The first-ever conference of the women’s wing of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was the tale of two women. Two poets from the family, two who were largely in the shadows till the conference. Even the subject matter of their speech was similar: Muthuvel Karunanidhi: one’s father and the other’s grandfather.Sunday’s conference by and large revolved around the family and the two women, Kanimozhi Karunanidhi and Kayalvizhi M.K. Azhagiri. The two had differing styles, subjects and diction, but the cadre were ecstatic nevertheless. With thousands of women as witnesses, Kanimozhi, the daughter, took on the “Hindu fundamentalists” and everyone else who dared to oppose her father.As her proud parents, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and mother Rajathiammal watched from the ringside, Kanimozhi refused to concede the “women’s vote bank” to the AIADMK led by Jayalalithaa. After equating Jayalalithaa’s ‘authoritarian functioning’ to that of Modi’s hardline Hindutva, she reminded the women—some even from neighbouring Kerala—that they were the first victims of fundamentalist thinking.As the cadre indulged her with loud cheers, Kanimozhi reiterated her father’s wish: implement the Setusamudram shipping project. If the daughter’s word of advice to the women was an atheistic ‘forget God’, the granddaughter, Kayalvizhi, chose to eulogise the patriarch, comparing him to the saint, Valluvar.Kavalvizhi, the 32-year-old daughter of Karunanidhi’s Madurai-based elder son MK Azhagiri, took to a bigger stage on Sunday, and compared Karunanidhi and his literary works to the life and works of the Tamil saint. The family—grandparents, parents and brother—gleamed proudly.Like her aunt, she has also published her poems and stories, and quite like her, Kayalvizhi has been in the sidelines as the men of the family grabbed the limelight and power.She had done a cameo in Tirunelveli during the youth wing conference that her uncle and Karunanidhi’s heir-apparent M.K. Stalin held in December last year. But Stalin was conspicuous by his absence this time around.
