It isnt difficult to guess the most recurring word in Tamil pollspeak 2009 Eelam. But as the campaign closed on Monday,the call for Eelam did not exactly rise to a crescendo. Cant tell which astrologer told them so but the whole band of Dravidian rationalists were quick to see an uncanny correlation between the Sri Lankan battle in progress and the timing of the poll itself. Across the state on TV sets,owned or obtained courtesy the DMK,the top news at the peak of campaign was the Lankan army closing in on LTTE and civilians trapped or fleeing in acute distress. Any moment it seemed Velupillai Prabhakaran would fall and all hell would break loose. This sent the mainstream parties scurrying back to the drawing board to re-script the campaign. Between the forenoon fast and the afternoon nap,the entire political class had instantly turned more Eelam-friendly than ever before in the last three decades of the Sri Lankan crisis. Everyone was budgeting for a suitably filmy climax,expected to coincide with the close of campaign. This is precisely what hasnt happened. In fact right through the last lap of campaign,when TV showed more IPL than Lanka,the issue has been fading out of the political mindscape. Parties are still making a noise only because it is the only emotive issue that cuts across the 40 Tamil speaking constituencies and can whip up what little emotion is left in a public left cold by calculated tie-ups and allegedly equally calculated cash flow. People joke about their new MPs first priority to lobby for Rs 10,000 denomination notes. A lot easier to distribute. Relaxed enough to enjoy such jokes on poll-eve,M Ramanathan,a 78-year old DMK veteran and longtime Lanka watcher,says that decades before Prabhakaran appeared,Karunanidhi had briefed Indira Gandhi on the history of the island Tamils,who were as much sons of the Lankan soil as the Sinhalese if not more. Even in the British era the island was ruled by the Thanjavur Collector. What lessons Mrs Gandhi or her successors learned from history,Ramanathan doesnt choose to elaborate. His unstated thrust is simply that it is a bit late in the day to make a fuss about the overseas Tamils. Will Jayalalithaa ask the next PM to actually carry out her threat to do a Bangladesh in Sri Lanka? W R Varada Rajan,CPI(M)s Central Committee member,is more on the current elections. Lankan Tamils do matter to voters but only next to price rise and power cut. Lanka or no Lanka,80 % of the electorate in any case swings between the two Dravidian parties. If at all anyone couldve campaigned cohesively on this and other issues,it is vintage Karunanidhi. He finds Stalin no match. And the other son Azhagiri is far too busy in Madurai trying every trick in the trade to defeat our candidate Mohan to bother about matters across the Palk Strait. The polite Marxist makes no mention of ally Jayalalaithaa. The ladys own partymen are no wiser. They are trained to follow,not anticipate the supremos next surprise move. During early campaign,PMK and MDMK attacked army trucks near Coimbatore but both have too much post-poll stakes to upset the electoral process. Even if sensational news from Jaffna breaks on TV channels before the polling day. One politician who had the saddest miss is Vijaya Kanth. His 100th film,tantalizingly titled Captain Prabakaran,earned him the title he is known by in the party circles,Captain. The Prabakaran he played was alas a mere forest officer who took on Veerabhadran,a thinly veiled take on the long dead Veerappan. Of the big two parties,the BJP got the much needed shot in the arm from a visiting Narendra Modi. Our strong PM will save the Tamil Hindu brothers out there. As for Congressmen,to be fair this is not the only issue they are silent on. They hardly speak up for their own candidates. A senior district functionary in Coimbatore was cooling his heels in the campaign office and talking about a silent wave in favour of Soniaamma,despite Lanka,despite the candidate,despite all other odds.
