பார்வதி பி.ஏ

The formative years of Anna's political and public life career were decided by the social and political context in which the early Dravidian movement was taking shape in Tamilnadu. On the social side, it was not the Brahmin and Non-Brahmin conflict that was the major thread in Annathurai's perspective. This was not unlike that of his mentor E.V.Ramasamy Naicker. Annathurai's social perspective was more inclusive. It addressed many social evils like casteism, the rich and poor divide, the attitude of the landed gentry towards the landless and the socially oppressed communities, the succumbing to a certain belief system not necessarily perpetrated by the Brahmins alone, the wit of games between the rich in particular and the people in general on the one hand and the manipulative Brahmins on the other, institutionalized low moral standards, nepotism and mismanagement of the government machinery including the police, and a few other such. On the political front, Provincial governments and the lack of credibility on their part, what appeared to be convincing about Communism as a political panacea, self-seeking politicians who wanted to exploit any vulnerable political ideology on the one hand and the possibility of inflaming the offended tilting them to conviction in a political revolution not necessarily pacifistic, extreme caution with which Gandhi's almost established iconoclasm was seen, parallel political and freedom fighters with Gandhi's nonviolence on the one hand and Subash Chandra Bose's military mission on the other, the international political situation marked by the Japanese political ambitions. Annathurai's literature in general and novels in particular have a reference back to all these social and political issues in explicit as well as veiled discussions. Parvathy B.A., is typical of the interplay of this complexity. At the same time, the novel maintains the flavor of imaginative literature.