Karunanidhi, Vajpayee and Chatterjee: India loses epochal leaders

Rajan Philips-August 18, 2018, 7:32 pm 

Three of India’s epochal leaders passed away in the last fortnight. First to depart was Muthuvel Karunanidhi (1924 – 2018), the patriarch of Tamil Nadu politics, who passed away in Chennai on 7 August 2018. Nine days later, on August 16, former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924 – 2018) died in New Delhi after falling ill in June. In between, Somnath Chatterjee (1929 -2018) died on August 13 in Kolkata, West Bengal. Somnath Chatterjee may not be a familiar name in Sri Lanka, but he was a frontline leader of the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPM) and was elected by consensus and served as Lok Sabha Speaker from 2004 to 2009. Vajpayee and Karunanidhi were poets and superbly gifted orators in their mother tongues. Chatterjee belonged to that select band of Indian Communists who went to Cambridge to refine their indoctrination.

At the time of independence, Karunanidhi, Vajpayee and Chatterjee, and the political organizations to which they were belonged in three different parts of India, stood apart from the mighty All India National Congress, that great banyan tree of Indian politics both before and after independence. They were the discontents at the dawn of India’s independence. Yet, over time they were integrated into the politics of Indian federalism and played crucially different roles in the consolidation and furtherance of the federalist promise that was India in 1947. Their political origins were totally unconnected, and their political paths were initially separate, but they crisscrossed from 1975 onward as India broke loose from Indira Gandhi’s Emergency Rule and Indian federalism shifted gears from its centre-led dominant (Congress)-party orientation to a multipolar centre-state equilibrium

Both Karunanidhi and Vajpayee tasted early electoral success in the same year, in 1957, the former becoming a DMK Member of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly (MLA) in Chennai, and the latter becoming an opposition Jan Sangh (political arm of the right-wing RSS and precursor to the current BJP) MP in the Lok Sabha. Both men won every election thereafter regardless of the electoral fortunes of their political parties. Vajpayee retired in 2009, but Karunanidhi remained an MLA until his death, the longest serving MLA in Tamil Nadu history. Karunanidhi tasted power early and had the longest association with it, as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu – for five different terms totalling 20 years between 1969 and 2011. Karunanidhi and the DMK lost power in the 2011 election and were defeated again in 2016, even though he remained an opposition member of the legislature.

Vajpayee spent his first thirty years in parliament as an opposition MP, became Minister of External Affairs in the 1977 Janata Party government with Morarji Desai as Prime Minister. That was the first non-Congress government at the Centre after independence. Vajapayee would later have three stints as BJP Prime Minister: for 13 days in 1996, 13 months in 1998-1999, and finally for a full term from 1999 to 2004 – the first and so far the only non-Congress Prime Minister to serve out a full term. Vajpayee and BJP/NDA were defeated in the 2004 general elections by Manmohan Singh and his Congress/UPA alliance. The current BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi is poised to break that record by serving out his first full term and going on to win a second term in the general election next year. Unlike Modi, Vajpayee was a man of compromise and consensus builder. He was a voice of moderation within the cacophony of Hinduthva nationalism. And he put himself at the service of his party, unlike Modi who calls all the shots both in the party and in the government.

The third Indian stalwart to die last week, Somnath Chatterjee was a Bengali lawyer from a prominent lawyer and political family in Kolkata. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1971 from the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPM) and functioned as its parliamentary leader from 1989 to 2004, when he was elected as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha by acclamation. Chatterjee was a highly respected Speaker and was fondly called Lok Sabha’s ‘headmaster.’ He is now most remembered for the heavy handed treatment that he received from the CPM Politburo in 2008. By 2008, the CPM had decided to leave the UPA alliance over the Indo-US nuclear deal and to vote against the government on a confidence motion. The Party leadership directed Speaker Chatterjee to resign as Speaker and vote against the government. He declined indicating his unwillingness to vote with the BJP against the government. The Politburo expelled him from the Party. Chatterjee was devastated by the expulsion and he retired from politics a broken man at the end of the Lok Sabha term in 2009. The Congress/UPA won again in the 2009 election, while the CPM fared rather badly. Subordinating elected Party MPs to its diktats has been typical of the CPM bureaucracy. It had earlier vetoed Jyoti Basu, the West Bengal CPM Chief Minister from becoming Prime Minister of India heading a coalition of non-Congress Parties.

