Today’s THE HINDU front-page news report above caught me really by great surprise. Reading the above column set me wondering about how the DMK , an avowedly anti-Hindu Party “traditionally associated with atheism and anti-Brahminism”, suddenly decided to elevate Dr. V. Maitreyan, a Tamil Brahmin, who sports his caste-mark and Hindu identity upon his forehead prominently at all times, within its hallowed Dravidian fortress.
In the past, since 1967 when it first came to power in the State, the DMK occasionally did make positive or appreciative remarks about individual Brahmins, although such statements were very rare, far and between, compared to the party’s critical and toxic rhetoric that its leading ideologues like A.Raja, Ponmudi, T.R.Balu and other used to regularly air in public about Brahmin dominance as a class or institution. Yet, M. Karunanidhi, former DMK chief and family patriarch, was known for his professional relations with Brahmins in government service. Testimonies from senior bureaucrats—such as S. Malathi and K.S. Sripathi, both Brahmins—affirmed that Karunanidhi never showed administrative bias against Brahmins and valued competence regardless of caste. Karunanidhi once pulled up a DMK MP for criticizing a Brahmin official and made the MP withdraw the remarks, demonstrating respect towards the individual official.
Karunanidhi also wrote a successful television serial on the Vaishnavaite saint Ramanujacharya, which was well received by the Iyengar (Tamil Brahmin) community. It reflected his willingness to appreciate important Brahmin figures and cultural contributions after his 2011 election defeat.
The DMK had, in fact, also received public support from Brahmin organizations, such as the Tamil Nadu Brahmins Welfare Sangam, which extended support during the 2016 state elections—a sign that DMK occasionally whenever electoral expediency demanded it, did engage in positive dialogue with certain influential sections of the Brahmin community.
But by birth and by religious practice, Dr. Maitreyan is a Hindu Sanatanist. And it was only as recently as in 2023, that the Yuvaraja of the DMK, Mr. Udayanidhi, grandson of M.Karunanidhi, had declared publicly that “Certain things like dengue, malaria and corona need to be eradicated and not merely opposed. Likewise, Sanatana should also be eradicated”.
So, what then is one to make of all this breaking news reported today by THE HINDU on its front page?!
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We could ask ourselves: Is this DMK’s moment of metanoia? Or is it a sign of the Party’s evolution by the Darwinian principle of “selection of species”? After all, it is well known that the DMK, founded by the legendary C.N.Annadurai, is only one of several species of the Dravidian stock whose natural habitat extends far and wide in Tamil Nadu (the others being its lesser cousins the DK, AIADMK, MDMK, DMDK, VCK and their respective smaller scions).
As a regular and loyal reader of The HINDU now for many decades, I must confess that lately, say, in the last 10 years, I read it with my morning coffee more out of sheer force of habit that got formed irreversibly over many years than out of willing choice… and here I am not meaning meaning the coffee.
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Before I go on to elucidate the Darwinian principle of “natural selection“, first I must allude in the same context to THE HINDU’s own evolution through “unnatural selection” inside the ecology of the journalistic world of India.
Many knowledgeable friends of mine I know — they are all loyal readers too — tell me that the HINDU in the last 10-15 years has morphed unrecognizably from what it once used to be. They say, today it is no more than the unofficial national-media mouthpiece of the DMK, and as much a Party propaganda-organ as the latter’s very own Tamil daily, Murasoli.
The Hindu, started in 1878 as a weekly, became a daily in 1889 and from then on it kept steadily growing until today, nearly upto its 125 years anniversary, it earned the right and proud claim to be called the “Mount Road Mahavishnu” amongst all National Newspapers in South India. Now, nearly, 150 years since inception, it has lost much of its divine sheen.
The HINDU’s evolution had been hailed in 1965, in The Times which listed it as one of the world’s ten best newspapers. Discussing each of its choices in separate articles, The Times wrote:
“The Hindu takes the general seriousness to lengths of severity… published in Madras, it is the only newspaper which in spite of being published only in a provincial capital is regularly and attentively read in Delhi. It is read not only as a distant and authoritative voice on national affairs but as an expression of the most liberal—and least provincial—southern attitudes... It might fairly be described as a southern newspaper. The Hindu can claim to be the most respected paper in India.“
In 1968, the American Newspaper Publishers Association awarded The Hindu its World Press Achievement Award. An extract from the citation reads:
“Throughout nearly a century of its publication The Hindu has exerted wide influence not only in Madras but throughout India. Conservative in both tone and appearance, it has wide appeal to the English-speaking segment of the population and wide readership among government officials and business leaders… The Hindu has provided its readers a broad and balanced news coverage, enterprising reporting and a sober and thoughtful comment… It has provided its country a model of journalistic excellence… It has fought for a greater measure of humanity for India and its people… and has not confined itself to a narrow chauvinism.”
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The evolution of THE HINDU from its inception in 1878 to 2025 can be best understood by looking up its website https://www.thehindu.com/aboutus/ and glimpsing at a snapshot, as it were, of the historical journey of this great newspaper house. Once upon a time, THE HINDU itself says, on that same page:
“The greatest asset of The Hindu , founded in September 1878, is trust.”
“Everything we do as a company revolves, and should continue to revolve, round this hard-earned and inestimable long-term asset. The objective of codification of editorial values is to protect and foster the bond of trust between our newspapers and their readers”.
