M.K. Alagiri’s squabble with his father is just another episode in a multi-hued saga.
In the latest installment of DMK and Dynasty, the high command has warned that party workers who keep in touch with the banished M.K. Alagiri will face disciplinary action. The elder son of party patriarch M.K. Karunanidhi, Alagiri was suspended in January for speaking his mind on a possible DMK-DMDK alliance. This is not the first time he has been sent to coventry. In 2001, a mutinous Alagiri worked against DMK leaders in the local body elections.
His periodic insurrections are attributed to the rise of his younger brother, M.K. Stalin, anointed successor to Karunanidhi. For more than a decade now, the DMK has been shaped by a cinematic contest between the two brothers that has pitched Alagiri, the strongman of Madurai, against Stalin, the “ilaya thalapathi (young commander)”, one time actor and head of the party’s youth wing at a sprightly 61.
Parties being run like family concerns is old hat. We know it helps establish fiefdoms, control the political machinery, cultivate feudal loyalties. But dynastic politics has grown to encompass and incorporate almost every feature of the Indian polity, including fierce competition and ugly rivalries, sometimes even across party lines.
So the BJP’s Varun Gandhi takes on his cousin in the Congress, Rahul Gandhi. In MP, the Congress’s Jyotiraditya Scindia crosses swords with his aunt, Yashodhara Raje Scindia, a BJP candidate. In Maharashtra, it’s Raj Thackeray’s MNS versus Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena.
But family sagas have a habit of living up to cliches, including the one that says that blood runs thicker than water. They also make for providential reunions.
After the rebellion of 2001, Alagiri returned to the DMK fold, bringing with him his support base in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. The party may have closed ranks against him now. But the story is not over yet.
