‘Sasikala’s Entry Won’t Stop Me From Supporting AIADMK-BJP’

Sasikala is set to walk free on January 27. In an interview with G.C. Shekhar, Thuglak editor S. Gurumurthy explains his position on the former aide of late CM J. ­Jayalalitha in the context of electoral alliances in Tamil Nadu. Excerpts:

In 2017, you opposed Sasikala when she was set to become CM. You even tried to delay her swearing-in, which resulted in the Supreme Court upholding her conviction in the disproportionate assets case and sending her to jail. But now you think there is no harm in including her in a front to take on the DMK. What has changed?

It is wrong to say that I ­supported her inclusion in a front to take on the DMK. I had opposed Sasikala taking over the party and becoming CM. I still oppose Sasikala and her family politics. The reference to her came in response to a question by a reader in Thuglak’s 51st annual meet on January 14. The reader asked whether the AIADMK and the BJP would ally with the AMMK to defeat the DMK. We had decided to support the AIADMK-BJP alliance, calling for the DMK’s defeat. This announcement was to be made at the end of my address as Thuglak editor. But the question was asked much before my speech. If I express support to the AIADMK-­BJP combine and they ally with Sasikala, what should I do? Should I revise my decision? I recalled that when the Indian Express was fighting Rajiv Gandhi over corruption and misrule, we were supported by the ­controversial Chandraswami. The media asked Arun ­Shourie, then editor of Indian Express, how he could take the corrupt Chandraswami’s support in the battle against corruption. Shourie replied: “When the house is on fire, you don’t look only for ­Gangajal to douse it, you also throw sewer water.”

I reasoned that parties can’t afford to pick and choose while forming an electoral alliance against a common foe. This is to indicate that I won’t review my decision to support the AIADMK alliance due to Sasikala’s entry alone. In fact, I went ahead and announced my support to the AIADMK at the end of the meeting. In any case, Sasikala cannot contest until 2026—six years after her jail term is over. If the AMMK has a minor role in the ­alliance, I won’t mind.

In your speech, you placed both the AIADMK and the DMK on the same footing when it comes to corruption, and said you preferred the AIADMK due to other factors such as its nationalistic ­outlook, belief in God and absence of anti-Hinduism. Can the BJP afford to ally with the AIADMK, which may also include Sasikala, widely seen as another face of corruption and nepotism?

It has been established over the past three decades in Tamil Nadu that any party allying with the DMK or the AIADMK has to ignore ­corr­uption as a factor. If the BJP had a non-corrupt option and still allied with the corrupt AIADMK, its image would take a beating. Or else, it has to go alone, in which case it might be allowing a bigger corrupt and dangerous party, the DMK, into power.

What are the BJP’s chances in the 2021 assembly polls? Has the party grown enough to make its presence felt in the assembly where it last had an MLA in 2001?

In a bipolar situation, the BJP won’t be able to make significant gains, except perhaps to show its growth in votes. Its situation in Tamil Nadu today is comparable to where it was in Karnataka in the 1980s. Until one of the bipolar parties, the Janata Party, weakened, the BJP had no scope there. In Kerala, where the BJP’s voteshare in the 2016 assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha polls was 15 per cent, smaller parties have a significant presence in the assembly, but not the BJP. This is bipolarity’s effect. Bipolarity in Kerala rejects alliance with the BJP. My own forecast is that the BJP will break the bipolarity faster in Tamil Nadu than in Kerala.