Dravidian politics’ last stand falls

Dravidian politics lost its last tallest leader on Tuesday with the demise of Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the 95-year-old DMK patriarch who headed the party since 1969. The 13-time MLA and five-time Chief Minister, the name of Karunanidhi is synonymous with the Rising Sun, the electoral symbol of the DMK. It is a strange coincidence that the passing away of Karunanidhi was announced after sunset.

Critics of the DMK say that Karunanidhi made it a “son rise” party through the careful coronation of his son Stalin as the de facto chief of the party in 2016 and elevation of other members in the family to important positions. 

For the DMK cadre, the party chief was a superman. He was the last word in Tamil culture, tradition, literature and of course politics. The scripts he penned for films which were the mirror images of the Brahmin-dominated Tamil society of the early 19th and the 20th century, stand out for the electrifying dialogues and tongue-in-the-cheek repartee.

Brahmins, who constitute less than two per cent of the State’s population, continued to be Karunanidhi’s bête noire, though their monopoly in politics, literature and Tamil social life came to an end long back. Opposition to Brahmanism and Hindutva was the focal point of Karunanidhi’s political ideology.

Karunanidhi became Chief Minister in 1969 by default, according to AM Raja, the nonagenarian former DMK MLA from Erode. “VR Nedunchezhiyan was the chosen one to be the Chief Minister because of his knowledge, erudition and selfless service. But a section of the DMK leadership under MGR felt that Nedunchezhiyan would not heed to their requests and they zeroed in on Karunanidhi.

“Karunanidhi lacked the personality and charisma of CN Annadurai or Ramasamy Naicker, but once he became Chief Minister and DMK president, he decimated all his opponents and made the party an extension of his family,” reminiscences Raja.

Karunanidhi was a clever politician who was an expert in winning friends and influencing people. Dale Carnegie would have to earn one or two tricks of the game from Karunanidhi, a school dropout, said a DMK leader.

Karunanidhi could be described as a phenomenon which took Tamil politics by storm in the 1960s and 1970s. He got rid of all his rivals and potential threats in the DMK in a systematic manner. Politics and his family were his foremost passion as well as obsession. What made him stand out from his contemporaries was his acumen in doing business with the Congress and the BJP with the same of élan.

The contributions made by Karunanidhi in the development of Tamil Nadu are debatable. There was a time when people in the neighbouring Kerala considered Madras (the old name of Chennai) as an El Dorado. For an average Keralite, the industrially developed Tamil Nadu was a source of livelihood. By the 1990s, Tamilians used to make a beeline to Kerala in search of livelihoods.

The period 2006 to 2011, when Karunanidhi was Chief Minister, was a challenging time for him. The State saw on an average 18 hours of power cut because of the failure of the State administration to increase electricity generation. That was also the period which saw Karunanidhi playing the role of kingmaker in Delhi politics as the DMK was the third biggest political outfit in the UPA. Despite his position as the most powerful ally of the Congress, Karunanidhi could not succeed in getting the verdict delivered by the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal Award gazetted. He also failed in saving the Tamils in northern Sri Lanka from the alleged genocide.

Karunanidhi was fully engaged in saving his daughter Kanimozhi and her friend A Raja from the 2G Scam. He was busy trying to extinguish the fire generated in his clan because of the internecine turf war between his children born to three wives and the grandnephews. Though he had institutionalised the freebee culture by dolling out colour TVs, mixers and heavily subsidised rice to voters, it did not help him win any of the elections held from 2011 onwards.

A close scrutiny of Tamil Nadu’s recent history reveals some interesting facts. The DMK registered an impressive growth during the initial phase of Karunanidhi’s leadership. When Karunanidhi grew, the DMK too grew. But the moment his family started dabbling in politics, the party, which was described as a disciplined and non-corrupt outfit, went haywire. Sycophancy and favouritism became the hallmarks of the DMK and the Karunanidhi clan.

Karunanidhi’s major achievement has been to retain his control over the party for almost fifty years. DMK historian K Thirunavukkarassan says, “This does not mean there is paucity of leaders in the DMK. There were equally charismatic and talented leaders. But they were not elected to the party president’s post. Would Karunanidhi or his family members allow anyone to contest against him? It is yet another extension of the Congress and the Gandhi-Nehru family.”

The departure of Karunanidhi would make a lot of difference in the future of the DMK. The question is whether Stalin would be able to retain the same control over the party. The possibilities of the turf war between Stalin and his elder brother Alagiri spilling on to streets cannot be ruled out. How long the new generation leaders of the DMK would continue as the “yes men” of the Karunanidhi clan is also to be seen. The anti-Hindi and anti-Sanskrit campaigns unleashed by the DMK have lost steam. The scene of thousands of DMK activists offering special poojas in temples all over the State prove that rationalism and atheism have lost sting in the Dravidian land. Add to this, the findings by the scientific community through DNA and genetic studies proved that the Aryan Invasion Theory is bunkum. The DMK may have to reboot and rework from the basics.

Au Revoir Dr Kalaignar (as he wanted everybody to address him). Thank you for the good works you did for Tamil Nadu.