For some months now, supporters of Tamil Nadu’s chief minister, J Jayalalithaa, had been trying to conceal their anxiety. Something was going unimaginably wrong. Through the duration of Jayalalithaa’s long-running trial on charges of holding disproportionate assets, they had enthusiastically protested her innocence, going on fasts and circumambulating the sanctums of every Hindu god they could think of. This May, it seemed their faith had been rewarded. Jayalalithaa—Amma, to them—was absolved, and returned to head the state government. But a suspicion started growing among them. Is it true, her supporters asked each other, that Amma is ill?
Jayalalithaa, the supremo of the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, spent 21 days in a Bengaluru jail last September and October after a special court found her guilty of corruption, before being released on bail. She came straight back to Chennai, and cloistered herself in her Poes Garden residence. She did not emerge for 217 days. When the Karnataka High Court acquitted her on 11 May, her supporters rushed to her gates. But Amma did not come to her balcony to wave and flash the victory symbol, as was her habit. In hushed whispers, AIADMK leaders told each other she refused to meet even the party’s top brass. Not even O Panneerselvam, her stand-in chief minister, was granted an audience.
On 23 May, Jayalalithaa finally stepped out to attend her swearing-in ceremony, but that appearance only added to the gossip. The event was just 25 minutes long, and featured what was probably the first mass swearing-in of ministers in any government in this country. The national anthem, whose full 52 seconds are mandated at such ceremonies, was truncated to under 20. One explanation doing the rounds was that the Tamil Nadu governor, K Rosaiah, was unwell. But Jayalalithaa herself looked pale and tired, and seemed to walk with difficulty.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Chennai in early August, Amma’s supporters must have smiled with relief to see the chief minister, resplendent in a green sari, receive him at the airport and host a lunch in his honour. These images, they would have thought, would shame those—her detractors and rivals—who had been spreading awful rumours.
In many ways, the cult of the movie-star turned political leader that prevails in Tamil Nadu contradicts basic democratic values. The cult mentality is fostered within party ranks to create a cohesive political unit. In Jayalalithaa’s absence, Panneerselvam treaded softly in leading the cabinet, careful not to be seen or heard except when singing paeans to his leader. The effects of this spread beyond just the executive, as the entire state machinery paused: through Jayalalithaa’s absence, the assembly barely functioned, and important decisions went untaken.
In the months after her swearing-in, Jayalalithaa visited the state secretariat only twice a week, for two hours at a time. She has inaugurated projects via video-conferencing, flagging off even the prestigious Chennai Metro from the secretariat rather than on site. She was easily re-elected to the state assembly from Chennai’s RK Nagar, but her campaign was bafflingly brief. Her swearing-in as a member of the legislative assembly, as well as a major meeting with the Adani Group, were rescheduled at the last minute. She failed to show up to the AIADMK’s much-publicised iftar on 2 July. News reports suggest that as of mid August, the state cabinet had met only once since her return to power. There was also no indication as to when the Tamil Nadu assembly, whose budget session ended in March, would be reconvened.
Theories abound as to what actually ails the chief minister. She is known to have chronic diabetes, and arthritis in her knees. Now, rumours in the media also speak of gangrene in her toes. Her kidneys are said to be malfunctioning, and there is talk of dialysis being carried out at her home, and house calls by specialists.
Concerns over Jayalalithaa’s health began just as the AIADMK looked to be in an unassailable position going into campaigning for Tamil Nadu’s assembly elections next year. Her purported illness could revive the hopes of her opponents, and especially of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which has been laid low by massive electoral defeats at the state and national levels, reduced to third position in the assembly, and coming a distant second in Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha elections.
But the opposition parties’ hopes of painting Jayalalithaa as bedridden and collapsing were dented by her appearances with Modi, and later at Independence Day celebrations. Earlier, her arch-rival, Muthuvel Karunanidhi of the DMK, had claimed she was unfit to lead, and publicly advised her to leave office. “The chief minister is not discharging her duties because she is not in good health,” he said at a public meeting in July. “That is why the state is being run like one without a CM.” He asked the “ailing” Jayalalithaa to divulge her medical condition, and to “take rest.” These were provocations rather than expressions of concern, and also attempts to cast a shadow over the future of the AIADMK as a whole.
Karunanidhi’s barbs seem to suggest history repeating itself. Over 30 years ago, the AIADMK founder and former chief minister MG Ramachandran, or MGR, Karunanidhi’s bitter rival, suffered kidney failure and a stroke, and had to
be taken to the United States for medical treatment. Karunanidhi used the same rhetorical weapons against him then. But so popular was MGR that he won the 1984 assembly elections from his hospital bed in Brooklyn. If an election were held today, Jayalalithaa and her party—which captured 44 percent of the vote in the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections—may yet win hands down. She may not be able to campaign like she did in 2011, but that in itself may garner sympathy votes.
