Howling Wolf

It’s like the story of the wolf. Ever since, the J.Jayalalitha-led All-India Anna Dravida MunnetraKazhagam  (AIADMK) came to power in Tamil Nadu in May 2001, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has timeand again talked of being unhappy with the BJP and the NDA and often times the party’s executive council metto decide on snapping ties with the centre. And now, when they have formally withdrawn from the NDAgovernment, few have bothered to stop and take serious note of the development.

Some 20 months ago, in March 2002, the DMK, which headed the state-level NDA, came to the conclusion thatthe BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit was functioning closely with, and in awe of, the Jayalalitha government. Theoccasion was the Jayalalitha government’s decision to implement the Annadanamscheme (free meals in temples). The BJP openly supported the AIADMK government on the issue, while the DMK,suddenly waking up to its forgotten atheistic roots, was critical of such a "communal scheme".

Soon, the DMK general council met, and its president Muthuvel Karunanidhi, protested the BJP’s attitudeand wondered if there was a need for the DMK to continue in the NDA at state level NDA. He said they wouldmaintain only a "friendship" with the BJP and not a "relationship". The DMK generalcouncil, at the same time, heaped praise on "the leadership of A.B.Vajpayee". Murasoli Maran wasvery much an active commerce minister then and he was keen on the DMK continuing at the centre given that theparty had to face Jayalalitha’s wrath in the state.

Even the "friendship" was severely tested when MDMK founder-leader, Vaiko, a former lieutenant ofKarunanidhi, was arrested under Section 21(3) of POTA for this verbal support to the LTTE in July 2002. TheDMK, which had supported the so-called anti-terror legislation in parliament, cried foul. But all that anaggrieved but hapless Karunanidhi did was become the first to sign a memorandum for the release of"brother" Vaiko.

Such was the keenness of both the DMK and MDMK to clutch on to the few ministries they had, that"principled" opposition to POTA in agitational politics did not deter them from unprincipledcontinuance in the government. So much so that when the DMK finally announced that it was withdrawing itselffrom the NDA government on December 20, the MDMK reserved comment on the issue despite having had its leaderVaiko in prison for over 17 months. The PMK, on its part, felt that the DMK has acted hastily indicating thatits leader S.Ramadoss was keen on maintaining good terms with the BJP.

Though Karunanidhi has been maintaining in public that it was the BJP president Venkaiah Naidu’s commentson the DMK’s protests against POTA that made him finally decide on withdrawing support, the real reason,again, was the Jayalalitha factor. The unbridled powers and the aura of invincibility that Jayalalitha hasbeen vested with after the Supreme Court exonerated her in the Tansicases, seem to have unnerved the DMK. If it was Jayalalitha’s pro-Hindutva policies that sowed seeds ofconfusion in the BJP-DMK alliance over the past two years, it was again Jayalalitha that Karunanidhi waslosing sleep over. But first, let us dispense with the DMK’s official line of reasoning.

When the DMK was about to stage peaceful picketing in front of the Central and state government offices inTamil Nadu on December 15 to demand the repeal of POTA, Venkaiah Naidu had remarked that being in the Centralgovernment and going on an agitation was not an ideal situation for coalition partners to be in. It was"neither ideal nor healthy", he had said. The DMK chief promptly took offence, and asserted the DMK’sdemocratic and moral right to protest.

However, soon enough, on December 17, when union home minister L.K.Advani sought to move amendments to thePOTA, both the DMK and the MDMK set aside their "scrap POTA" demand and merely toed the NDA line inNew Delhi. Publicly, the DMK has been posturing against POTA ever since the arrests of Vaiko, Tamilnationalist leader P.Nedumaran, Nakkheeran editor R.R.Gopal and others. In March 2003, at an all-partymeeting convened by the DMK, a resolution said that the arrest of the leaders under the law, meant to curbterrorists and militants, went against DPM Advani’s promise in parliament that the POTA would not bemisused; this was followed by a fast (on March 29) in which Karunanidhi himself participated; then there was ajail-bharo against POTA.

But all along, Karunanidhi took care to mouth words such as these: "The protest is not against the NDAgovernment. It is only to draw the Centre's attention (to the misuse of the POTA) and in that sense it ismorally right." However, the obvious immorality of staying with the NDA and yet opposing the NDA-sponsoredPOTA was not lost on the people. And yet, it was not really POTA, or Naidu’s justifiable concern over DMK’sunabashed double standards, that resulted in the December 20 decision. It was, as we said, Jayalalitha.

