COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

BJP's union with PMK and MDMK will undercut Jaya

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is uncomfortable yet jubilant. The Bharatiya Janata Party is expectantly satisfied, and its allies, the Pattali Makkal Katchi and the Marumalachi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, have no cause for complaints -- if anything, they all see the political situation as another step towards their dream.

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which brought down the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, however, is groping in the dark. The Congress is confused, and the communists discredited.

As for the Tamil Maanila Congress, a one-time ally of the DMK, it doesn't seem to know where to go, or what to do.

It's an 'unlikely alliance' for 'Dravidian' Tamil Nadu, yet a formidable one. With the Vanniar community-strong PMK shedding its reservations to team up with the DMK, and the MDMK too readily agreeing to work with its parent organisation, the evolving BJP coalition in Tamil Nadu has a greater chance of sweeping the Lok Sabha election than any other.

In a way, it's an irony in political terms, yet a sign of the social changes sweeping Tamil Nadu. Three political parties with their strong social moorings and 'pan-Tamil, Dravidian roots' readily joining hands with a decisively pro-Hindutva BJP with its evolving middle-class vote bank is not something that could have been dreamt of five years ago. That the rival AIADMK might have sympathised with the BJP cause over the Ayodhya issue even in the pre-demolition days could have been acceptable, but not the DMK, PMK and the MDMK, not necessarily in that order.

The AIADMK's changeover from the Dravidian red-and-black started in 1972. The party's expanding base, dating to the demise of the middle-class hopes for Congress's revival with Kamaraj's exit in the mid-'70s let party founder and post-emergency chief minister, the late M G Ramachandran, take bold, new 'Dravidian initiatives' on the religious and nationalist front.

The MGR government did not shy away from attending to the needs and demands of Tamil Nadu's temples, its culture steeped in Sanskritised, brahminical traditions. Nor did he later shy away from proclaiming his godly intents, when he publicly started visiting the famed Moogambika temple in northern Karnataka.

MGR's successor at the AIADMK helm, Jayalalitha, went one step ahead. Not only did she visit Hindu temples and consult astrologers and holy men more frequently, more so while in power, she also took a pro-BJP, Hindutva-sympathetic political line on the Ayodhya issue even in the pre-demolition days. Both leaders also took the Dravidian party to the nationalist plank, with MGR being more pragmatic about his limitations at the national-level, and Jayalalitha, more ambitious.

In comparison, the DMK, MDMK and the PMK had been steadfastly anti-BJP and anti-Hindutva, until the latter two joined hands with the BJP in last year's Lok Sabha poll in the company of the one-time AIADMK enemy. If their very political survival, with the Election Commission too de-recognising them as 'regional parties' with separate symbols was the bottomline, the fact remained there was little cadre-resistance in both parties to an alliance with the 'pro-Hindu, pro-Hindi, upper caste' BJP.

The 'DMK conversion' too has been smooth thus far, what with the party leadership focussing on politico-moral issues like 'Jayalalitha's corrupt and contemptuous bargaining ways', in the place of communalism, casteism, anti-Dravidianism, all of which used to be its standard planks not very long ago.

In comparison, the Opposition is a divided house of divergent political causes and social hues. The AIADMK, the Congress, the TMC and the communists all have their differing political bases, yes, but that does not mean much. If anything, their differences and distinctions are even more perceptible than those visible on the other side. For instance, the AIADMK is 'all-embracing', and it has nothing to fear or favour either from the Congress or the BJP at the national-level, or any regional party at the local level. It's politics, pure, simple and straight, that matters to the AIADMK leaders and cadres, alike.

In comparison, the Congress still has its pre-Independence attraction for a substantial section of the state's voters. Contesting on its own in the post-MGR 1989 assembly election, a unified state Congress, then under G K Moopanar, guided by Rajiv Gandhi at the national-level, polled 20 per cent votes. That it was over 20 years after the Congress lost power in the state, with no real hopes of restoration in the near future meant something for the party.

But a very substantial section, say, the majority, moved over with Moopanar when he founded the Tamil Maanila Congress on the eve of the 1996 election, objecting to P V Narasimha Rao's leadership of the Congress joining hands with 'corrupt' Jayalalitha. It's that middle-class moorings on its moral high ground that has forced the TMC leadership not to side with the AIADMK, even after voting on its side to oust the Vajpayee government at the Centre.

The party has also inherited a substantial minority votebank from the Congress, whose ranks have accumulated with sections of these segments reportedly moving away from the DMK after the Coimbatore blasts last year.

The TMC did not want to lose the 'minority votebank', hence the decision to vote against the Vajpayee government. Nor does it now want to lose this, or the traditional votebank to the Sonia Gandhi leadership of the Congress.

Hence, attempts to tie up with the parent organisation. But the 'moralistic' middle-class votes, it has already lost to the BJP. It started with the Lok Sabha poll last year, and consolidated with the confidence vote this year.

The communists are a near-extinct political force in the state, other than in select pockets, where in a direct electoral fight their numbers could make the difference. Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy's poll victory at Madurai last year owed it also to the CPM slicing away a high 75,000 votes from the TMC incumbent's tally, as the two contested on their own with the DMK aligning with the latter. That way, the Left in Tamil Nadu is mostly a 'paper Tiger', and whatever credibility was left of it, was lost when it aligned with the Congress first, and Jayalalitha next.

Interestingly for a state that's looking at national politics to decide its future course, and which in turn has also been deciding the future of national politics, it's local issues that matter most. Thus, Jayalalitha becomes the issue, not only for the cadres of the DMK, but also for the one-time MDMK and PMK allies of the AIADMK.

Tell us what you think of this report