Culture and Governance: Recent Trends in Tamil Nadu

Culture exists prior to governance. Conflicts come and pass away. Governance is a process and it also comes and passes away. But the culture remains. Conflicts may reappear and resolved and the cycle goes on ever. The responsibilities assumed by the administrative class remain significant and desirable as the political process implies problematic or overplays the governance with vested interests. Yet the governance is unavoidable combination of politics and administration. The concept of administrative culture is forced to take experiments in the prevailing social and political structure and behaviour. Tamil Nadu remains a fertile field of study in understanding the nexus between culture and governance the position of bureaucracy to mediate the process. The recent trends show a friction between culture and governance. It is overtly created by the BJP and its ruling ally ADMK and the DMK and its allies constantly resist. At the same time the former encounters the later as they stood for the Tamils embedded in language and culture. Despite the Hindutva policies, BJP and its allies tries to build an image that it is not against the interests of Tamil culture. Its image building is an instrumental exercise. The Dravidian ideology implies that Hindutva and Tamil culture are two parallel developments where the intersection would be resulted in friction rather assimilation. As far as the BJP keeps its allies intact and dominates the administrative class it has agenda to enforce but up to the time when the opposition regains the power.