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Cadres confused over Karunanidhi's certificate for RSS

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Ruling DMK workers in Tamil Nadu are confused over party supremo and state chief minister M Karunanidhi's declaration that the RSS was 'not communal'. This, they say, is yet another calibrated departure from the recent past when the BJP became acceptable to the DMK leadership, not the RSS.

Karunanidhi's defence of the RSS at a media meet in Chennai on Tuesday was more than his BJP ally might have bargained for. At least, it was much more than any defence of the RSS even by BJP leaders, including prime minister A B Vajpayee and home minister L K Advani. The question related to the 'Gujarat issue', where the state government had amended service rules to let employees join the RSS.

"What is communalism?" Karunanidhi shot back at a questioner. "Every religion is represented by a party, but they call themselves social parties. Could you term Muslim League as a communal party because of its name?" Karunanidhi did not stop there, either. He sought to draw parallel between the RSS and the DMK, too. "Just as the DMK is a social party in Tamil Nadu, the RSS too dabbles in politics in Gujarat," Karunanidhi explained, defending the line taken by Vajpayee on the RSS issue. The septuagenarian leader, once considered the fountain-head of 'everything that was anti-RSS' in Tamil Nadu, looked uncomfortable answering newsmen's questions, but that did not deter him from taking his new-found, pro-RSS line, a step forward.

Karunanidhi would not outrightly say that that his government would let its employees join the RSS, but suggestively declared that "let them go to the courts, and get permission." He also referred to the favourable court verdicts the organisation had obtained earlier in other States. However, he was quick to change track, saying that the issue could be discussed, as and when the situation arises.

For his 'suggestive support' to the RSS now, after joining hands with the BJP, Karunanidhi is drawing flak. While political opponents have come out in the open, senior Dravidian leaders from the past are 'suffering it in silence'. They however, appreciate the electoral logic behind it. "The BJP-RSS has come to stay, not just in rest of the country, but even in the 'Dravidian' Tamil Nadu," says a senior DMK leader. "An ostrich-like behaviour will not help us in anyway, so if you cannot beat them, joining them should be the motive."

In this context, this leader refers to the growing popularity of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, and its attraction for the post-Congress, post-Dravidian, younger generation of the present. "Even the assembly segment-wise voting pattern in the Lok Sabha elections last year, proved it, and we better accepted it," he adds.

According to him, the 'BJP voters' in the state may not be pro-RSS. But they, all the same, resent the organisation being dubbed 'communal', while others of its ilk, more fundamentalist and more violent, are allowed to thrive. "Unless we are able to put down Islamic fundamentalism in the state, which caused the 'Coimbatore serial blasts' and the like, this segment will not accept RSS as communal. If any, they see in the RSS, an ideological defence against Islamic fundamentalism."

Electorally, too, this DMK leader concedes, that the party leadership had little option. "The urban middle class base of the DMK is fast shifting towards 'nationalist forces' and the drift cannot be checked by oration, as in the past," says he. The Lok Sabha elections of the last two years very clearly proved, that the presence of the BJP made the difference to victory and defeat, for the DMK and the rival AIADMK.

Adds he in this context: "The DMK's option was between the BJP and the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC), which the 'BJP voters' may have considered favourably for the assembly elections. We did play the TMC against the BJP to an extent, until the former took a line. With the TMC now giving up its neutrality, and joining the AIADMK bandwagon, we better shed whatever reservations we had for the BJP and its allies. For, with its decision, the TMC has made the residual middle class too, to flock to the BJP."

However, Dravidian ideologues are not satisfied with the explanation. While some in private are uncharitable enough to say that Karunanidhi's shift was influenced by his personal preferences that has come with advancing age, others look at it, politically. The former point to his taking to a 'yellow shawl', reportedly on the advice of astrologers, an anathema earlier to Dravidian ideologues . "He denied astrological advice, but has not changed the colour of the shawl," one of them points out.

Others say, Karunanidhi has been ill advised on the rising influence of the BJP in the state. "There is no denying the fact that the BJP is a power to reckon with in Tamil Nadu's electoral politics," says a DMK leader from this segment. According to him, however, the BJP has only cut into the 'traditional, nationalist votes' of the Congress.

"Even in 1989, when the Congress last contested the assembly elections alone, it polled a very substantial 20 per cent votes," says this leader. "Most of this has since been transferred to the BJP, which as the 'upcoming party' has definitely cornered some peripheral votes which were going to the Dravidian parties of various hues."

As he points out, "Whether it is the DMK or the AIADMK, we have also counted on our 'nationalist' allies to win the Lok Sabha elections in the state. It is also true that the Dravidian party with the 'nationalist' ally alone had won in the Lok Sabha elections. Both the DMK and the AIADMK had also conceded more seats to the Congress. Earlier it used to be Congress, now it is BJP, but even here, the BJP's share is only a handful."

The assembly elections, in contrast, are a different ball game altogether. Here, the equations are different." Local issues, local leadership, and local government matters. Here, the DMK and the AIADMK, not the BJP or the Congress, used to be issue, and will continue to be the issue."

Ironically, as it may seem, the first one to fire the salvo against Karunanidhi from inside the DMK has been state assembly speaker P T R Palanivel Rajan. A docile leader otherwise, Palanivel Rajan, whose late father P T Rajan was a pro-Dravidian Justice Party leader of repute, has kept his religion with himself, even when the rest of the DMK leadership used to be pronouncedly anti-god.

However, on the 'Gujarat-RSS issue', he has raised what looks like a politico-administrative question : "If RSS is only a social organisation like the DMK, and if government employees in Gujarat could join the RSS, what will the Tamil Nadu government do if its employees wanted to join the DMK volunteer force, whose members, wearing their uniform in the party's red-and-black colours, are regulars, in every major function organised by the DMK?"

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