For most of the last nine years of its existence, the ultra Tamil nationalist political party Naam Thamizhar Katchi was dismissed as a fringe group that would not succeed electorally.
Slowly but surely, this assumption is changing. In the parliamentary election, the party, led by Seeman, garnered nearly 4% of the vote contesting alone.
Outside Tamil Nadu, few people are aware of the central ideals of this party, which harps on ethnic purity and insists that only those it defines as “true Tamils” should rule the region. The party has employed hateful rhetoric as Seeman has gone about pitching “real Tamils” against “Vandheri”, or immigrants. He takes inspiration from the likes of Adolf Hitler, approvingly quoting the fascist dictator who presided over the Holocaust.
For long, Tamil Nadu’s main political parties ignored Seeman, worrying that giving importance to his speeches and statements would only increase his popularity and stature. However, this strategy changed in the run up to the general election, with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, for which Seeman has reserved harshest criticism, and its ideologues slamming the Naam Thamizhar Katchi for its hateful language.
The Naam Thamizhar Katchi functions on two distinct planes. On the cultural front, it has tried to construct an imagined past of Tamil culture which it claims was ruined by non-Tamils. In this, its primary foe is the Dravidian movement. For Seeman, the Dravidian ethnic identity is a false construct, engineered by non-Tamils to rule over Tamils.