Chennai: The alacrity with which the AIADMK government headed by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswamy recently announced a long-schedule of functions, covering all 32 districts of Tamil Nadu, for celebrating the birth centenary year of the late legendary actor-turned-politician, former Chief Minister and Bharat Ratna, M G Ramachandran, popularly known as MGR, is not just to take the winds out of the sails of the rival party faction led by the former Chief Minister, Mr. O.Pannerselvam, widely known as OPS.
The meticulously publicised schedule, starting with the inaugural function at Madurai on June 30, and to culminate in a grand finale to commemorate MGR's birth centenary year in Chennai in January 2018, has also given equal prominence to the picture of MGR's protégé and late Chief Minister, J Jayalalithaa in the government announcement.
The net impact of this genial response by the ruling establishment in Fort St. George, appears to be to ward off apprehensions of its imminent dissolution after the July Presidential polls.
Circumstances cannot be more trying for what used to be hailed a model state of India. Amid having to fight strong impressions of being a lame-duck administration post-Jayalalithaa's demise in December 2016, most excruciating drought in the last 144 years, the state economy visibly slowing down, the two AIADMK factions locked over de facto from-prison guidance of Ms. V.K. Sasikala, confidante of the late Chief Minister, former MP, T.T.V. Dhinakaran's bid to regain lost political ground, no quick end in sight to the party's 'Two Leaves' symbols case and a high decibel backdrop of payoff charges, Mr. Palaniswami's adroit move, who by now has built an equation with the BJP government in Delhi, clearly signals that this government is here to stay longer than expected.
Nonetheless, it is not merely to do with the tenure stability of holding the reins of power, which anyway is largely taken care of by the State administration in an auto-pilot mode. The deeper political significance of an extended centenary year mela, dovetailing MGR's successor, J. Jayalalithaa as well, unveils a new dimension of 'charisma in absence' in Tamil Nadu politics. It underlines how, for all the post-death assessments, leadership icons are not easily wished away.
While Jayalalithaa's charisma-centric politics has recently begun to be decoded and deconstructed through biographies and fictionalized narratives, MGR's popularity and power was of a larger epic proportion, something only his death on Christmas-eve in 1987 could dislodge. Perhaps the most trenchant sociological critique of the 'MGR phenomenon' came from the highly acclaimed social scientist, late M S S Pandian, in his work, "The Image Trap - M G Ramachandran in Films and Politics" that was published in the early 1990s'.
Pandian was troubled by how MGR managed to coalesce his eternal do-gooder image through a variety of film roles (a film career spanning four decades with 136 films) that invariably cast him as reaching out to the poorer and oppressed sections, with his political persona as well.
Pandian's critique of the MGR era stemmed from the actor-turned-politician's presumed immortality both in films and in real life, though there was the other side to the coin. Amid a bunch of public welfare schemes, including the expansion of the nutritious noon meal programme for school children, that won him the massive support of the poorer sections, Pandian also points out, rather agonisingly, how MGR's government was largely serving the "interests of the rich". There were several such contradictions under the MGR era, but, despite his principal DMK rival seeking to raise corruption charges against his regime, none would ever think of even believing a graft charge flung against the MGR rule. On the contrary, MGR was more seen as a 'kodai vallal', one who gave away whatever money he made.
There are good historical reasons for this kind of charismatic politics to be able to sustain itself beyond the 'Image Trap', so to say. The evolution of the late rationalist leader Periyar E V Ramaswami's 'Self-Respect Movement' had brought about such a big churn in the composition of the traditional political elite who took decisions for the people in the erstwhile Madras State.
With the Dravidian Movement, as pointed out by several scholars including Theodre Bhaskaran, making effective use of theatre and cinema to make that transition from being 'message-bearers' of progressive social change, to leadership positions in corridors of power, where they could actually take decisions to bring about those changes- both the DMK and the AIADMK substantially inherited and grew on that legacy-, the transition from reel to real life was that much easier and equally authentic in reinforcing the pro-poor image of the Dravidian parties.
However, the compulsions of realpolitik in the coalition era since the late 1980s', when the Dravidian parties fell sway to the blind anti-Congressism at the All-India level, saw the beginnings of an image makeover in leadership styles of DMK and the AIADMK, both having been allies of the BJP at the centre as part of the NDA, when the saffron party was then yet to get a clear majority of its own in Parliament.
The virulent anti-corruption campaign against Ms. Jayalalithaa's regime, historically, came only later, even as spasmodic episodes of Tamil Nationalism have made their presence felt on the state's political theatre.
Pandian's persisting agony, as seen in a later article, was that social gains of Periyar's rationalist movement got diluted during the MGR-led AIADMK regime to start with. But subsequent political developments have not seen people jettisoning charismatic leadership altogether. No wonder the MGR centenary as a political binder keeps the clocks and calendar going.
