Daily News Editorial

End of an era in Tamil Nadu

07 December 2016

Jayalalithaa Jayaram, who passed away on Monday night, was one of the region’s most flamboyant, popular and controversial politicians. Jayalalithaa, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, was revered in her home State and even neighbouring states as “Amma” (Mother). Her death at the age of 68 has proved to be unbearable to most people in Tamil Nadu.

Jayalalithaa first gained fame as an actress who was often paired with the legendary M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) in Tamil movies. Kollywood audiences of the 60s and 70s rushed to see movies such as Rahasya Police, Chandrodayam, Kannan En Kadhalan, Thedi Vanda Mapillai, Mattakura Velan, Oli Vilakku, Love Scent, Neerum Neruppam and Raman Thediya Seethai which featured the duo in the lovers’ roles. She would eventually appear in more than 140 Tamil and regional language movies including one Hindi movie.

Some years later, when MGR entered politics, he urged Jayalalithaa to follow suit. The rest, as they say, is history. “MGR has been a great influence in my life, I don’t deny that. But now I am my own person,” she once said. Elected to the Tamil Nadu Assembly in 1989 she took over the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Khazagham (AIADMK) party, becoming the first ever woman opposition leader. A year later she became chief minister for the first time. As head of the AIADMK, she was elected as chief minister of Tamil Nadu on four occasions, overcoming convictions and jail terms to return to office, most recently in May this year. Her nemesis in Tamil Nadu was Muthuvel Karunanidhi, also from the Kollywood Community, who headed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDK) and became chief minister five times.

Jayalalithaa was essentially a national figure in India and was well known in the wider region. While most Indians would struggle to name the chief ministers of the other 28 States, everyone, even nursery schoolchildren, knew who Jayalalithaa was. Her words and actions were watched closely across the Palk Strait in Sri Lanka too, given the demographics of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province and linguistic and cultural similarities to Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa was once a fierce critic of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and urged the Centre to seek the capture and extradition of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran to India for his role in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. She in fact played a major role in India’s decision to ban the LTTE in 1992. However, in the wake of the Sri Lankan Security Forces’ victory over the Tigers in 2009 and an increasingly hostile attitude towards the Sri Lankan government by certain sections of the Tamil Nadu political spectrum, Jayalalithaa too joined the bandwagon and even called for a referendum in Northern in Sri Lanka to ascertain the opinion of the local population on ‘Tamil Eelam’. However, subsequent Tamil Nadu polls results indicated that the Sri Lanka issue had not made a dent in electoral fortunes on either side, with the local populace preoccupied with issues such as abject poverty.

Even the fiercest critics of Jayalalithaa would unhesitatingly admit that poverty was one issue she strove to tackle. She championed the cause of the rural and urban poor by introducing subsidised “Amma” food canteens, providing free laptops to thousands of school pupils and launching other populist schemes like giving away food mixers and grinders to families. Many publicly funded projects in Tamil Nadu were named after her.

However, her detractors saw her anti-poverty campaign as a façade to cover up her lavish lifestyle and higher, national political ambitions. Corruption allegations were not far behind. In 1996, she served one month in jail, having been charged with receiving financial incentives in a scheme to buy more than 40,000 colour televisions for local villages. In 2014 she was sentenced to four years in jail after being convicted of using her position to amass a huge property portfolio, expensive jewellery and luxury cars. She became the first Indian chief minister to be removed from office. Eight months later, the conviction was overturned and within days she was reinstated as Chief Minister. She swept to power again in this year’s elections. “I did not have a coalition and I placed my faith in God and built an alliance with the people,” she said. “I have total faith in the people and the people have faith in me.”

That was never in doubt at any time. A larger than life figure, she was often accused of building a personality cult. But there is no denying that the people of Tamil Nadu genuinely loved her across party, communal and religious lines as seen by the huge crowds that lined up outside the Apollo Hospital in Chennai. O. Panneerselvam, the fierce loyalist of Jayalalithaa who succeeded her as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, has a huge task ahead of him to usher in a new era for the State whilst taking her vision forward. Sri Lankan authorities too must make use of this opportunity to cultivate better ties with Tamil Nadu.