For the BJP, the needle of power has come full circle. The further it moves away from the AIADMK, the more it swings in the direction of the DMK. Like the two mutually excluding poles of a magnetic field, the two Dravida parties have staked their positions on the nation's political terrain.What's interesting, however, is the central position Dravida politics has come to occupy in Delhi politics today. The situation is rich in irony. A year ago, when the AIADMK and the BJP campaigned together during the Lok Sabha elections, DMK leader and Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi had acidly remarked that communalism and corruption have joined hands in this partnership.Today the BJP, in order to retain its control at the Centre, has had to swallow its pride and get Prime Minister Vajpayee to signal his anxiety to do business with the DMK. Karunanidhi, in turn, even as he reiterates his earlier characterisation of the BJP as a communal party, has indicated that he does not rule out the possibility ofrescuing Vajpayee in his hour of need, if it could lead to the immediate isolation of his arch political foe, J. Jayalalitha.Of course it was Jayalalitha, the mercurial secretary of the AIADMK, who set this unhappy trend. Her single-minded quest to get even with Karunanidhi for having publicly humiliated her by sending her to jail on corruption charges and the urgency with which she sought the dismissal of his government ensured that her political partnership with the BJP floundered almost before it began.The same contradiction would surface in any new political partnership that she may enter into at this juncture. Already, there is speculation that she is going to make the dismissal of the Karunanidhi government the central condition for her support to any coalitional grouping that replaces the BJP-led one at the Centre.What does all this say about Dravida politics today? The most obvious conclusion is that it has drifted considerably away from the values and beliefs of early ideologues and leaderslike Periyar and Annadurai. Both men had vigorously and systematically propounded an anti-Hindi, anti-Aryan, anti-North Indian worldview. The politics practised by Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi seem more driven by personality factors rather than ideological ones. It's not entirely surprising then that the adage, ``my enemy's enemy is my friend'' becomes cardinal in their brand of Dravida politics. This is why Karunanidhi seems prepared to take the risk and embrace the BJP, despite the fear that the move would alienate his party's innumerable Muslim voters.This is also why Jayalalitha was prepared to wreck an alliance that gave her some measure of national exposure and power. Unfortunately, all this may make for exciting politics, but it does not make for stable and transparent governance. When important national and regional issues are reduced to the narrowest of personal considerations and when settling scores becomes more important than settling the problems of the people, something is terribly wrongsomewhere.
