Madras Check

J Jayalalithaa prepares to re-enter the national

arena
By VAASANTHI | 1 April 2014

ON 19 FEBRUARY, Tamil Nadus chief minister J Jayalalithaa ordered the

release of seven people convicted of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, after
a Supreme Court order commuted the death sentences of three of these
convicts to life imprisonment. It was a stunning statement, and made
national headlines. Her admirers called it a master strokebut it was
prompted by her arch rival, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M
Karunanidhi, who had written just the day before in his paper Murasoli,
calling for the plotters release. Jayalalithaa, who has always been a severe
critic of the LTTE, decided to capture the popular mood on the issue, and
ended up taking over a discourse mainly generated by the media (and feebly
propped up by Karunanidhi to remind people off and on that he is the
Tamilina thalaivar, leader of the Tamil community). The objective was to
gain political mileage, ensure that the Congress would have no allies in Tamil
Nadu in the months to come, and leave little to no space for the other
Dravidian and pro-Tamil parties to oppose her decision.
For months now, hoardings all over Tamil Nadu have declared Jayalalithaa as
prime-minister-in-waiting. She behaves like one already, making audacious
decisions even as she remains fully aware that they will not go unchallenged.
The woman on the posters, smiling serenely as morphed images of world
leaders crowd the edges, apparently paying obeisance to her, has been chief
minister of Tamil Nadu thrice in the past twenty years. With her greatest
rivals, the DMK, routed in the 2011 assembly polls and embroiled in the
power struggle between the sons of the patriarch Karunanidhi, she is eyeing
the moonall forty parliamentary seats (thirty-nine in Tamil Nadu and one in
Puducherry) in 2014. That is an awesome number, and an unlikely target
given the five-pronged contest under way in the state. But were she to gain
something close to it, she might well be the kingmakeror the ruler herself.
Tamil Nadu has the unique distinction of having been ruled for nearly fifty
years by a screenwriter and two actors, all masters of their craft. Here, the
real and the reel have a symbiotic relationship that can make the unthinkable
happen. So a Brahmin came to lead the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam, a party that had its roots in a movement that denounced
Brahminism. People who puffed their chests out to chant Tamil is our
breathone of the Dravidian movements historic sloganssaw no difficulty
in accepting as their leaders both the non-Tamil MG Ramachandran, and
Jayalalithaa, a woman who was born in Mysore to Mandyam Iyengar parents
and once spoke Kannada with better ease than Tamil. To accept leaders as
gods is a party compulsion, and god can speak any language.

For Jayalalithaa, the political baggage came attached to her gender, an

added challenge to her gaining acceptance. Today, she is a mystery both
within and without the AIADMK, and this suits her. She continues to
challenge the male-dominated, sexist politics of Tamil Nadu that once sought
to block her at every step of the way, as she rose to be the charismatic
leader of the party, left rudderless in 1987 after the death of its founder,
MGR. Her actions ahead of this years general election may be interpreted in
light of this tumultuous history in state and national politicsand the key to
it is her obsessive rivalry with Karunanidhi, which has long been her greatest
motivation.
Her prime ministerial ambition is itself an appropriation of Karunanidhis old
strategy to leverage Chennais power in Delhi, bettered by her aim to capture
power at the national level. In February this year, her brief flirtation with the
Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) made
them believe that she would be a serious partner in their proposed third front
following this years general election. When the alliance was announced on 2
February, AB Bardhan of the CPI went out of his way to say, If the alliance
succeeds in the elections, prospects would open up for her.
After her magnificent victory in the 2011 assembly polls, Jayalalithaa often
said that the DMK was a finished story, but she is no fool to take them for
granted. Over the last year, MK Stalin, the rising star and the heir apparent
to the DMK, has been mobilising the party with unprecedented energy. Its
cadre is enthused. Earlier this year, Stalin proclaimed that in the forthcoming
election, the DMK would go neither with the Congressunpopular due to its
handling of the issue of Tamils in Sri Lankanor with the Bharatiya Janata
Party, which is viewed as communal. It was evident that its best option for
an alliance with a national party lay with the Left, with which the DMK has
always had a cordial ideological relationship.
As talk of the third front came up, Jayalalithaa decided it would be prudent
on her part to enter into an alliance with the Left parties. It is easy to
imagine that she enjoyed the discomfiture her decision caused to the DMK,
now left with just a few small local outfits to go with, as its desperate efforts
to tie up with Vijaykanths Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam failed (the
DMDK ended up joining hands with the BJP in March). For their part, the Left
parties may have forgotten that they were dealing with a consummate actor,
and that Jayalalithaas own ambition would prevent any possibility of her
allotting the communists the six seats that they demanded, since she would
require all forty seats to make her mark.
Jayalalithaa also knew that Stalin, less politically shrewd than his father was,
remained strongly opposed to a tie-up with the BJP. However, reports
emerged in February this year of Karunanidhi praising Modi and calling him a
friend, clearly signalling to the BJP that the DMK was not averse to an
alliance. A BJPDMK combination would have deprived the AIADMK of the
maximum number that Jayalalithaa wants so badly. This realisation caused a