The AIADMK has rubbished rumours of Jayalalithaa’s ill health. “Our leader is fine and we do not need the concern of leaders of other parties,” CR Saraswathi, the party’s spokesperson, said in July. “Do not do politics with an individual’s health.” But, uncharacteristically, Jayalalithaa has not responded to Karunanidhi herself. Of course, this may be down to sheer disdain for the accusations, coming as they do from a 92-year-old man who uses a wheelchair. But Karunanidhi is still going strong, and looking ahead. Under the leadership of his son and political heir, MK Stalin, the DMK has been busy in recent months, mobilising all over Tamil Nadu. Stalin boasts a clean record, has evolved into a good speaker, and has been drawing huge crowds at recent rallies.
The DMK will try everything it can to create a regional alliance against the AIADMK’s supremacy. Karunanidhi, a shrewd man, must be aware of Jayalalithaa’s continuing popularity, as well as the loss of faith in his own party after years of infighting and a devastating corruption scandal at the centre implicating the DMK leader A Raja. It will not be easy to find willing partners among the Dravidian parties, all of whom are bent on achieving their own ambitions. Even the Viduthalai Chiruththaikal Katchi, a Dalit group allied with the DMK, has started talking of sharing power, and may part ways with Karunanidhi to forge a coalition with the left and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Vaiko. The Congress party, which secured less than 5 percent of the Tamil Nadu vote in the 2014 election, has no option but to align with the DMK, but even its leader in the state, EVKS Ilangovan, is jockeying for more power within the partnership.
Meanwhile, the DMK has been wooing the Desiya Morpokku Dravida Kazhagam, which won 5 percent of the 2014 vote and 14 percent in the 2011 state poll. In April, it agreed on a joint expedition to Delhi, under the leadership of the DMDK’s chief, Vijayakanth, to discuss an inter-state dispute over the use of the Kaveri river with the central government. Vijayakanth, unsurprisingly, used the trip to boost his own image. He has indicated that the DMDK may drift away from its present alliance with the BJP, but for now he is keeping the DMK guessing.
The BJP’s other ally in Tamil Nadu, the PMK, which is perceived as casteist and anti-Dalit, has ambitions far in excess of what its 4-percent share of the 2014 vote would warrant. It has publicly denied the possibility of an alliance with either Karunanidhi or Jayalalithaa. By moving away from these two giants, the party’s leader, Anbumani Ramadoss, has broken with its history of switching allegiances from one to the other. Ramadoss is the PMK’s chief ministerial candidate for 2016, and initially sought to win votes, particularly from women, by championing prohibition. But, to his dismay, the entire opposition, with the DMK in the lead, has now seized the same idea, clamouring for complete prohibition and organising protests for it every day. It seems the opposition is bent upon pressuring the government, and thereby exhausting an already ailing chief minister.
Jayalalithaa has been crucial to the AIADMK’s rise as a national force. Even now, she can bring a powerful prime minister to her doorstep, in large part because of her party’s presence in parliament—37 seats in the Lok Sabha, and 11 in the Rajya Sabha—but also because the BJP is desperate for a foothold in Tamil Nadu. It won just a single seat here in the 2014 elections, even when helped by its alliance with the DMDK and the PMK. It looks unlikely that these parties will repeat the tie-up for the 2016 assembly elections. Modi’s recent visit prompted speculation that the BJP and the AIADMK might consider an electoral alliance, possibly also bringing in the former Congress leader GK Vasan’s formation, the Tamil Maanila Congress.
But Jayalalithaa will keep everyone guessing. She knows that aligning with the BJP will hurt her popularity among Tamil Nadu’s minorities. Those who believe in a secular Tamil Nadu still see the BJP as a fundamentalist party rooted in the Hindi belt. With many still appreciative of Amma’s populist schemes, there is a fair chance that Jayalalithaa will continue to lead the pack in 2016.
The meeting with Modi, as well as the first dismissal in her present cabinet—the sacking of the transport minister, Senthil Balaji, in late July—seem to indicate Jayalalithaa is back in gear. At the Independence Day celebrations, she went through all the usual ceremonies, even smiling through the process.
Still, much is contingent on Jayalalithaa remaining relatively healthy. There is a story that MGR was once asked what would happen to the party in his absence, to which he replied, in the fashion of Louis XV, “After me, the deluge!” In 1984, as he lay critically ill in hospital before the elections, the state administration, and Tamil Nadu’s political world, ground to a halt. The Congress government in New Delhi must have considered MGR’s health in scheduling upcoming parliamentary and state elections. Would sympathy for the leader bring dividends to a putative Congress–AIADMK alliance, or would the regional party, essentially a one-man band, collapse without him? MGR had created a politics driven by personality, and kept his party under control by making it almost completely dependent on him for votes.
Jayalalithaa’s withdrawal would mean a deluge. Thirty years ago, there were only two strong contenders in the field. Once MGR died, the AIADMK was consumed by internecine struggle, which took Jayalalithaa time to overcome. Karunanidhi and the DMK were able to fill the void. Now, there are dozens of parties and leaders waiting to grab any opportunity for power.
No party would suffer more from Jayalalithaa’s decline than the AIADMK. So the party will keep an anxious eye trained on the health of Tamil Nadu’s chief minister, while the opposition circles, hungry to fish in troubled waters.