The fourth edition of the Kashi Tamil Sangamam has opened on the Varanasi riverfront with great confidence and colour. Lamps glow on ancient steps, television cameras focus on saffron banners, and young delegates from Tamil Nadu move through carefully staged cultural scenes. Union ministers speak of a shared destiny.

In his recent radio broadcast, the Prime Minister said the Sangamam is a rediscovery of civilisational kinship and called Tamil Nadu and Kashi long-lost siblings finally meeting again. Leaders in Uttar Pradesh repeat the same promise of a cultural revival that will restore what they describe as ancient unity.

From the outside, the whole event looks like a theatre trying to become a holy text. Yet something important is missing. Tamil Nadu is not reacting like a long-lost sibling at all. It is watching with quiet intelligence, like a neighbour invited to a function whose meaning is clear to someone else but not fully convincing to those who were asked to attend. For all the choreography in Varanasi, the cultural tremors stop far short of reaching Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, or Tirunelveli. Tamil soil stays calm and unimpressed.

What is taking place in Varanasi is not a simple cultural festival. It is a political attempt to rewrite belonging using geography and nostalgia. Kashi is shown as the centre of Hindu civilisation. Tamil culture is asked to circle around that centre with gratitude.

Ancient references are selected from history, neatly arranged, and displayed as proof of unbroken civilisational continuity. The message is that Tamil Nadu has forgotten where it truly belongs and must now remember it by looking towards the North.

Memory is a sensitive political tool. It can be rearranged easily. Forgetting needs only distraction. Remembering can be controlled with bright lights and serious voices. But the Kashi Tamil Sangamam faces a problem when it enters Tamil Nadu.

Memory in this state is not decorative nostalgia. It is a strong public habit that has been built through argument, protest, and reform. Tamil identity was not handed down by monuments or priests. It was shaped by debate, social demands, and leadership from common people.

It is true that Tamil Nadu and Kashi have points of contact in their histories. Some pilgrims travelled north, some monasteries had links, some royal journeys took place, and a few devotional texts spoke of the Ganga or Kashi’s shrines. Lingams were brought home, and ideas were exchanged. But........

© National Herald