change of tone in her campaign speeches. The Left, already aghast when she
went ahead and nominated AIADMK candidates for all thirty-nine Tamil Nadu
seats just ten days after they announced the alliance, noticed that she
avoided mentioning the BJP or Modi, even as she raised the volume of her
anti-Congress rhetoric. The writing was on the wall.
Sure enough, Jayalalithaa refused to negotiate, and the alliance quickly
ended. But cutting off the Left does not mean that Jayalalithaas chances of
commanding a federal front have dissolved. When she broke with the
communists, the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee openly offered
to support her as prime minister when the eventuality arose. Meanwhile, if
the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance comes away with inadequate
numbers from the general election, it will have to circle back to her for
support. Either way, it is presumed, victory will be Jayalalithaas.
Her party men, none of them close to her, nod their heads in confusion at all
this back and forth. Within the AIADMK, no one knows what her strategy will
be, and no one dares ask. After she won the assembly elections in 2011,
observers were led to believe that she was close to the BJPs prime
ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, when she invited him to attend her
swearing-in ceremony in Chennai. When Modi became the BJPs campaign
committee chief last year, she publicly congratulated him. But she chose to
keep her distance when he was declared prime ministerial candidate, and
ignored him during his subsequent visits to Tamil Nadu. She knew full well
that she would lose minority votes if she was seen as close to Modi. It would
erode the confidence of her people in a state where the BJP has no presence
whatsoever.
Her projection of herself as a potential future prime minister may well be a
tactic to enthuse party-men and cadres to work harder, simply to obtain
enough numbers to emerge as a major bargaining power during the
formation of a new government in Delhi. But she and her party may also feel
that she is in no way behind Modi in matters of governance. Development
indicators in Tamil Nadu have consistently outdone those in Gujarat. Since
she came to power, Jayalalithaas strategy of governance has radiated an
aura of inclusiveness that provides everything for everybody. A Vision 2023
plan, which the state government released this February, claimed that it
would hit impressive targets to achieve economic prosperity, while ensuring
that no one is left behind in the progress under Vision 2023. Tamil Nadu
has also always had the good fortune of a bureaucracy that has given little
trouble to whoever comes to power, and executed ambitious administrative
schemes with unparalleled efficiency. Jayalalithaa governs a state that, even
by Modis standards and ideas of progress and development, ranks above
Gujarat.
MINE IS AN OPEN BOOK, she once said, but in truth, Jayalalithaa remains
unapproachable. Her arrogance and fits of rage are legendary. So are the
stories of her troubled childhood; her brilliant school record in Church Park

