It’s All Personal

Few principles may be at stake when Jayalalithaa takes on the DMK in Tamil Nadu, but it is still a war out there

It’s Sunday, 3 April, with just 10 days left for voters of Tamil Nadu to take their pick. It is likely to be one of two options: the DMK-Congress combine, led by Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, or the AIADMK, led by former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who has teamed up with actor-politician Vijayakanth’s DMDK, apart from the Left.

As in past polls, the campaign has unfolded in 35-mm Technicolor, so to speak. If Karunanidhi has been a cinema scriptwriter, Jayalalithaa first achieved fame as a Tamil actress. The public adulation has proven addictive to them both, though it is Jaya’s behaviour that suggests a keener sense of anticipation this time round. She even has a swivel chair newly installed in her Tempo Traveller that turns 180º for her to access another hydraulic seat that lifts her through a sort of sunroof, all the better to address crowds from a loftier perch. Her face bears a glow. To some, the glow of a compassionate aunt who’s come out to comfort the women gathered around. To others, the glow of power within grasp.

Will she win? Jayalalithaa, at her vitriolic best in the temple town of Madurai as she takes on Karunanidhi’s son MK Alagiri on his home turf, has few doubts about the answer. She lists out a series of murders, attacks and extortionist events. Who is responsible? She asks the crowd. “Alagiri!” shouts the chorus. She nods dramatically, even issuing a veiled threat: if elected, she will reopen cases of the violent deaths of some newspaper employees and a former DMK minister, and of a recent attack on officials of the Election Commission (EC). Accusing Alagiri of being a mamool (extortion money) collector, she thunders: “His father says he should be protected [after Alagiri’s security was scaled down by the EC]. It’s the people who need protection, not him.”

Revenge politics is in the air, something the state is accustomed to, with the party in power typically using all tools at its disposal to settle scores. Alagiri makes a good target. A problem child among the CM’s sons, he was packed off to Madurai in a family power tussle some years ago. Though he has boosted the DMK here, his tough tactics have alienated enough people—evidence of which was seen last October, when Jaya addressed a large anti-Alagiri rally here.

Since then, the 2G spectrum scam (among smaller ones) has given her voice an added shrillness; wherever she goes, she speaks of the DMK’s propaganda secretary A Raja as the man shaping the ruling party’s alleged kleptocratic policies from his cell in Tihar jail. Their focus, she holds, is to amass wealth for the CM’s family. Justice, she adds, will be served only by confiscating it all and returning it to the people.

Jaya herself faces a case of owning assets disproportionate to her known sources of income, under trial in a Bangalore court, but the judge has postponed proceedings on her plea that there are serious errors in the translation of case-related documents from Tamil to English (a public prosecutor has been asked to recheck the papers). When she won power back in 2001, she had to have a loyalist, O Panneerselvam, act as CM while she extricated herself from a legal tangle. It could happen again.

According to an observer, the DMK is rich enough to spend Rs 10-15 crore per constituency on cash giveaways for voters, apart from all the other freebies (cheap rice, colour TVs, etcetera). “In a by-election two years ago,” recounts the observer, “South India’s egg producing hub Dindigal ran out of eggs for the first time in independent India’s history, as egg biryani became staple food for voters for a week in the run-up to voting.”

Ill-gotten funds, shrieks Jaya. “They have looted so much money that would otherwise have helped people do well.” The state exchequer, she calculates, has been burdened with a massive debt thanks to the DMK’s largesse. She fails to mention that her own manifesto, released soon after the DMK’s, tops those freebies with as much abandon. If the DMK dangles mixers and grinders, her party is offering those plus fans. In addition, there are laptops for students and gold ornaments for girls. There’s also a subsidy for Christians to go on pilgrimage to Bethlehem, a la Hajj for Muslims.

