With neither Jayalalithaa nor Karunanidhi around, Dravidian parties have so far managed to tide over the political slugfest by national players. But will their strategy work this time?
Carlos Bilardo, manager of the 1986 World Cup winning Argentina national football team, had something in common with late J Jayalalithaa, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) supremo. Whenever Bolardo was asked about the composition of his team for the World Cup matches, he had a standard reply: “My team will feature Diego Maradona and 10 other players. That’s all I have to say.” Such was his trust and confidence in the Argentine superstar.
At the time of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa’s exhortation to the voters was somewhat the same: “There will be a candidate contesting in the two leaves symbol of the party. Please elect him/her.” This was the essence of Jayalalithaa’s election campaign speech. During the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) had fielded A Raja, the 2G Spectrum tainted former Union communications Minister from the Nilgiris, which the party felt would be a safe constituency. Jayalalithaa sprang a surprise by nominating C Gopalakrishnan, a political lightweight from Nilgiris.
When asked about his fate in the contest against the DMK heavyweight, Gopalakrishnan replied: “Sir, I am going to win hands-down because I was hand picked by Amma. She had asked the electorate to vote for me and they would oblige Amma.” Gopalakrishnan won by a margin of more than 1,20,000 votes. While J Gopikrishnan of The Pioneer, through his superb investigating reports, unseated A Raja from the Union Council of Ministers, Gopalakrishnan demolished the “halo” around the DMK leader by waving Jayalalithaa’s picture.
However, these are things of the past. Cut to 2019, and there is neither Jayalalithaa nor Karunanidhi around. While the disintegration of the AIADMK has picked up momentum, the DMK’s end, too, is not far off. It will be reflected in the Lok Sabha election results of 2019. MK Stalin, the DMK chief, who succeeded his father Karunanidhi (the undisputed party president for almost five decades) is nowhere near the latter’s intelligence. His only unique selling proposition is his hatred for Hindutva and the BJP. His only offer to the people of Tamil Nadu is that he would bring in a stable and steady Government. Stalin feels that by humiliating the Hindus, he may be able to consolidate the minority votes of the State.
Despite an image make-over he underwent as per the directives of his son-in-law, Stalin remains the same old self. Unlike his father, who could charm the crowd with his one-liners and dramatised dialogues, Stalin is a poor communicator. Despite wearing black goggles, Karunanidhi was a success with women voters among the crowd, whom he could amuse with spicy and witty dialogues. While Jayalalithaa did not bother to groom a second-line leadership in the AIADMK, Karunanidhi did not allow anybody outside his immediate family raise their heads in the party. Though he wanted to anoint MK Muthu, his elder son born to Padmavathi, his first wife, Muthu ended up as a wayward youth, finding solace in alcohol. He had everything at his command. An obliging father, whose only mission was to see Muthu emerge the numero uno in DMK politics and finally as the Chief Minister to keep the family flag flying. Karunanidhi ousted MGR from the party to facilitate Muthu’s entry into the top league of the DMK. But MGR retaliated by launching the AIADMK and the people of Tamil Nadu, who were fed up with the kind of politics played by Karunanidhi and his family, elected the former with a huge majority. Since 1977, when MGR became the Chief Minister, till his passing away in December 1987, Karunanidhi was in political wilderness.
There was a split in the AIADMK immediately after the demise of MGR and this helped the DMK bounce back. In the Assembly election held in 1989, the DMK bagged 150 seats on its own. The faction of AIADMK headed by Jayalalithaa won 27 seats while the faction headed by Janaki Ramachandran (widow of MGR) had to contend with just two seats. But the women saw the writing on the wall that the split in the AIADMK would benefit only the Karunanidhi clan. They buried the hatchet, merged the factions and Janaki made a dignified exit from politics. Karunanidhi thoroughly underestimated Jayalalithaa and joined hands with secessionist forces operating in the State. Following the murder of Rajiv Gandhi, who was electioneering at Sriperumbudur near Chennai during the Lok Sabha election of 1991, by the hired assassins of the LTTE and the all-round failure of law and order situation in the State, the Karunanidhi Government was dismissed by the then Chandrasekhar headed Union Government.
The truth is that people elected Karunanidhi in 1989, 1996 and 2006 out of anger and angst as they had no other option. Karunanidhi saw to it that the Congress, which ruled the State uninterrupted till 1967, became weak and ridden with groups. The only option for the electorate was the AIADMK, which had a semblance of nationalism and democracy in it. For the DMK, democracy began and ended at the Gopalapuram residence of Karunanidhi and in the houses of his other two wives and nephew Murasoli Maran.
But Karunanidhi kept his obsession for dynasty under cover, thanks to his expertise in double-speak. Whoever questioned the legality of Stalin’s emergence as his heir, ended up outside the party headquarters. The list is long and includes Vaiko, the eternal rebel and V R Nedumchezhiyan, described as the man with a golden tongue. Now, Stalin is surrounded by acolytes and a cabal of wheeler dealers.
Karunanidhi, who had vehemently opposed Hindutva and the BJP, did not think twice before extending support to the BJP in 1989. The DMK can never survive without the life support it gets from the power of office. Karunanidhi and Stalin are always willing to join hands with any forces which offer them uninterrupted “power”. That’s why they jumped from the National Front Government of VP Singh in 1989 to the Deve Gowda Government of 1996 and then to the NDA Government led by Vajpayee in 1999. When they saw that the possibility of the NDA coming back to power in 2004 was bleak, Karunanidhi crossed over to the Congress’ camp and emerged as the “critical component” of the UPA. For the next nine years, the DMK was in charge of the money spinning Ministries, popularly known as Any Time Money (ATM) ministries.
Since 2011, the DMK has been out of power in Tamil Nadu while in New Delhi, it remains out of Government since 2013. Stalin hopes that the weakening of the AIADMK would help him regain power in Tamil Nadu as a split in AIADMK votes would benefit only the DMK. As pointed out earlier, the Congress is a weak entity in the State though there are ‘paper tigers’ like P Chidambaram and Mani Shankar Aiyer. “There are more leaders and groups in the Congress than the party cadre,” said N Kalyanasundaram, chronicler of Tamil Nadu politics. The Congress had survived in Tamil Nadu over the years only by riding piggyback on the shoulders of either the Dravidian parties — the DMK or the AIADMK, according to O Panneerselvam, deputy Chief Minister and AIADMK leader.
For all practical purposes, the Congress in Tamil Nadu has become the B team of the DMK. What about the BJP? The less said about the Hindutva party the better. Dravidian parties have succeeded in keeping the BJP in their arc through an intelligently crafted strategy. That and other details will be told in the next part of this series.
(The writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer)
