Moopanar’s dilemma

Just two years later, the TMC was virtually wiped out in the 1988 Lok Sabha elections, winning but three of the 20 seats it contested for the Lok Sabha. The comfort they could derive was that, once again, the Congress had won none, all Congress candidates but one having lost their deposits. And even though two-thirds of the seats went to the hated Jayalalitha and her allies, even the victory of the AIADMK was that of a “regional party with a national outlook”, albeit not their own.

It was on March 14, that the TMC’s dilemma began. Sonia Gandhi’s ascension to the presidentship of the Indian National Congress put the TMC in a quandary. To continue as the “real” Congress in Tamil Nadu, they either needed to be recognised as such by the central leadership; or they had to merge seamlessly with the Congress headed by Sonia Gandhi. The first option was closedwhen Sonia Gandhi nominated Tindivanam Ramamurthee as the Tamil Nadu State Congress president and authorised him to operate on her behalf in the state, including legal action to resume Congress properties usurped by the TMC. The second option became imperative when Sonia Gandhi invited all former Congress activists, to return to the party. Moopanar chose not to.

Since then, Moop-anar and his colleagues have had to establish that the bogus Congress in the state is the Congress of Sonia Ga-ndhi, while the true Congress is the one they are running, purportedly in the name of Rajiv Gandhi. They will soon have to answer in the courts how properties belonging to the Sonia Congress actually belong to the allegedly “Rajiv” Congress!As regards the other justification — namely, that “national” parties will have to vacate the political space to make way for “regional parties with a national outlook” — there are three tough problems in maintaining that proposition. The first is the disastrous showing of theGowda, Gujral and Vajpayee coalitions, which is increasingly persuading the electorate that the nation is more than the sum of its parts and, therefore, the nation must be run by national parties.

The second problem now dawning on the TMC is that regional problems cannot be solved by regional parties; they require national intervention. This is best illustrated by the regional problem with which the TMC is most familiar — the sharing of the Cauvery waters between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Moopanar startled most Tamilians when, in his capacity as “king-maker”, he chose to appoint as king the hardest of hardliners on the Cauvery issue, one H.D. Deve Gowda. It was touted at the time that this would lead to a solution. There was, therefore, much thumping of desks in the state assembly when chief ministers Karunanidhi and Patel met for the first — and last — time in Chennai in August 1996. They never met together again one-on-one. It was not until an entirely non-regional and indubitably national leader,Atal Behari Vajpayee, brokered an agreement between them, that matters were brought to a conclusion. (That the conclusion is both transient and fraudulent is quite another matter).

Besides, as all the regionals are discovering, regional aspirations do not always or necessarily coincide with perceptions of the national interest at the Centre. Priorities and preferences are almost always different, as are the practical politics of what will prevail. Thus, the AIADMK, as its obsessive priority, wants Karunanidhi dismissed, but the Centre demurs and the Samata Party wants Laloo-Rabri hounded out, for the Centre the way ahead is fogged. In short, when it comes to priorities and preferences, the “national outlook” of the regional party is usually at variance with the national outlook of the national partner. The concept of a “regional party with a national outlook” is, therefore, bereft of meaning.

It is, however, the third problem which is the TMC’s most serious political problem. Which is that the TMC isnot even a regional party, it is an appendage of the DMK. The state assembly elections of January 1989 showed that even a united Congress led by Moopanar had little standing of its own in the state; the elections of 1996 and 1998 have shown that the fortunes of the TMC led by Moopanar are wholly dependent on Karunandhi’s DMK.

Which means Moopanar and the TMC have to link themselves to others to secure even a toe-hard in the polity. To survive in the state, they have to play poodle to the DMK; to survive at the national level they have to be one with the Congress. Moopanar has tried to get the best of both worlds by reaffirming the indissolubility of his ties with the DMK in the state, while offering outside “support” to the Congress at the centre. Karunanidhi has accepted the bargain. The Congress has not. For one thing, only a national party can drive an honourable bargain with either Dravidian party as both Dravidian parties know they are not a party of the centre. The Congress has, therefore, somethingto give and the Dravidian parties something to gain.

There is, however, nothing Moopanar can offer Karunanidhi in Delhi; the TMC is, therefore, doomed to survive on the crumbs thrown to them from the DMK’s table. For another, the Congress is not in the business of cobbling together an alternative to the Vajpayee government. Therefore, the Congress demands of the TMC merger or nothing.

But Moopanar remains impaled on the horns of his dilemma. For his personal aversion to Jayalalitha far outweighs his political attraction to Sonia Gandhi. And so he twists slowly, slowly in the wind.

Aiyar is a Congress party official but the views expressed here are his own