Convent; her impeccable English; her relationship with MGR and her sense of
loss after his death; her relationship with her aide, Sasikala, which Tamil
men are not able to understand; her deep hatred towards Karunanidhi, which
invariably colours all her political reactions. The past, which shapes her
present, is marked by her loneliness, as well as her anger at having been
battered by various court cases; having her wealth frozen, properties sealed
and jewels seized; and being sent to legal custody, the memory of which
must continue to haunt her.
In 1996, Jayalalithaa was imprisoned for twenty-eight days following the
Madras High Courts rejection of her anticipatory bail application in the case
known as the colour television scam. The imprisonment had come on the
heels of a massive electoral defeat in the state elections of 1996, which
ended her first term as chief minister. Upon her release, she went into selfimposed exile.
When she returned after a long silence, in October 1997, she told her partymen that she was still in politics because she did not want it to be written in
history that AIADMK, a party that MGR founded in opposition to Karunanidhi,
was wiped out by Karunanidhi. It was even more important that Karunanidhi
should not wipe her out: the AIADMK knew it could not exist without her. Her
party members were deeply moved to hear her say, Any other woman in my
place would have committed suicide [for the kind of suffering I have gone
through] or would have become insane.
Corruption had been her downfall in her first chief ministerial term, between
1991 and 1996. In her second term (20012006), she baffled the state with
her autocratic measures, unhindered and unquestioned except in the media,
with whom relations had soured at the time. First, her assumption of power
raised constitutional debate, since she had been unable to run for election as
MLA, and had been rejected by the electoral offices of four constituencies
because of her corruption charges. But more dramatically, her first act as
chief minister was to arrest the seventy-seven-year-old Karunanidhi in the
middle of the night, shocking the nation. A spate of unilateral decisions
followed. There was her proposal in the assembly, ruling out all discussion, to
demolish the nearly hundred-year-old Queen Marys College to make way for
a new secretariat; the ordinance against forced conversion; and the ban
imposed on animal sacrifice. In 2002, Vaiko, leader of the Marumalarchi
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, then an ally of the ruling BJP, was arrested
under POTA (since repealed) for speaking in favour of the LTTE, a banned
outfit.
All this has shaped her third term as chief minister, during which she appears
to have understood the art of wielding power. Her massive mandate in the
2011 Tamil Nadu elections, which proved every poll prediction wrong, was
definitive in this respecta victory that released her from fear of the future.
Her previous term had been consumed by her desire to avenge the wrongs
she felt she had suffered because of Karunanidhi, but in 2011, no need for

that remained. The DMK was comprehensively routed, with the patriarchs
family spiraling into destruction. Karunanidhis daughter, the Rajya Sabha MP
Kanimozhi, was in jail, charged with fraud and corruption. The Tamil press,
always soft on Karunanidhi, had turned on him because his allies in the UPA
had made a mess of dealing with the genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils during
the civil war in Jaffna.
This time, Tamil Nadus mood, and its priorities, have discernibly changed.
People are concerned with issues of the environment, as evinced by the
Koodankulam protests; they are angry with human rights violations of fellow
Tamils beyond their own shores. Tamil fellow feeling is resurgent.
Jayalalithaa, once a severe critic of the LTTE, has changed her own tactics in
response. With her order to free the seven convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi
assassination case, the states press, largely pro-Tamil, was completely won
over. The media today bends over backwards to praise her.
Her third term has been relatively tranquil. She remains unforgiving in many
respects: over the past two years she has reshuffled seventeen cabinet
ministers from their positions. Within the administration, she brooks no
opposition, and her word on any subject is considered law. But she has
survived three years without scandal, or allegations of corruption. She now
maneuvers public support with her array of populist welfare schemes, thanks
to which it seems as though the man in the street gets everything he needs
in the name of AmmaJayalalithaa as universal mother. Any public
discontent is offset by her largesse. Twenty kilograms of rice free every
month for each BPL family, mixie-grinders and fansnever mind that
Jayalalithaas grand promises to end Tamil Nadus power shortages have
come to nothing so farand bicycles for school children, have all been
distributed as Ammas gifts. Amma canteens run by municipal corporations in
cities sell idlis for one rupee each, and curd rice for three rupees. All this has
an impact on the Tamil psyche, among people who believe in the old adage
Be grateful as long as you live to the person who fed you.
IN 2010, all hell broke loose in parliament as the CAG report on the 2G
spectrum scam implicated the UPAs then telecom minister, Andimuthu Raja
of the DMK. As the melee gained volume, Jayalalithaa unexpectedly gave an
interview to the news channel Times Now, in which she indicated her
willingness to offer support to the Congress with eighteen MPs, nine from the
AIADMK and nine mustered with the help of like-minded partiespresuming
that the Congress hesitated to sack Raja, fearing the withdrawal of the DMKs
eighteen MPs.
It was a stunning announcement. She, supporting the Congress? After all
that happened between her and Sonia Gandhi? She smiled benignly at the
interviewer. My party is thirty-eight years old. My political career is twentyeight years old. There are bound to be ups and downs. If you keep harping
on the past, you cannot move forward. Her only concern, she insisted, was
to create a nationwide awakening to bring the corrupt to book.

