Jayalalithaa earned her place in history

The rise, fall and rise of J. Jayalalithaa will remain one of the most remarkable stories of modern India. Her Poes Garden residence was her castle and while in power she was an empress few dared to cross. There may have been very powerful politicians, beginning with Mrs Indira Gandhi, who ruled with an iron hand but few may have assumed this imperious air in everything she did in the public sphere and carried herself as Jaya did in Tamil Nadu. Right up to the night they wheeled her into Apollo Hospital, she had lorded over her land in a manner only a few could have.

Jayalalithaa will remain a figure etched in the history of Tamil Nadu. Those who choose to eulogise her will find plenty of material in her unique connect with the people through her many welfare schemes she designed, principally with an eye on the women in the kitchen being those needing the most relief. Those who saw her, warts and all, would be able to recount better the plus and minuses of having an imperialist in modern age democracy ruling in autocratic fashion and brooking no opposition from among the bureaucrats or those in her party fold who were politically lighter in weight without her charismatic vote-pulling prowess.

In a long meeting with her in 2011 at Poes Garden when she was out of power I saw her dark side, the bitterness pouring out of her as she confessed innermost thoughts, exploding at her political opponents, principally her bête noir M. Karunanidhi. A few years later, in her chamber at Fort St George I saw the other side of her as she exulted in Tamil Nadu’s victory that day in the Supreme Court when the long running Cauvery water case seemed to have ended in the State’s favour with the ordering of a Cauvery management Board. For once, we were glancing at our watches wondering if we were taking too much of a Chief Minister’s time.

Jaya’s greatest strength as well as her biggest weakness may have been her theory that everyone has a price. She used to tell the politician who took her into Parliament on her first day after she was nominated that all investigation officials were like canines who would keep quite if you threw them a few biscuits. She may have been young and immature then but she followed that principle throughout her reign, threatening and badgering bureaucrats into submission and managing the investigators. Her entire judicial defence was predicated upon dilatory tactics to hold up the verdicts for as long as possible while she trotted out all Indian politicians’ lame reasoning that the people  voted for them, the vox populi being immune to the vibrations of the morality factor because it sees all rulers accused of corruption anyway.

Not until she ran into a judge the Indian equivalent of the Italian who took on the Sicilian mafia did she face the worst of the long arm of the law when the national flag was ripped off her official car in the Bengaluru court compound. It was really downhill all the way from there, although she fought on grimly in the higher courts, hoping to get a favourable judge who would be more forgiving of the shenanigans of politicians. So inured are our leaders to dipping their hands into the funds provided by crooked people wishing to turn the business odds against rivals, or simply playing front men as the state became Tamil Nadu Enterprises Limited that they hardly see the moral dilemma of the corruption of power and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

After coming to know from her highest political contacts that the judgment was bound to go against her in the DA case, Jaya was never the same again, notwithstanding the victory that saw her replicate MGR’s feat in breaking the alternating duopoly vote. What was impressive was her ability to stand up to the pressures and seek the public vote again and carry off an MGR-like re-election success story. She was also on exemplary behaviour in obeying top court diktats, which people like Lalu Prasad just could not although he was in the same boat.
Even so, all that her political connections could command was a delay in reading the verdict, which got further put back after she was rushed to Apollo in an ambulance. I was told most reliably by insiders that she staged a smart recovery and was close to choosing a date to head home when her heart could take it no longer. It was only the strict policing by her aide who allowed very few people to see her in the course of the treatment which triggered all kinds of ugly rumours. The life may have gone out of her but Poes Garden intrigues never stopped.

A year later, the Jaya legacy is still in the balance, her true place in the Tamil pantheon still being debated. Kin have been coming out of the woodwork even as her principal aide cools her heels in jail while her nephew is fighting to keep the family business together by remaining in politics. It’s a pity in a way that the life ebbed out of her when she was barely conscious of what was happening around her. In keeping with her imperious ways she never nominated a political heir.

Considering how she battled to establish herself as her mentor’s political heir, she probably didn’t want anyone to enjoy the title without sweating for it. The Jaya legend will live on, more so as she named no successor.