Predictably unpredictable

In moments when variegated political forces are pitted against each other, and structures of political governance seem to rest on quicksand,...

In moments when variegated political forces are pitted against each other, and structures of political governance seem to rest on quicksand, certain individuals 8212; otherwise of little consequence in national-level politics 8212; come to play pivotal roles. One such moment is what we are presently living through and one such person, none other than AIADMK general secretary Jayalalitha Jayaram.

It has always been notoriously difficult to identify the real Jayalalitha. For all one knows, Kumari Kottam8217; who remained sealed in celluloid, and who subsequently rode on to Tamil Nadu8217;s political stage in a peacock chariot under the benevolent gaze of a mentor called MGR, may have died somewhere along the way. But she was efficiently replaced by a 80-ft high version in painted plywood. What8217;s more, nobody, not even the woman who starred as Kumari Kottam, could tell the difference.

For Jayalalitha, what matters is that the klieg lights of public recognition continue to beam down on the image she has of herself. Ifsomeone, even inadvertently, switches off those lights, all hell can break loose, as the BJP discovered to its cost last week. A perceived personal slight got refracted through the prism of her self-esteem into an injury perpetrated on the Tamil people.

Desperate moves of appeasement on the part of the BJP has mollified the lady 8212; and presumably Tamil pride. In today8217;s tableau of power, she gets to sit to the left of A.B.Vajpayee in solitary serenity, almost crowding out the BJP8217;s other allies from the frame. And there she is again, beaming as four of her partymen are sworn in as ministers, two of cabinet rank.

Jayalalitha has always maintained that her public stances are dictated by the 8220;interests of the people of Tamil Nadu8221;, that she is not, repeat not, 8220;interested in personal benefit8221;. Her great political success, as the AIADMK sweep in the recent general election in Tamil Nadu demonstrates, is in being able to convince her voters that this is indeed the case. Yet, this elaborately choreographedstance, helped in part by occasional bouts of brinkmanship over that perennially emotive issue 8212; the distribution of Cauvery waters 8212; rings hollow. In the final analysis, Jayalalitha has no cause that is bigger than herself.

Despite her recent breast-beating about including a 8220;package for Tamil Nadu8221; in the National Agenda, the document when it finally emerged skimmed over the Cauvery and Mullapperiyar dam controversies by stating that the coalition 8220;will adopt a National Water Policy which provides for effective and prompt settlement of disputes and their time-bound implementation8221;.

The demand for recognition of Tamil as an official language also met with a time-tested bureaucratic response: a committee is to be set up 8220;to study the feasibility of treating all 19 languages included in Schedule 8 of the Constitution as official languages.8221;

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Jayalalitha is far too intelligent not to know that her 8220;Tamil Nadu package8221; has been quietly torpedoed in the document. For the moment she seems placatedby the order of seating at Vajpayee8217;s residence. But anyone familiar with Tamil Nadu8217;s recent political history would know that this season of cool breezes is necessarily a brief one.

The politics of unpredictability. This in, a phrase sums up Jayalalitha8217;s brand of public life. The AIADMK today is innocent of any ideological underpinnings. The Dravida edge to its politics has long been blunted and with the party formally aligning itself with the BJP, regarded thus far in Tamil Nadu as a north Indian, Aryan, Hindi-driven political formation, the ghost of Periyar has finally been driven underground.

It follows that without an ideology, there are no objective rules to be followed. What8217;s left are the subjective regulations set by the lady herself. The one lesson she learnt from MGR, and which she practiced meticulously during her five-year rule as Tamil Nadu8217;s Chief Minister, was the importance of constructing herself as a cult.

The rest of India watched with dropped jaws at the ever larger cut-outs ofthe Puratchi Thalaivi that peppered the state; at the doctored eminence of honorary degrees bestowed upon her; at the spectacle of 46 grown men rolling down roads to celebrate the 46th birthday of their leader. If, in 1986, MGR had presided over a World MGR Fans Association in Madurai, in June 1992 it was Jayalalitha commemorating in that city her first anniversary as CM by stringing up a 1 km-long pandal designed like a fort and getting partymen to file past her.

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The party leader8217;s pre-eminence, displayed thus to the outside world, was ruthlessly demonstrated in inner party functioning as well. Party stalwarts were expelled without ceremony and others promoted in their place were sometimes thrown out in turn. Senior leaders were reduced to divining their status on the basis of their leader8217;s smile or scowl.

The politics of unpredictability also meant that orders issued on Monday were rescinded on Tuesday. On several occasions, Jayalalitha took the 8220;irrevocable8221; decision to resign from politics, only tobe persuaded to withdraw the decision after public pleas acquired the required levels of hysteria.

Jayalalitha thrived on every personal reversal. Whether it was the brutal fashion in which she was pushed out of the gun-carriage bearing MGR8217;s body, or the physical attack she faced in the Madras Assembly in March 1989, or even the fact that she was made to sleep on the floor in Chennai8217;s Central Jail in December 1996, each one of them have paid electoral dividends.What has all this got to do with Jayalalitha8217;s future political trajectory? Everything, given the fact that, for her, history has been an endless round of reward and retribution.

Even her initial flirtation with the BJP was provoked, not by any particular sympathy for the latter8217;s ideology, as much as a desire to settle scores with her one-time political ally, the Rao Congress. In 1992, she not only went on record to say that 8220;the Ram temple should be allowed to come up and the Babri Masjid should stay8221;, when the Centre dismissed the BJP-ruledstate governments, the AIADMK denounced the move.

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Subramanian Swamy8217;s campaign against her, G.K. Moopanar8217;s barely-veiled unhappiness over her regime, and the appointment of Rao-confidante Chenna Reddy as TN governor, accelerated this drift. The BJP, on its part, played along. When Jayalalitha was arrested on December 6, 1996, after being implicated in 8 cases, the party struck a sympathetic posture. It was a clever move.

Today as she sits quietly triumphant to Vajpayee8217;s left, it8217;s useful to remember that this is only one avatar of Jayalalitha Jayaram. Just last week, another had pronounced in Chennai that 8220;most of the people of our villages had not heard of Vajpayee8230;I went to the public8230;and asked the people to vote for BJP.8221; Here is a woman capable of infinite surprises.