DMK party, which came to power in 1967, had a crisis in facing the 1971 Assembly elections. Mr.C.N.Annadurai passed away in 1968 after being in power for one year and Mr. Karunanidhi succeeded as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. During the 1971 election there was a huge campaign against DMK for “corruption in public life”. The late Sri Kamaraj, with his unblemished record in public life, spearheaded this campaign against DMK. The octogenarian Rajaji also gave his blessings to Kamaraj in this campaign.
Almost all political forecasts declared the doom of DMK party in that election. Even the Chief Minister, Mr. Karunanidhi in his last leg of public speeches, started saying “Whoever comes to power, after this election should forget the past of political animosity and should be prepared to co-operate with the new Government whoever forms it”. However, the election results turned out to be quite different and surprisingly the DMK not only won the elections but also came back to power with a better majority. All political calculations went wrong. It appeared as if the electorate had accepted corruption in public life as an inevitable thing and political parties should be judged on other criteria. May be there were more pressing issues before the public than fighting a moral battle against corruption. After this election, the ruling DMK also started feeling unquenchable. This was clearly visible in Mr. Karunanidhi’s handling of the crowd puller of the DMK, Mr. M.G.Ramachandran.
While all DMK party functionaries enriched themselves MGR did not have any demands on the administration as well as on the DMK party.
He was far removed from the world of administration. He did not even know the details of the Government ministries. There was a joke going around at that time that MGR asked a common friend of his and Mr. Karunanidhi “Why can I not be a minister?” The friend replied, “Of course you can. Which ministry do you want?” To this MGR is reported to have replied that he wanted to become Medical Minister. The point made here is that he did not even know the nomenclature, “Health minister”.
Strange as it would seem to a normal mind, power brings with it a sense of too much insecurity and the consequence is that people in power want to adopt peculiar strategies and even when there is no problem they create one. Mr. Karunanidhi at that point in time thought that it was time to settle scores with MGR and reduce his popularity, so that Mr. MGR is finished off as a political force. What he did was very peculiar. He made his son Mu.Ka. Muthu act as a hero in a few movies. Murasoli started writing and other newspapers were encouraged to write that Mu. Ka. Muthu acts like MGR. Mr.Karunanidhi’s henchmen then started fan clubs in various parts of the state for Mu. Ka. Muthu. MGR was closely watching all these things. Mr. Karunanidhi also slowly started making inroads into the very popular MGR fan clubs. In certain places, MGR mandrams announced that they are converting their mandrams into Mu. Ka. Muthu mandrams. MGR lost his patience. He discussed with his friends and well-wishers. He made discrete enquiries and found out that these were planned and executed by Mr. Karunanidhi himself. Now this is striking at the roots of the MGR phenomenon itself.
MGR, for the first time, attacked Mr. Karunanidhi in his speech in a public meeting at Mylapore. He declared that there is a lot of corruption in Mr. Karunanidhi’s government and he is going to ask for “Accounts”. This may look a very ordinary statement in the present day context. But during those days when the DMK was at its peak of popularity, it was an outright challenge by one of the most popular leaders of DMK from within.
Power, as we know, brings along with it not only insecurity but also arrogance. Instead of making compromise, Karunanidhi misjudged his popularity among people versus MGR’s popularity. MGR was expelled from DMK on disciplinary grounds. Mr. Karunanidhi thought that as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and having a strong hold on the party organ, he could wipe away the MGR phenomenon from TN. He also thought MGR being an outsider, that is, a Malayalee would not succeed in TN where the pan-Tamil feelings ruled supreme as evidenced by the success of DMK in the polls even against the towering personality of Mr. Kamaraj.
MGR was in the thick of his cinema career and he was not very sure of his political plans.
Yet he challenged DMK leaders by taking their corruption in public life as a main weapon. But he did not have a clear cut political strategy.
While the DMK leadership mounted an attack on MGR by organizing a large number of public meetings about his “Treachery, Malayalee origin, and various other snippets like a cinema hero can never be a ruler etc.”, MGR went about giving press statements saying that Mr. Karunanidhi led a corrupt regime. The communists slowly veered around MGR and encouraged him to form a political party and the ADMK was born.
MGR inducted into his party a large no of disgruntled politicians from DMK and all his fan clubs were converted into ADMK party offices. It became a big party overnight. He toured the whole state and campaigned on the single theme of corruption of the Karunanidhi government.
Before MGR came into the political scene, the Organizational Congress led by Kamaraj, was the single largest opposition. The whole of TN anticipated Congress (O) to use this opportunity and support MGR to bring down Mr. Karunanidhi’s regime. To everybody’s surprise, Kamaraj announced suddenly that both DMK and ADMK are of the same mettle and they are not different from each other and the latter is comparable to the proverbial “old wine in a new bottle”. (“orae kuttaiyil oorina mattaigal” which roughly translates as “logs soaked in the same pond”).
The above is exactly similar to what Ms. Jayalalitha had done to Mr. Vijaykanth in the present day political context. After the Madurai by-election results, an average Tamil political observer expected that if Mr. Vijaykanth and Ms.Jayalathita joined together it would be a very powerful political combination challenging the monopoly of the DMK-led alliance. But it was not to be so and such expectations were belied.
Unfortunately, politics, like any other profession, cannot be clearly understood by observers who are not part of it. When you see a successful cinema hero like Mr. Rajnikanth you also feel at times that at an early age you should have gone to the cinema field to become a hero. However, one may not know all the troubles Mr. Rajnikanth underwent to get his first chance in a movie. He might have been spending days without proper food and lodging and could have done tireless trekking towards studio gates pleading with every other producer or director for a cinema chance etc. When you see a successful liquor baron, you also think you should have been in the liquor trade to be like him enjoying life with big bungalows and imported cars. But if only you know how many times he has been picked up by excise police or the ordeal he has undergone before the excise department you may not dare to desire that way.
The point made here is that political activity as conducted by politicians is different from politics, as we want to happen. Thus, Mr. Kamaraj those days might have thought joining with MGR in fight against DMK could have meant accepting him as a good leader. If MGR is accepted as a good leader and his party a good party, Kamaraj and Congress (O) have either to play second fiddle or get dissolved in the ADMK party in the long-run.
On the same lines if Jayalathita recognizes Vijaykanth, the next thing that could happen is he will become more important in the eyes of the public as well as the ADMK cadres. Also there is an added problem in the case of Ms. Jayalalitha which was not there in the Kamaraj vs. MGR situation. Kamaraj was a towering personality with unblemished records and an image of absolute honesty and purity in public life, whereas Madam Jayalalitha lacks those things. Vijaykanth has also been campaigning against corruption of both ADMK and DMK leadership. Thus the attack means Ms. Jayalalitha’s corruption also.
When Vijayakanth first entered Tamil Nadu political arena, there was a big discussion about whose vote bank he is cutting into. Wiser observers felt that one should look into his attacks on SUN TV and posturing as black MGR, not to mention about traveling in MGR’s original campaign van. He will be polling anti-DMK and pro-MGR votes only. If Ms. Jayalalitha is to support Mr. Vijayakanth, it will be political hara-kiri for her.
In fine, every politician is pursuing his own private political agenda and the strategy which best suits to achieve the same.
Source: http://indiainteracts.in/columnist/2006/11/10/HISTORY-REPEATS-ITSELF/
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