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Pro-BJP 'sympathy wave' sweeping across Tamil Nadu

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

"They were settling down and should have been given time to prove themselves," says S David, a Tamil Nadu government employee in Christian-dominated Nagercoil near Land's End. "But Jayalalitha could not wait, and had to bring Vajpayee down."

"She did it, and she will pay for it," says Haja, a shopkeeper in the same town.

Both men are educated and seem to have no rancour, at least for now, towards the "communal" BJP. "We know that's there somewhere deep inside the BJP. But for now, Jayalalitha is the issue, like in the 1996 election, and the voters will teach the AIADMK a resounding lesson, worse than the one they got in 1996," says David.

Whether it is Varalakshmi in Tirunelveli or Ramaiah Thevar in Madurai, Shirley Lawrence in Christian-dominated Tiruchirapalli or Ekambara Naicker in Tindivanam, the Vanniar heartland of the BJP-friendly Pattali Makkal Katchi, all echo similar sentiments. As do scores of middle-class voters in Madras, or Chinnaiah Gounder in Pollachi, Suryanarayana, a Tamil with Kannada origins in Krishnagiri, and Sivasubramaniam in Pudukottai. All these people hold similar views on the political developments at the Centre, though in varying degrees. All of them voted against the AIADMK-Congress combine in 1996, but behaved differently in the Lok Sabha poll last year, and deny membership of any political organisation.

"Jayalalitha wanted the BJP to help her out of her cases, but the Vajpayee government took a morally correct stand," says Janardhanan, from near Madurai. "And Vajpayee now stands taller than he did last year."

A sympathiser of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, an ally of the BJP, Janardhanam has no problem with his party working with the DMK, of which it is a splinter. "Our differences were not over issues or ideology, only over the 'family rule' in the DMK. As a separate party, we can align better with the DMK than with any other, given the common moorings."

"We Tamils should bow our head in shame," says Srinivasachari in the temple town of Srirangam, dominated by the Iyengars, a Vaishnavite sub-sect of Brahmins. "Political parties from Tamil Nadu have been the cause for two successive snap polls to the Lok Sabha," he says, recalling the withdrawal of support by the Congress to the United Front after the interim report of the Justice M C Jain Commission indicted the DMK. "Now, you have Jayalalitha not letting the BJP settle down. What happened to all those initial charges on the Admiral Bhagwat issue? Why is she not talking about that anymore?"

"We had to back the Vajpayee government as Jayalalitha was trying to pull it down," says Ranganathan, a DMK worker in Trichy. "It made political sense for the DMK locally."

But the 45-year-old brought up on the DMK's traditional anti-BJP stance is not so sure if Chief Minister M Karunanidhi is doing the right thing by aligning with "what we have all along described as a communal, pro-god, pro-Hindu, pro-Hindi party. The DMK's strength, compared to the AIADMK's, lies in its ideological moorings, and I am not sure if countering Jayalalitha's political moves is a good enough excuse."

"What's wrong in Jayalalitha withdrawing support to the Vajpayee government?" counters Marisami Thevar of Tuticorin, reflecting a view usually expressed only by senior AIADMK leaders. "Dismissing the DMK state government was our poll plank last year, and our leader had stated it publicly in the presence of both Vajpayee and Advani in election meetings. But they did not move a little finger even after the Coimbatore blasts, which alone helped the combine win more seats from Tamil Nadu, and thus helped Vajpayee become prime minister. Why, the Karunanidhi government did not even let the CBI probe the blasts, yet no questions were asked."

According to Marisami, "Vajpayee even said that dismissing the DMK government was like dismissing his own government." This, he felt, "was a clear admission of the BJP having a secret understanding with the DMK, even while aligning with the AIADMK in public".

"What's wrong with that?" argues BJP sympathiser and Madras businessman Ramamurthy. "It's part of the political game, particularly after Jayalalitha had thrown tantrums even over sending the letter of support to the President. Anyway it's an open secret that Jayalalitha was keeping in touch with Congress leaders, through the anti-BJP Subramanian Swamy."

According to him, "The AIADMK, which had won back some of its lost credibility because of the BJP's poll plank last year, will have to pay for its sins, political and otherwise."

Caught between the two camps is the Tamil Maanila Congress, which had come to represent middle-class aspirations when it separated from the Congress in 1996 over the Jayalalitha issue. "By playing second fiddle to the DMK rulers, that too when the traditional AIADMK opposition was down in the dumps, without coming out boldly against the wrong-doings of the administration, the party lost much of the initial sympathy. This was reflected in last year's poll, when its Lok Sabha tally came down from 20 to three. Now, because the party has voted against the Vajpayee government on the confidence motion, its sympathy has eroded further," says Gopalakrishnan, a TMC sympathiser in Virudunagar, south Tamil Nadu. "They have to do a lot of rethinking if they are to fulfil their dream of restoring Kamaraj rule in the State by 2001."

The increasing ranks of the middle class matter a lot in Tamil Nadu today. Thanks to urbanisation and greater exposure through the electronic media, they vote more on issues than political tags and identities. They voted on Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, on Jayalalitha's misadministration five years later, and on Vajpayee's image coupled with the Coimbatore blasts last year. Now, it's Vajpayee versus Jayalalitha for them, but the initial over-reaction is giving place to a realisation of political realities. And the success of the rival camps will hinge on keeping the current issue alive -- or throwing up new issues that can catch the voter's imagination closer to the poll.

"Electoral arithmetic shows that a DMK-led front with the BJP providing the poll plank and the PMK and MDMK adding to the vote banks should sweep the polls," says a PMK strategist in Tindivanam. "But the evolving situation has thrown up possibilities for sub-regional parties like the PMK. While reflecting the public mood in general, we have to take care of our own interests."

According to him, it was the 'Vanniar atma-gouravam' card played by PMK founder S Ramadoss that made the real difference in the northern districts last year. "While there is a definite Vajpayee wave sweeping Tamil Nadu, there is also a consolidation of caste-based sub-regional vote banks -- the PMK in the northern districts and the Puthiya Tamizhagam [of the dalits] in the southern districts. You even have the anti-dalit Thevars and Gounders forming strong political groupings in their own regions. True, we were with the winning combination, and our contribution became unidentifiable in a pool, but Puthiya Tamizhagam held its fort despite the Coimbatore blasts."

With the election being held only in late September, the outcome may depend more on such parties than on the BJP wave.

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