Karunanidhi was different

"The life story of Muthuvel Karunanidhi," wrote The Hindu in its editorial after his death "is also a history of Tamil Nadu politics." He was born twenty three years before India’s independence, and became Chief Minister of Tami Nadu twenty two years after independence. He was drawn to political activism at the tender age of 14, and was a relatively unknown political activist before independence. He rode the reformist and linguistic waves, putting to good effect the powers of his pen and his tongue, earning notoriety among the elites and mass popularity in Tamil society and politics. For nearly fifty years since he first became Chief Minister in 1969, Karunanidhi remained the most powerful political force in Tamil Nadu and a highly influential regional voice at the national level. His death has created a huge vacuum in Tamil Nadu politics, and the start of a new chapter in Tamil Nadu politics will be hugely influenced by politics at the national level as India gets set for the general election next year. The centre-state dynamic and dialectic will be crucial factors in filling the Karunanidhi vacuum in Tamil Nadu.

The social building blocks in Tamil Nadu, as indeed in every South Asian society, are the family, caste and village. Their specific configurations and the politics that go with them vary from one society to another. Overarching these building blocks are the politics of nationalism, secularism, and federalism. The economic base underpinning the social and political ‘superstructures’ in Tamil Nadu has been rapidly shifting from agrarian feudalism and pre-colonial trading to modern industries and services. As the sixth most populous (72 million) state with the second largest economy (US$230 billion), Tamil Nadu is among the more successful state economies in India. But the economic relations in society are an uneven patchwork ranging from the archaic to the very modern.

Karunanidhi’s political trajectory not merely ‘intersected’ the social dimensions of family, caste and village, but was for the most part woven into them as they continued and changed over nearly hundred years. For fifty years he was the central figure in the ebb and flow of Tamilian nationalism and a key regional leader in the transformation of Indian federalism. As Chief Minister, it will not be an exaggeration to say that Karunanidhi presided over the development and diversification of the state’s industrial base. He was widely respected even among his critics as a swift decision maker and a consummate deal maker. He was known for keeping files ‘moving’ in government, unlike his rival MGR who was known for ‘piling’ them.

He was consistently dead set against caste discrimination, but was never wanting in shrewd political calculations to exploit caste loyalties in electoral politics. Village advancements and mass ameliorations were constant themes in his political campaigns and programs. A rationalist from his salad days, he remained true to his non-beliefs to the end. As a writer and speaker, he poured scorn on social superstitions religious rituals. He did mellow with years but the old sarcasm returned in full vigour when he made fun of the religious opposition to the dredging project for opening a shipping channel across the Palk Strait.

Yet, the legacy that Karunanidhi leaves behind after a long and complex political life is more mixed than unblemished. Just as his life story is a history of Tamil Nadu politics, his legacy mirrors the conflicts and contradictions of the society in Tamil Nadu. The main source of his blemished legacy is the family and corruption involving family members. No single family in Tamil Nadu has become so politically aggrandized, as the Karunanidhi family. Karunanidhi and his family members have been the subjects of a number corruption commissions and inquiries. They have been found guilty and punished a number of times, and have periodically suffered electoral defeats.

After Karunanidhi’s death a succession struggle has erupted between his sons, the younger one of whom the patriarch chose as his successor, and the elder one is now fighting for his ‘rightful’ place. The DMK could not win the last two Lok Sabha and State elections even with Karunanidhi actively involved as the leader. It is highly doubtful if the DMK would do better in the future without the presence of Karunanidhi. The end of an era in Tamil Nadu and even Indian politics has created a vacuum for new political leaders and alliances to actively emerge. But whether they can break through the constraining moulds of the opposition DMK and the governing ADMK in Tamil Nadu – is too early to predict. The Lok Sabha elections in 2019 and the State elections two years later will be crucial in shaping the near term future of both Tamil Nadu and India.