Jayalalithaa is the sort of politician who loves to gamble and drop bombshells
to test the waters. The Congress, which knows this and is unwilling to trust
her, did not take up the offer. As an ally at the centre, Jayalalithaas track
record has been dismal. When she first joined hands with the BJP in 1998
after the fall of the United Front government of IK Gujral, in which the DMK
had been a partner, it was described as a natural alliance. Jayalalithaa had
been consistently soft on the Ramjanmabhoomi issue, and made an
unabashed show of her religiosity and visits to temples. But it soon became
clear that her alliance with the BJP-led coalition had personal motivations. By
offering support in the Lok Sabha, she could bargain for crucial ministerial
berths, and seek help as she waded through the numerous corruption cases
in which she was entangled. There was, of course, a hidden agenda. On 15
April 1998, the first executive of the AIADMK after the poll formalised the
partys demand for the removal of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu,
claiming that there had been a confirmed breakdown in law and order.
As the BJP coalition began to feel the strain, having to depend on
Jayalalithaas eighteen MPs to stay in power, she broke every rule, ruffled
every feather, and defied every convention. The shenanigans of the puratchi
thalaivi (revolutionary leader, as her party faithful call her) whenever she
visited Delhi, given royal treatment by prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee,
became a national obsession. In a hurry to achieve her objectives, she
marched to the capital in March 1999, meeting Sonia Gandhi at the famous
tea party arranged by Subramaniam Swamy, which also happened to be
attended by opposition leaders such as Narasimha Rao, Chandrashekar and
HD Deve Gowda, among others. It was an ominous warning to the BJP that
she was not averse to shaking hands with the Congress.
The inevitable happened. She made impossible demands, asking for the
dismissal of George Fernandes, the then defence minister, purportedly
objecting to his removal of the navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. On the
pretext of the governments refusal to accede, she withdrew her support on
14 April 1999, and the government fell following a no-confidence motion.
(Based on the impeccable logic that the enemys enemy is a friend, the DMK
with its six MPs, in its golden jubilee year, ended up voting for a government
led by its ideological opponent, the BJP). However, when the results of the
1999 general election came in, Jayalalithaa was shocked, left with just ten
MPs. The DMK was now not only the NDAs electoral ally, but also brought
twenty-six seats to the BJP-led government that came to power.
Still, towards the end of its term the BJP appeared to be getting close to
Jayalalithaa again, and by the end of 2003 Karunanidhi decided to pull out of
the NDA government. For her part, even as she struck up an electoral
alliance with the Congress in 1996, Jayalalithaa could never make friends
with Sonia Gandhi, and found it difficult to bring herself even to share a
platform with the latter. She insulted Gandhi during the election campaign,
making her wait, and not turning up for a joint event in Tamil Nadu, because,
she claimed, she had been caught in a traffic jam.

Later, Jayalalithaa clearly indicated that alliances were only for the purposes
of elections and ceased to be relevant after that. Returning to power in 2001
with a brute majority, she began to attack Gandhi openly as a foreigner who
could not be allowed to become the prime minister of India. By 2004, Gandhi
had become a friend to Karunanidhi, whom her party had once accused of
facilitating the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. It was a fateful election year;
the DMK-Congress combine walked away with all forty seats from Tamil Nadu
and Puducherry in the Lok Sabha elections, and the AIADMK was left with
nothing.
Ten years on, the equations have changed yet again. Jayalalithaa need not
offer her support to anyone; it is assumed that she will have a decisive role
in the formation of the next government at the centre. Her manifesto for the
coming Lok Sabha election reads more like a national policyit includes
plans to link national rivers, the return of black money parked in foreign
accounts, and reservation for women in legislatures. Her body language has
changed as she addresses industry leaders. On 21 February, she said at a
meeting: I have a vision for India in which Tamil Nadu will play a key role, a
vision for a resurgent Indiaa statement made as though she already ruled
the nation. Now she says to her party-men, Obama-like: Yes we canthe
AIADMK can make it to the centre and redeem this nation to a new freedom.
Every street in Chennai carries a hoarding hailing her as the future Prime
Minister and permanent Tamil Nadu chief minister. Nobody appears to
think it a contradiction.
Who will trust her? Will she trust anyone? Running a coalition needs flexibility
and accommodation, qualities which have been difficult for her to cultivate.
There are others in the country with similar ambitionsequally strong
individuals. Her path remains complicated by legal hurdles, which she will
bring with her to every negotiating table. Many say it is unlikely that she will
be a consensus choice to take power at the centre. However, as always, she
gambles with gustoa woman ready to believe that no matter what the
results are, she will be the winner.