National

Sunset Boulevard

Nepotism and despotism combine to marginalise the DMK

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Sunset Boulevard
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Any party with 29 MLAs in a 234-member House, with the next round of assembly elections four years away, is likely to yawn and feel a little tired and bored. But the crisis in the DMK can't be yawned away. It is tottering and seems rudderless. The DMK is choking and its only source of oxygen comes from the few ministries it holds at the Centre. It is this artificial respiration system that keeps the party going. Its soul mortgaged to the BJP, the DMK seems to have lost its ideological moorings.

After the DMK and its allies lost all three seats in the recently-concluded assembly byelections, party chief Muthuvel Karunanidhi did not have much to celebrate on his 79th birthday. He decried Jayalalitha's "Musharraf-style democracy" and said "democracy had been strangulated". Nice words from a professional orator. But there are some issues confronting the party that need more than smart lines.

First, the leadership of the DMK has become a sordid family affair. While near-octogenarian Karunanidhi has encouraged dynastic principles by virtually appointing son M.K. Stalin as successor at the state level, at the Centre it is nephew Murasoli Maran who calls the shots. In Madurai, another son, M.K. Azhagiri, holds court.

Party insiders say the only job a senior leader like general secretary K. Anbazhagan gets to do is rebut Jayalalitha's charges in the assembly. Even when Stalin is the one under attack, it's Anbazhagan who responds. "Stalin sits dumbstruck, overawed, clueless," says a party leader. Papa Karunanidhi, citing old age, does not ever attend the House. This gives Jayalalitha the chance to say he is running scared.

Such being the state of affairs at the top, when Karunanidhi gave a call for a district-level agitation on June 5 to protest against the "AIADMK rigging" of the by-polls, the cadre refused to stir. An irate Karunanidhi asked the office-bearers to either lead from the front or quit. By that count, say his detractors in the party, Stalin should have been the first to go. On polling day at Saidapet, a DMK bastion that went the AIADMK way, Stalin did not even make a token appearance at the booths. He was more preoccupied about keeping both his mayorship of Chennai and his MLA seat. "If they had let Parithi Ilamvazhuthi contest the mayorship, they could have retained a DMK mayor. In trying to keep everything within the family, they will now have to let the mayor's post too go to the AIADMK," says a senior leader.

Besides, the party leadership has earned notoriety for ignoring the claims of genuine workers and denying them advancement in the party. The elevation of film star Sarat Kumar to the Rajya Sabha last year is a case in point. The actor showed his gratitude during the byelections by holidaying in the US! Sweating it out were loyalist warhorses like K. Ponmudi and Ilamvazhuthi. So when Karunanidhi wanted district secretaries to protest against electoral malpractice, they obviously saw no "gains" in stirring out in the hot summer sun.

"The DMK has become a party of leaders travelling in AC cars and living in AC bungalows. Their politics is not fought on the streets any more," says a worker at party HQ Anna Arivalayam.

At a deeper level, what afflicts the party is that the DMK's core ideology is not paid even lip service. The DMK's raison d'etre was its strident Dravidianism. Today, party leaders tell you, it is a different story. The DMK has tied up with the BJP which epitomises everything that Dravidianism opposed. Socially, the DMK has been losing base since the '90s. "The party was controlled by and seen to be catering only to the upper castes—Mudaliars, Naidus, Saiva Vellalars, Reddiars.By the '90s, the Dalits (via Puthiya Tamizhagam, Dalit Panthers) and other sidelined castes such as Thevars (AIADMK) and Vanniars (PMK), who did not find much favour with the DMK establishment in terms of power-sharing and posts, started ploughing their own furrows," says Ravikumar, state PUCL president and political analyst.

But the party of geriatrics is hardly listening to the critics. Some fresh blood and new ideas are needed to make the party find its feet. Right now, as a DMK worker quipped, "Our party is as strong as our Thalaivar's (leader's) gait." Karunanidhi ambles along, denying any crisis. And that's perhaps the biggest crisis.

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