Post-TVK victory in TN elections, the denial of reds and blacks, and the dynamics of discourse

I like to focus on a few molecular lines of algorithmic narratives out of the multiple flows in social media for the convenience of better understanding. Let’s start with the block of profiles (users) who are certain that DMK will win the elections. We will call these profiles Red and Black profiles for convenience. As a matter of clarity, I could briefly describe both of them. The black profiles are those who are in some way affiliated with the DMK party, whereas the red ones are those interested in DMK winning this election, regardless of their affiliation to any particular party. The only obstacle before the election would be the MyAxis India agency’s prediction on the exit poll survey, which was dealt with by these blocks with the clip, where Pradeep Gupta cried in the live, as he predicted the BJP to win 360–400 seats in the Lok Sabha Elections or ignored completely.

[embed]Failed MyAxis India prediction in 2021 Lok Sabha elections

They thought this would be a strategy for manipulating the narrative or just a way to gain more attention, so there was no sedimentation in their flows. In any case, Reds & Blacks believed the DMK would win and gave TVK only 10% of the vote share.

With the election results, this flow was ruptured, the lines multiplied, and we can now follow the line of ‘branding the TVK voters as ‘tharkuri’, meaning ignorant’. Red and Black profiles, who couldn’t accept the defeat of DMK initially, started to ‘other’ the TVK voters as ignorant of political knowledge. This ‘Othering’ of the reds bloomed from the base of affects such as shock and denial. Shocked to see the list of candidates who won and were defeated, and in denial of the win of TVK. This Denial arises out of two natures, one, the win of TVK with massive majority and another the loss of DMK. Both are mutually exclusive, one does not explain the other. We will come to this later.

Now, let me introduce a few more blocks of profiles, such as the Orange Block (affiliated to the BJP or Hindutva ideology), Blue Block (Dissenting Dalits who lost hope in DMK rule) and lastly the Yellow Block (Sympathizers of TVK). This coloring was purely made for convenience and easy recognition.

Okay now as we observe another line, where blue block profiles who condemned this ‘Othering’ before and now, tried to reason about the loss of DMK and its flaws, not just in the molecular level, but in the molar level too. Their words of promoting Self-introspection, provided an analysis of what went wrong with the loss of DMK, but still that did not answer how TVK have won.

[embed]This post was again reshared in stories

The Reds and Blacks who were in Denial, a state of ‘Anti-production’ couldn’t record the connection between the win of TVK and loss of DMK, were not ready to make half way of the broken bridge. They tried to connect the gap with the Star power of Mr. Vijay, which offers nothing but cinematic glamour and the ‘Desire’ to see their actor win and dismantle all the injustice prevailing single handedly. So, there was still nothing to sediment the flow of the othering by the reds and blacks.

Simultaneously, the orange profiles, despite losing all seats but 1, rejoiced in the downfall of DMK government, which stood as a force of opposition against the ruling BJP. Some went further to celebrate the win of TVK as they never showed any enmity or opposition towards the BJP or Hindutva.

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Interestingly the ‘text’ pushing the DMK into a self-introspection of their loss, takes a flight. Most of the yellow profiles who never positioned themselves aligning to any party before or voicing out any political opinions started to use this text to explain the win of TVK and in doing so criticized the reds and blacks for being in denial, and called out for being ‘too woke’ when the election results are unfavorable to them and not standing with the victims of state ignorance and violence. The reds who were mostly engaging in online activism, who were seen condemning this state’s ignorance and violence hit them back with asking them to stop being pretentious now. And stopped engaging with them and it ends up in a taunting meme rivalry. Whereas Black profiles, made an attempt to engage via accepting this defeat and chose not to ‘Other’ the yellow profiles, but made sure that they would question them for the upcoming years of their administration and would try to hold them responsible and accountable in times necessary. But still some texts emerged out of the black blocks, which are mere curses on the downfall of Tamil nadu in the rule of TVK, which came as a product of reactive anger and nothing more.

Comment section of the post from Director Mari Selvaraj for expressing his grief on the loss of Ex-CM Stalin on his constituency

After these flows, a new branch emerges from the blue block calling out the reactions of the reds and blacks and positioning them against, with already the previous posts citing the drawbacks of DMK, explaining their loss has not been processed, they made the same mistake as the reds and blacks did earlier. Started with the problems in the DMK rule but progressing, conveniently choosing to not speak about the newly elected representatives, and their win and went on to position alongside Yellows, we can see the Blues lending their intelligentsia and framing the reds and blacks as the “Ignorant” for associating with the DMK alliance. Which led to abusing and calling them a ‘Blue Sanghi’ by the Blacks. (which is an age old way to silence the voices of Dalit, irrespective of its efficiency)

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Along with this we can also quote Director Pa. Ranjith, where he says that this win of TVK, “shattered the age-old practice of selecting candidates based on caste”. This idea of breakthrough is being shared by the profiles of blue blocks too. They see this as a victory across caste, class and religion. And when the reds and blacks reply, that this mere representative tokenism, which can be done by BJP too, the blue comes back with, if a new party can do this, it is a shame for the legacy parties for not doing it.

So, with the discourse produced, if we lay them out and try to understand as a whole, we can understand why I say that, the win of TVK and loss of DMK cannot explain each other. The flaws of DMK, alone does not give way to TVK and ADMK. The celebrity worship of the Actor — turned politician needs no interest building. They had no need to build an interest in the form of an ideology or even a practical working manifesto or even expected to voice out for the people when needed, because the desire of seeing their actor win needed no masking. On the other hand, the desire to win, for the DMK alliance, needed interest building in the form of Ideology. So the idea that celebrity worship is not the reason for this win and the people genuinely wanted the “Change” claim by the blue block is flawed. We cannot prove this quantitatively, who voted for what, but discounting the effect of blind Hero worship by the majority of the population, cannot serve the connection between the win and loss. It is prevalent as much as those who wanted ‘Change’.

Lastly coming to the claim this win for the Dalits and celebrating this as an intersectional win is very naive, as we can see that this token politics is done all over in India, by BJP predominantly and at the same time, those who are in opposition have fielded candidates who belong to the majority community of that specific region. Because, the party or government is situated in the same social reality as that of the masses. The voters of TVK, in most constituencies are unaware of the names of those candidates and by this we can say that the voting decision even if it may be a Dalit, is not a conscious one. Unless caste lives as a social reality, the electoral representation alone would not bring a massive change. The valid question is also pinned along the same ‘text’ of the blue block profiles, that would be, “why even after the long legacy of the Dravidian parties, the social fabric of caste is still strongly controlling every socio-sphere of life in Tamil nadu?” (as well as South-Asia)

This win of TVK is Historic and shows the power of democracy, the only grief is, this came out with the affect of a hero — worship, which is blatant.

Note: After writing the article, they found that no Dalit candidates have won from TVK, from an unreserved constituency.