Alarmed by how electoral rules are being flouted by all this vote buying, the EC has begun raiding campaigners. So far, it has seized wads of cash running into several crore, stacks of saris and dhotis, several cases of cheap liquor, and some 9,000 detonators (from a vehicle).

Corruption, needless to say, is an electoral issue. Both Karunanidhi and son Stalin have chosen somewhat safe constituencies to stand from. Jayalalithaa has chosen to contest from Srirangam, a spindle-shaped landmass on the banks of the river Cauvery, a Vaishnavite pilgrim centre and abode of Sri Ranganath Swamy. She had lived here as a pre-teen,

and many residents claim to be her ‘only living relatives’ (though they do not want to be photographed).

With the stakes so high, superstition was bound to enter the scenario—and it has. The state’s opulent new legislature building, some whisper, is not Vaastu compliant. This could harm the DMK, they add knowingly. Though a declared atheist, the Vaastu question seems to be troubling Karunanidhi, who risks being compared with Raja Raja Chola, who built the magnificent Brihadeeshwara temple in Thanjavur that the CM recently visited; anyone who visits it loses power, go the whispers, though the CM took care not to use the main gate.

Is this the sign of a rationalist? That’s what Vijayakanth wants to know, highlighting Karunanidhi’s yellow shawl and costly stone ring as ‘lucky charms’ that bust the myth of the man’s rationalism.

If ideological illogic supplies the campaign with comic relief, Tamil comedians have also been having a field day. Vadivelu, a well-known cinema comedian who reportedly charges Rs 1 crore a flick, has been lampooning the AIADMK on the DMK-Congress campaign trail. It’s another thing that Jaya can’t stand being made fun of. A furniture man in Chennai who pulled an Amul hoarding gag on her learnt this the hard way in the mid-1990s, when AIADMK goons tore his creative endeavours apart. This, though, was mild in comparison with what some Jaya loyalists did in Salem in the aftermath of an adverse court judgment; they set a women’s college bus afire, burning two students inside.

Public memory, however, is short-lived. This time Jaya has some of her hopes pinned on Vijayakanth, who hopes to capture 10 per cent of all votes with his 41 candidates in the fray. If he has a weak spot, it is his public slapping of a candidate—which the DMK-run Sun TV is busy broadcasting repeatedly as evidence of the rival alliance’s arrogance.

In all this, it is also true that Jaya’s enigma endures. She hasn’t squandered the political legacy of her late mentor, the charismatic MG Ramachandran (MGR), who drafted her into politics. The rub-off remains. To many voters, says senior journalist TN Gopalan, Jaya comes across as a loner, one who has gone through a lot emotionally. Perhaps a reason why she is so dependent on Shashikala Natarajan, her close friend for nearly two decades (they met at the latter’s home video store). “Shashikala probably went through a similar phase, a reason she has chosen to stay away from her husband and be with Jaya. Of course, one does not need to read more into the relationship—just two lonely women emotionally dependent on each other,” he emphasises.

Many say that MGR gave her a platform for success in both cinema and politics, but also a rough time. There were periods when he would ignore her totally; she once even threatened to commit suicide, as he had refused to meet her for months. Today, Jaya is seen as a woman with nerves of steel, headstrong and determined, ever ready for a fight. She has taken on editors, bureaucrats, politicians and others. She knows that she is the only alternative to the DMK, and her alliance partners know it well too. They do not complain when she opts to follow her whim instead of their advice.

Emotion, bluff and bluster have seen her through before, and she sees no reason why it will not again. Yet, even as most opinion polls give a slight edge to the AIADMK combine, there is talk of Tamil Nadu heading for a hung Assembly. In such a scenario, sources say the AIADMK can hope to have the Pattal Makkal Katchi, led by Ramadoss and contesting 30 seats as part of the DMK alliance, cross over to its camp. And if the vote goes clearly against the DMK, even the Congress might consider offering her external support. That glow she has atop her chariot is not fake.

DMKJayalalithaaTamil Nadu