Panorama: Stalin's anti-BJP front won't do on home turf

Five time Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s 94th birthday celebrations should have been a non-partisan affair befitting a State leader with national reach. His son and DMK working president M K Stalin has done disservice to him by using it to bring all parties ranged against BJP and Narendra Modi on one platform.

The reason he gave for excluding the BJP was that its State leaders like Tamilisai Soundararajan have been critical of  DMK. Another State leader and Union Minister for Transport Pon Radhakrishnan has shown this is no time for pettyfogging by greeting Karunanidhi.

Stalin had also excluded State level parties not in alliance with the DMK. But leaders like S Ramadoss  of PMK and Thol Thirumavalavan  of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi conveyed their wishes to Karunanidhi, adding that they regretted that Stalin has politicised the issue.

The DMK is part of Congress president Sonia Gandhi led United People’s Alliance which is the main opposition to the Modi Government. The Left parties are also ranged against Modi though they are not part of the UPA. 

Besides leaders of the regional parties like West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar are also against Modi. But Nitish as well as Navin Patnaik of Orissa and Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh are ambivalent.

When efforts are on at the national front to form a grand alliance to take on Modi ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019, how effective will the initiative of a novice to national politics like Stalin remains to be seen.

Secondly, as pointed out by State level BJP leaders, where is the need for Stalin in a national-level anti-Modi front?

Stalin reckons that Modi is going all out to capture power in Tamil Nadu, exploiting the vacuum caused by the death of AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa and the virtual retirement of DMK patriarch Karunanidhi. Modi’s strategy is to force a fragmented AIADMK into reuniting to get the Two-Leaves symbol and ally with the BJP in the next election, whether at the State level if this government falls, or the next Lok Sabha polls. To face Modi’s onslaught, Stalin needs the support of national leaders like Nitish Kumar, Rahul Gandhi and Sitaram Yechury and D Raja of the Communist parties. He has made them share the dais, using Karunanidhi’s birthday as an occasion.

Here again, he appears to have been guided by the experience of Karunanidhi, as he feels Modi is going the Indira Gandhi way. On returning to power in 1980, after the collapse of the Janata experience of 1977, Indira dismissed nine opposition States at one go to get even with the Janata Government that acted likewise. Then, she went on to topple other governments which had survived the first wave of dismssals.  

She dismissed the Navbahadur Bhandari Ministry in Sikkim, the Farooq Abdullah Government in Jammu and Kashmir, the NTR Ministry in Andhra Pradesh and last, but not the least, the DMK Ministry of D Ramachandran in Puducherry, all in 1984. It was then that Karunanidhi took the initiative to forge an anti-Congress front. Thus was born the National Front, launched in October 1985 at a rally in Panagal Park in Chennai .

On the dais were NTR, Farooq Abdullah, V P Singh H N Bahuguna and other stalwarts from the Opposition who were fighting Indira’s hegemony. It took another three years till 1988 for this United Front take a firm shape. It led to the National Front government in 1989 led by V P Singh after Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat.

Karunanidhi played a crucial role in the formation of  the VP Singh Government and later the UF Government in 1996, though both proved to be short-lived.

He used the same very instability of non-Congress, non-BJP formations to justify the DMK joining the NDA Government  in 1999 after Jayalalitha pulled down the second Vajpayee Government.

Murasoli Maran was the architect of national level alliances that Karunanidhi forged during those days. When the 13- day Vajpayee Government sought a vote of confidence, Maran explained why the DMK could not support him though it considered him the right man in the wrong party. He said:”You stand for Hindi, Hindu and Hindutva and we are the very antithesis of all these”. That did not prevent Maran joining the Vajpayee Government in 1999 and DMK shared in power with the BJP in the NDA till his death in 2004. 

Then Karunanidhi latched on to the Congress-led UPA Government and the DMK enjoyed power at the centre for the next 10 years. 

Such being the track record, what could be the credibility of DMK leading the front against BJP now? 

Stalin, however, has every reason to draw the parallel between the Indira years and three years of Modi rule. Like Indira,  Modi has turned States into vassals, as the Opposition alleges, though he came to power with the promise of ushering Team India in which the Centre and the States would be partners in nation’s progress.

However, unlike Indira, Modi cannot go about dismissing Opposition governments, thanks to the SR Bommai government’s dismissal  on April 20, 1989 and the subsequent judgement He does the next best—grabbing power through defections  It happened in Arunachal Pradesh and Goa 

Thought the present Edapaddi Palanisamy government is unstable, the BJP cannot come to power by toppling it as it has no presence in the Assembly. But Modi can force the two factions of the AIAMK to come together to get the symbol by using CBI and income-tax, agencies under its control, and make the united party a captive ally of the BJP. 

Stalin knows that if and when he takes on Modi, he will also face similar raids as the present crop of  Ministers has been subjected to.  He will also have to factor in the  verdict in the 2 G scam , in which his step-sister Kanimozhi is the prime accused, which is expected next month. Stalin will require support from national leaders when he faces the heat.

This alliance at the national level will not translate into a similar front at the State level as the Left parties are part of the third front though their national  leaders make common cause with Stalin on the larger goal of fighting Modi’s government.

Ultimately, Stalin has to rely on his own strength and the support of the cadre. The people want change, but voting DMK back to power will be more of the same unless he can live down the haunting image of Karunanidhi’s last reign from 2006 to 2011, which was marked by family rule and corruption. 

Stalin managed to live down the negative image of the 2006-11 rule of MK in 2016, when Jayalalithaa was very much around, by winning 89 seats. He is raring to go, now that the AIADMK is in tatters and MK is no longer active . Sasikala has told Dinakaran to give the EPS government another two months. What the situation will be when he strikes will decide the battlelines.