits, Caste, and Political Power in South India-Book review

What is it about?

The scope of the book is to describe the process of institutionalization of a radical movement. To address this broader question, the author has selected a case study of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), the Liberation Panthers Party in Tamil Nadu. In the process of political institutionalization what does the movement achieve? and what does it lose? The author through an ethnographic account maps the process through his collection of enormous data from VCK cadres, cadres from other social movements, NGOs and intellectuals, etc., and interprets it as political anthropology. The author, Hugo Gorringe, has a good fluency in Tamil and moreover he had spent his early years as a kid in Madurai where the VCK’s precursor the Dalit Panthers of India was formed. The title of the book itself, Panthers in Parliament, captures this foray into institutional politics, Panther denotes radicalism in its essence and how through electoral politics that they have transformed themselves to democratically engage by entering the hallowed portals of Parliament. So the title itself here denotes the transformation of a Dalit movement, which was engaged in a radical politics towards institutionalization.

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Why is it important?

In Tamil Nadu the Dalit political party Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers Party ) is getting mainstream recognition after the party's participation in electoral politics from 1999. This work reviews the work of Hugo Gorringe, faculty of Edinburgh University, Scotland.

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