Post Jayalalithaa era, Kingmaker state' has descended into political muddle

Chennai: After calling on the ailing DMK patriarch, M. Karunanidhi at the Kauvery hospital here on Friday, former Prime Minister Mr HD Deve Gowda, who had headed the United Front Government at the Centre, said he “cannot forget that Karunanidhi was also responsible for making me the Prime Minister in 1996.”

Mr. Deve Gowda’s pithy yet telling reminder was a ringing affirmation of the fact how influential political leaders from Tamil Nadu had played a crucial role in the selection/election of Prime Minister’s right from late Congress President K Kamaraj’s time in the mid-1960s’. The sobriquet that Kamaraj deservedly earned as ‘Kingmaker’, symbolised a tradition that moved on even three decades later when Karunanidhi at the helm of the DMK and Tamil Nadu could play that role.

It was not just symbolism. The ‘Kingmaker’ metaphor connoted a substantial speech-act.  It was a mirror to how influential political leaders from the South with a broader vision and interests of the country at heart, could set aside their personal predilections and ambitions, to act to ensure political stability at the Centre, either when there was a dicey leadership succession issue in New Delhi or when no single party obtained a clear majority in the Lok Sabha. It was also a live affirmation that States mattered as much as the Centre in democratic India.

“Everyone has a free expression of views. Without all the States, where is the Centre? The Chief Ministers certainly represent the States. Without the States how do you have India and Parliament? “ was Kamaraj’s cryptic reply at a press conference in January 1966 during the second succession issue over who should succeed as India’s PM, a week after the ‘shocking and tragic news’ of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri having passed away after signing the Tashkent Agreement. 

Recalling those hectic days in his meticulously succinct book ‘Kamaraj – A Study’, the late veteran journalist, economist and social thinker, VK Narasimhan, wrote: “The country was once again confronted with the problem of choosing a successor and for the second time in two years, Congress President Kamaraj became the central figure in Indian politics.” ……”In the choice of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, as much as in the choice of Lal Bahadur, Kamaraj’s overriding purpose was to preserve the unity and authority of the Congress and install as Prime Minister, one who accepted the concept of collective leadership and who commanded the widest spectrum of support in the party and in the country,” wrote Narasimhan in his study laced with insights into politics of the 1960s.

Though the DMK in subsequent years had bitterly fought Kamaraj in Tamil Nadu, evolving over the years, as key regional players widened their spheres of influence, the DMK under Karunanidhi’s leadership had well recognised that the State’s pro-active role in times of political uncertainty at the centre, did substantively add to the Federal character of the Indian polity.

Thus his ‘Kingmaker’ role, both in the choice of Mr Deve Gowda and later within a year, Mr IK Gujral, Karunanidhi’s subsequent support for the BJP-led NDA followed by the DMK’s return to the Congress-led electoral alliance in 2004 in the post-Godhra context in Gujarat, was all of a piece that flowed from the Kingmaker’s logic: of ensuring stability at the Centre, even if tempered by DMK’s state political priorities where its main rival to this day has been the AIADMK. In the case of Gujral though, senior Congressman G.K Moopanar was also in the race. 

However, for the last nearly two years, the political honour and prestige that the ‘Kingmaker’ role had conferred upon Tamil Nadu, thanks to leaders like Kamaraj as that tradition had really started with him, has all but vanished. Rajaji, though was also a ‘Kingmaker’ in a different setting, when the ‘Swatantra’ party that he founded, later blessed the rise of the DMK. “You may take away your support, but you cannot take away your blessing,” Karunanidhi smilingly told Rajaji once later.

The point is that pattern of leadership Tamil Nadu could take pride in, had been seriously eroded post the Jayalalithaa-era in the state’s politics. Karunanidhi’s ailment, more or less coinciding with that phase when his younger son, M K Stalin was made the DMK’s working President, has only reinforced that new trend.

From a State characterised as a land of “vendetta politics” due to the fierce rivalry between DMK and AIADMK, in all standard readings by political interpreters - the most recent example of it being a new Legislature complex conceived and built during the DMK regime having being converted into a multi-specialty hospital under ‘Amma’s regime later - Tamil Nadu today finds itself unwittingly ensnared by what is widely seen as a political muddle.

As new political aspirants to power in the state, including the BJP and the two popular actors-turned politicians Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth, get increasingly vocal, besides parties like the PMK which are also strengthening their base, both the DMK and a fractured AIADMK are groping for a stronger political narrative. Both the Dravidian majors are being slammed by the same brush of ‘corruption’, even as the BJP and its affiliates seek to also raise the issue of ‘cultural decline’.

In the post-economic liberalisation period, relatively more jobs and better incomes, thanks to the MNCs’ attractive salaries, the economic foundations of the Tamil middle class, as in other parts of the country, is undergoing a slow transformation. For the contemporary sociologist, the biggest worry is whether it would translate into majoritarian/cultural nationalism. Is a seemingly puritanical, conservative government the answer to all social ills as perceived by its elite?

At least mass leaders like Kamaraj, Annadurai, Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalalithaa would say a big ‘No’. In fact, VK Narasimhan, in his book, explaining that facet of Kamaraj writes: “A third lesson which Kamaraj is said to have learnt from his political Guru is one which has made him appear as a supreme exponent of ‘Realpolitik’. Satyamurti seems to have impressed on Kamaraj that politics was not a game played by angels in human form and that a successful leader should not expect impossible standards of rectitude from his followers. Allowance should be made for human weaknesses of one sort or the other. Kamaraj has undoubtedly learnt this well.” Human fallibility is the corner stone of democracy.

The larger implication is that seasoned political parties, irrespective of their ideologies, would need to revisit and re-articulate their priorities, vision that square with a multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-cultural society, to remain relevant. In the words of the late scholar and a former Union minister Humayun Kabir, “Gandhiji’s deep sense of spirituality forged a new weapon of political warfare. He realized that violence can provoke only greater violence. Hatred cannot be overcome by hared. It is love alone that can triumph over hate and violence.”