Co-opting the Dead

Take reports of suicides following Jayalalithaa’s conviction with a pinch of salt

If you remember movies of yore there would often be a scene where someone gets news of the death of someone, usually spouse or progeny, and then clutching his or her hand onto chest, the said receiver of news falls down and dies to the accompaniment of cymbals. There is a reason that as movies evolved this particular scene has disappeared from the repertoire of filmmakers. They still like a humongous amount of melodrama, but that someone should be struck dead by information is something even movies don’t find possible anymore.

And with that preface in mind, let’s come to the reports floating around that soon after the news about Jayalalithaa’s conviction, 10 people died of heart attack and 16 people committed suicide. In fact, they say ‘at least 16’. Tamilians might be a very intense people (at least we know that from their movies), but it is still difficult to swallow that so many would kill themselves for the following reasons:

a) No one is saying how this number came about. A PTI report speaks about the 16 suicides with just a general vague attribution to the police. The only way to assess its credibility is by revealing who in the department collects such information and how they get it. Towards the end of the report, ironically, they add that the police are tightlipped on the number of such incidents.

b) We are told one anguished AIADMK worker committed suicide by immolating himself and that is believable. Both the fact of being a party worker and the immolation signal some veracity. But then there is one man who threw himself under a bus and three apparently hanged themselves with nothing to say why it is connected to Jayalalithaa.

c) Ten perished, it is said, because their hearts stopped beating. In rare cases, a severe shock can lead to a cardiac arrest but that it should happen to 10 people is beyond rational levels of probability.

d) If the loss of a chief ministership should lead to such deaths, then every time the AIADMK lost an election in Tamil Nadu, people should have been killing themselves. That has not happened.

Soon after the then CM of Andhra Pradesh YS Rajasekhara Reddy died in a helicopter crash in 2009, there came reports of a flurry of suicides. All kinds of numbers were thrown with the minimum being over a 100 killing themselves. And then came news that the suicides and deaths had been real enough, just that the families had changed the victim’s motive to Reddy’s death because, in some cases, Congress workers were giving them money to say so.

It might not necessarily be money alone that makes such claims go around. Attributing a suicide to loyalty to a politician also saves a family from stigma and even gets them some degree of respectability. Or it could be that the families never claimed it and it’s just the local party worker who spreads the story. The reasons could be any and many. The least probable one is what we read in the newspaper. Most people like to live. They are far more comfortable attacking someone else when their leader is in trouble. That doesn’t take too much effort if you are part of a mob. That is why violence is so commonly seen after such events. But directing it against oneself is slightly inconvenient.

BangaloreJ Jayalalithaaprisonspecial courtTamil Nadu