On November 28, the DMK president sent a five-page letter to prime minister A.B. Vajpayee. The letterbasically detailed Jayalalitha’s legal cases and talked of how every move she had resorted to since assumingchief ministership was patently illegal, and the centre has merely been a spectator. It talks of how in thewealth case, Jayalalitha was both the prosecutor and the prosecuted and how several witnesses had been made toturn hostile, and how the entire judicial process was derailed till the DMK’s general secretary K.Anbazhaganappealed to the Supreme Court to transfer the wealth case from Tamil Nadu, after which the apex court observedthat "the prosecution appears to have acted hand in glove with the accused".

Karunanidhi’s letter drew attention to the fact that even the Supreme Court had indicted the stategovernment for its violation of constitutional provisions. In the concluding paragraph, Karunanidhi said inthe letter: "The Prime Minister is quite aware that political ethics and morals are paramount to maintainthe values of democracy. But in Tamil Nadu… the Chief Minister who has been charge-sheeted in more thanseven cases, has been ignobly allowed to wield the sword of power arbitrarily, unconstitutionally andillegally." Karunanidhi appealed to Vajpayee to take "suitable measures as per theConstitution" so that the integrity of the country and independence of the judiciary are preserved.

Days after this letter was sent, Vajpayee did not bother to reply. The DMK clearly had pinned its hopes onthe Supreme Court convicting Jayalalitha in the Tansi cases. Since that did not come about, and given thattheir appeals to the PM were also ignored, the DMK decided to finally opt put of the NDA despite the BJP’screditable performance in the recent Assembly elections. In fact, soon after the BJP’s electoral successes,Karunanidhi had said on December 4: "It is a victory for the charisma of prime minister Vajpayee."On the same occasion, he said the intervention in the judiciary by the AIADMK government could very wellattract imposition of Article 356 in the state. However, he said he would be happy if the prime ministerwarned or took action against the AIADMK government. The prime minister of course neither warned the AIADMKnor did he take action.

When the DMK decided to finally withdraw support, Naidu’s remarks came in handy since Karunanidhi did notwant to overtly acknowledge the fact that Vajpayee’s had totally ignored his appeal. A couple of days afterwithdrawing his ministers from the NDA, Karunanidhi even said that but for Maran’s prolonged illness the DMKwould have withdrawn support earlier.

Much has been made of the fact that DMK was never a "natural" ally of the BJP and that the AIADMKindeed was. Even the alliance with the BJP that came about four years ago was projected by defenders of DMK assomething that the party was driven towards. The DMK, a product of the anti-Hindi, even anti-Hindu, socialmovement in Tamil Nadu, had indeed come a long way in formally embracing Hindutva. But over the years it seemsto have realised that at least in Tamil Nadu it was the BJP that was gaining at the DMK’s expense, whereasthe DMK’s vote-share among Muslims and Dalits had shown a serious decline.

The late Murasoli Maran was in fact a key votary of the pro-NDA/BJP stance and Karunanidhi today is notrevealing anything new in putting the Maran-BJP connection in so many words. (That however begs the question:Did the DMK continue in the NDA so that minister Maran’s medical bills could be officially footed by thetaxpayer?) If Maran was indeed the "brain" of the party, as Karunanidhi often referred to him as,then the party has been long brain-dead. For more than two years, since Jayalalitha’s return to power, theparty has been drifting. And such has been the internalisation of the Hindutva logic by the party that itsformal distancing from the BJP might not be able to undo the general Hinduisation of the cadre that hadforgotten its moorings in the Periyar-led non-Brahmin movement.

Though the Congress has been making overtures to the DMK, a formal electoral alliance between the two isunlikely. As for the BJP, if it does decide to go with the AIADMK, it does not stand to gain much in terms ofvote-share since the pro-Hindu(tva) AIADMK and the BJP share a similar constituency.

When the Lok Sabha poll does get announced, players such as the MDMK and PMK might stick with the BJP; theTamil Nadu Left might go with the AIADMK since Jayalalitha continues to espouse the cause of a non-BJP,non-Congress third front and sees herself as a futureprime minister in a third front-led scenario, and the DMK might be forced to go it alone along with a fewsmall Dalit parties such as Dalit Panthers and Pudhiya Tamilagam without formally entering an alliance withold foe Congress.

For now, the DMK— which now is both ‘secular’ and ‘communal’— can only wait and hope that inthe months to come the AIADMK government does not wreak more vengeance on the party and its leaders given thatthe DMK now lacks even the cushion of theoretical support in terms of a foothold in the centre.