Smaller parties: When symbols dance to varying caller tunes

CHENNAI: When the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) leader T T V Dhinakaran on Friday, the last day of withdrawal of nominations for the April 18 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, smilingly introduced the common ‘Gift Pack’ symbol allotted to AMMK nominees, the power of an ‘image’ to represent something to somebody came alive.

So was it when another new entrant to politics Makkal Needhi Maiyam (MNM) leader, actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan, jubilantly in a moment brought out his histrionic powers flashing the ‘Torch light’, allotted as a common symbol to his party for the 2019 elections by the EC, saying it was the political need of the hour. It electrified a recent memory to when ‘broom’ was allotted to AAP in New Delhi.

Though a ‘common symbol’ matters more for the political debutants, not all relatively smaller parties sail on the same boat. The AMMK for instance, led by the dissident AIADMK leader Dhinakaran, is the resultant of a political purge after former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016. Tumultuous events led to the emergence of a diarchy in the official AIADMK in the form of Edappadi K Palaniswami and O. Pannerselvam, widely referred to as EPS-OPS combine. It was crisis-management, taking forward a diluted MGR-Jayalalithaa legacy cleansed of the ‘Sasikala clan’, as the new purists saw it. But a defiant Dhinakaran continues his battle to retrieve what he terms the “real AIADMK”.

The MNM led by Kamal Haasan, has also been upshot of the post-Jayalaltiaha, post-Karunanidhi era in Tamil Nadu politics, though he has the advantage of beginning with a fresh slate as a ‘centrist party’. These are just but two examples in the state’s political spectrum today, where strength and size of a political vehicle do not yet have visible indices. They, nevertheless, bring to the fore how symbols play an important part in the discourse of political parties.

While Kamal Haasan had no legal issue in getting a ‘common symbol’ for a registered, but unrecognized party, Dhinakaran had to knock on the doors of the Supreme court till virtually the last day, as he faced legal tussle of not having registered the AMMK with the EC. That, lawyers pointed out in the Supreme Court, would have entailed T T V Dhinakaran giving up his claim for the AIADMK and its popular ‘Two leaves’ symbol. Yet, even if contesting all the 40 LS seats at stake here technically as ‘Independents’, lack of a ‘common symbol’ would have changed the contest dynamics as he sees himself as ‘challenger’ to the AIADMK. Thus, the Supreme Court had very correctly said that in the interests of a ‘level playing field’, the EC would have to allot a ‘common symbol’ to AMMK too.

However, the pragmatics of the immediate present is one thing, the long-term challenges in being able to sustain claims to a symbol as a ‘reserved symbol’, based on the party’s performance at the hustings is quite another. In that context, it is not only the fledgling political outfits that are under pressure to perform, but also the well established parties, big or small.

Take for instance, the Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar), which again under the leadership of G K Vasan had exited the Congress in Tamil Nadu, notwithstanding the merger of the two parties under Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s leadership at a huge rally in Madurai 2002 after G K Moopanar’s demise. For the 2019 LS polls, the TMC applied to the EC for ‘concessional allotment’ of its ‘bicycle’ symbol.

That the TMC’s political realignment this year was sudden and shaky by becoming part of the AIADMK-BJP led NDA combine is another matter. Interestingly, the EC agreed to TMC’s plea to allot it the ‘bicycle’ symbol, following a court case, but said it had to meet the ‘requirement of minimum number of candidates’.

However, as Mr. Vasan’s luck would have it, the AIADMK gave it only one seat of Thanjavur that TMC could not avail of the benefit of its ‘bicycle’ symbol, since it has fielded just one candidate for the LS polls. In an anti-climax of sorts, a party with a farmers’ base in erstwhile composite Thanjavur district, finally landed up with its contestant N R Nadarajan being allotted ‘autorickshaw’, an urban symbol.

Some other registered, unrecognized parties in the State also faced similar predicaments this time. The MDMK led by Vaiko, allotted one seat, Erode, as part of the DMK-Congress combine now, would have had to at least contest two LS seats to ask for its ‘Top’ symbol, which it managed to get even in 2014 parliament elections when it contested seven seats as part of BJP-led front. However, the issue was resolved amicably with MDMK nominee A. Ganeshamurthy, contesting on DMK’s ‘rising sun’ symbol, seeming to go back to its Dravidian political roots.

The IJK led by Paarivendhar also resolved its tangle by contesting on DMK symbol, like the Kongunadu Makkal Desiya Katchi (KMDK), which is testing its waters in Namakkal, having switched sides from the NDA to the secular alliance. The IUML, another ally of DMK, had no problem in getting its ‘ladder’ symbol allotted for its candidate in Ramanathapuram, as it sought the allotment from EC based on IUML being a recognised party in Kerala. The Dalit party, VCK though, responded differently in the DMK-led front, with its leader Thol Thirumavalvan, opting for EC’S symbol of ‘pot’, even as its second candidate settled for the DMK symbol.   

In the AIADMK-led front, similar situation vis-à-vis symbols, faced by single-constituency parties like the New Justice Party (NJP) leader A C Shanmugham, contesting from Vellore, was resolved with a pragmatic Mr Shanmugham  agreeing to contest on AIADMK’s ‘Two Leaves’ symbol. However, the other Dalit party, Puthiya Tamizhagam (PT) led by Dr K Krishnaswamy, who returned to the AIADMK-fold after six years, is contesting on his own symbol, as given by the EC.  

While the actor Vijayakant-led DMDK continues to be the only other recognised regional party in the State, now entitled to its ‘reserved’ symbol of ‘Damaru’, the PMK headed by Dr S Ramadoss was pleased to get its ‘mango’ symbol allotted by the EC, as a key ally of AIADMK in this year’s elections, thanks to PMK being a recognised party in the Union territory of Puducherry.

What these symbols imbroglio point to in the medium-term is that that the space for sub-regional parties- in the sense of their geographic spread and influence confined to a few districts or their political appeal confined to a particular community- is shrinking in the larger coalitional shakeup in Indian politics.  National parties like BJP may still need the smaller OBC parties for aggregating votes, but only until those voters sartorially prefer the saffron.

Even a dominant regional party like AIADMK, which going solo under Jayalalithaa, had won 37 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 needs to rethink, to re-imagine this political space, as BJP eyes the MGR-Jayalalithaa vote-bank sans an effective leadership.

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