Then on another page on the same website, under the caption: “CODE OF EDITORIAL VALUES”, THE HINDU goes on to explain how it goes about “protecting and fostering the bond of trust between our newspapers and their readers“. It is classic case of Orwellian Doublespeak. Why? Because that is the conclusion anyone would draw by reading carefully and in between the lines of the following three very revealing statements in the CODE which clearly dilute and displace Trust and replace it with Commercial Success.
QUOTE:
Alignment of Editorial and Business
The Company is fully committed to these values, so that the business and editorial departments and actions, while operating by their own distinctive rules, are on the same page. The two sides must work together closely on the basis of mutual respect and cooperation and in the spirit of living these values in a contemporary sense.
Business Focus
The Company recognises that good journalism cannot survive, develop, and flourish unless it is viable and commercially successful.
No Wall but Firm Line
There is no wall but there is a firm line between the business operations of the Company and editorial operations and content. ……etc.
UNQUOTE
It does not require any great intelligence or wisdom for readers to understand that any time when Editorial Policy gets written by Shareholders, it is extremely rare that Trust and Commercial Success can ever hang together and survive on the same page.
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Picking up THE HINDU this morning, and reading the column printed so boldly and brazenly, front and centre, upon its very first page, made me at once begin thinking how closely the newspaper’s evolution marches virtually lockstep with the DMK’s own political evolution.
The HINDU in printing the news about a Brahmin being anointed Vice-President in the DMK appeared to me to be the most “narrow chauvinistic and provincial” news report and a downright casteist news-analysis that I have ever before come across on its pages.
The DMK Party bosses wanting the news of Dr. Maitreyan’s coronation of dubious sort to be carried as front-page news in the HINDU — i.e. about an Aryan of Tamil origin being conferred, as it were, the “KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE STAR OF DRAVIDIAN PRIDE” — must surely rank as the most egregious example of the most cynical of political stunts ever performed in its history. One could even say it betters the (late) Karunanidhi’s wily, curry-favouring attempt to garner the Ayyangar votes of Tamil Nadu with the scripting of a TV-serialized, specious soap-opera on the life of the great Sri. Ramanujacharya.
By the way, and very ironically, the family that owns THE HINDU is one of the oldest and most respected Ayyangar families in Chennai.
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Dr. V.Maitreyan too perhaps has greatly evolved through the process of Darwinian “selection of species” in his long, chequered political career that one would hesitate to characterise as being just about a little picaresque.
This Brahmin politician has so far switched or job-hopped between four major parties during his political career: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, his ideological starting point), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), with multiple stints in both BJP and AIADMK before joining DMK most recently in 2025.
The HINDU report above hints that Dr. Maitreyan has now “relinquished Aryan Brahminical traits and ideas and embraced the culture of the Dravidian land”. The price of a very significant “organisational post in the Dravidian Party” for a Brahmin is, one reckons, tacit apostasy if not public recanting of Brahminhood.
The HINDU news-report above, published obviously with the DMK’s blessings, goes on next to recount a bit of recent history. There is undisguised triumph in the undertone of the narration. It implies and gloats over the fact that the late legal luminary, Mr. V.P.Raman, also might have, through the same route as Maitreyan’s, procured his appointment to the Office of the Advocate-General of the then DMK government — thanks to secret and effective parleys amongst M/s. A.V.Raman, Annadurai, C.Rajagopachari…. What an insult indeed to the memory of Rajaji, V.P.Raman and his revered father!
The general message that this HINDU news-analysis appears to aim to convey from its front page today is only this:
- The DMK has evolved so far from its fledgling days in the pre-1967 era that today it is willing to blur the mythical Aryan-Dravidian dividing line if electoral vote-bank and identity-realpolitik calculations demand it.
- The most enlightened of Tamil Brahmins are commodities. They can be purchased by blandishing loaves of office or Party positions.
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Finally, let me turn to the subject of Darwin’s theory or principle of “natural selection of species” which applies … unnaturally and contextually … to everything we know now from the foregoing narratives on the DMK, The HINDU and Dr. V.Maitreyan. All of them are true representative species, indeed … of the political, journalistic and Brahmin worlds, respectively.
Here below is a quick and easy gist of what is the Darwinian principle of “selection of species”. Once you have read it, I have no doubt that you should be able to easily put two and two together and understand how the DMK, The HINDU and Dr. Maitreyan have each evolved in their respective ecospheres all these years in their own ways.
Darwin’s principle of evolution by natural selection states that individuals with heritable traits better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those advantageous traits to their offspring.
Over long periods, this differential survival and reproduction leads to the gradual accumulation of beneficial changes, causing species to evolve and adapt to their surroundings.
This process relies on three key components: natural variation within a species, the inheritance of these variations, and a struggle for existence where not all individuals survive.
- Variation: Individuals within a species have slight, heritable differences, often due to random genetic mutations.
- Inheritance: Offspring tend to inherit the traits of their parents.
- Struggle for existence: More offspring are produced than can survive, leading to a competition for resources.
- Natural selection: Individuals with traits that provide an advantage in their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. This “survival of the fittest” means those advantageous traits become more common in the population over generations.
- Adaptation and speciation: Over vast amounts of time, the accumulation of these beneficial adaptations can lead to the formation of new species.
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Sudarshan Madabushi