Karunanidhi: Tamil till the last breath

Muthuvel Karunanidhi's fight began early, with a refusal to learn to play the naadasvaram, his father's vocation. A young Karunanidhi was apparently angered when he saw his teacher remove his upper cloth to bow bare-chested before an upper-caste man. Born on June 3, 1924, at Thirukkuvalai, near Thiruvarur, to Muthuvelar and Anjugam who belonged to the backward Isaivelalar community, caste inequality and its silent acceptance by the oppressed classes infuriated him from an early age. Later in life, he was hailed as the samooga needhi kaavalar (custodian of social justice) for his efforts to ensure 69 per cent reservation for the backward castes. He dreamt of a classless society, building communes called samathuvapuram across the state, where people belonging to all castes and religions lived together. (But he was pained to see that it was just a cosmetic effort, caste prejudice was too deep to be eradicated in the state.)

Karunanidhi's political struggle began when he was just 13 during the state agitation protesting the compulsory teaching of Hindi in the schools of Madras Presidency. Legend goes that he cut his arm and wrote Tamizh vaazhga (Long live Tamizh) with his blood on the walls of Thiruvarur where he did his schooling. Indeed, his love for the language made him what he was, Kalaignar the artist, litterateur, writer, poet and scriptwriter, the captivating orator.

As a teenager, he came under the spell of E.V. Periyar Ramasamy, who started the Self-Respect Movement. He began to edit Periyar's magazine Kudi Arasu. Periyar was an authoritarian and soon his admirers like Annadurai felt suffocated, impatient as they were for political empowerment and through it a new social order. When Annadurai left Periyar, Karunanidhi followed him. Anna founded the DMK in 1949 and Karunanidhi played a vital role in its growth as a strong opposition to the Congress party. Another young man, M.G. Ramachandran, joined them. The trio was involved in theatre but later turned to the silver screen, which became an excellent tool in their hands. MGR was the star and Karunanidhi, with his rabble-rousing scripts, his voice. His powerful scripts for Parasakthi to Malaikkallan remain etched in the memory of all Tamils. Karunanidhi was at the forefront of all agitations organised by the DMK and went to prison several times. He led the agitation to change the name of the town, Dalmiapuram, to its original Tamil name, Kallakkudi, by lying on the railway tracks! His slogan Tamil engal moochu (Tamil is our breath) became the mantra for generations of Tamils.

In a spectacular upset in the 1967 assembly elections, the DMK defeated the Congress in the then Madras state. Neither Anna nor Karunanidhi was then aware that the victory would change the states socio-political history but it began an era dominated by non-Congress Dravidian party rule in Tamil Nadu, as the state came to be called in 1969. Annadurai became chief minister, and Karunanidhi became the public works minister, but Anna did not live long to fulfill his promise. MGR, a close friend and fellow artist, saw to it that Karunanidhi was chosen to lead the party when the question of succession came up in 1969. He also helped the party win the election that followed in 1971. Karunanidhi, though close to MGR, was wary about giving any official post to him, though he was now an MLA. MGRs popularity as an actor and the do-gooder image he projected in films was a worrying factor. MGR was hurt and began his attacks on Karunanidhi's corrupt governance, which ended in the charismatic actor being expelled from the party. MGR went on to form his own party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Karunanidhi misjudged the impact and called it a teardrop that would dry soon. But MGR was able to keep him away from active politics for 13 years, making it impossible for Karunanidhi to come back to power.

When Karunanidhi took over the reins of the DMK, he was not considered a particularly charismatic leader, at least when compared with MGR. But Karunanidhi's personal appeal was an important factor in the DMK's continued strength and cohesiveness. The DMK prides itself on being a big family, and Karunanidhi, as the party patriarch and president, was a major factor in propagating such notions of familial emotional bonds, making himself an object of adoration, devotion and even sacrifice. Unlike MGR and Jayalalithaa who became mass leaders with their populist schemes and welfare measures, Karunanidhi as chief minister (he ruled for five terms) was a reluctant populist, laying stress on social justice and making the administration more representative of the states social composition. He was an atheist but never interfered in his partymens or his family members personal beliefs. In that sense, he was truly secular. The man who virulently opposed the Emergency, and went to prison for it, was consistent in opposing an all-powerful Centre and favoured federalism and autonomy much before it caught on with other states.

That has been the core of the DMKs approach regarding the Centre. None of the corruption charges alleged by the Sarkaria commission or the conspiracy theory alleged by the Jain Commission could be proved against him and the party. He was a trusted ally of all the regimes he aligned with at the Centre, the United Front, NDA and the UPA. He silently bore the accusations hurled at him by Tamil nationalists during the Sri Lankan civil war, not revealing classified information regarding the Centres stand though it would have cleared his name. He kept silent during the 2G scam too when his own daughter was jailed even as he was an ally of the UPA at the Centre.

He was accused of having put his family cart before the party, but the millions that gathered as he was breathing his last testify to the fact that he was still the much-loved party patriarch.