Amma’s rise to glory forgotten?

A little over a month after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s death, a young Jayalalithaa took the oath of office and with it took over the reins of AIADMK permanently, which had briefly turned headless after the demise of its founder, MGR.

Two and a half decades later, the AIADMK is staring at a similar fate. With the MLAs disqualification case hanging like a Damocles sword above the EPS regime at one end and the rising popularity of TTV Dinakaran’s AMMK (Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam) on the other, the party cadres are in the same dilemma they were in after MGR’s demise.

A good number the party workers, if not all of them, are divided between the those in power and the one promising to capture power.

Remarkably, not even a handful of leaders cared to remember the historic day their ‘Amma’ had entered the ramparts of Fort St George after trouncing Karunanidhi’s DMK, which had managed to win just two seats.

AIADMK leader V Maitreyan, one of the key members of the O Panneerselvam camp which parted ways within months of Jayalalithaa’s demise, was the lone leader who remembered Jayalalithaa’s rise to power.

That the historic day did not find adequate space in Namadhu Amma, the party organ launched by the EPS-OPS led AIADMK recently, explains how oblivious the incumbent leadership is to the legacy of their once formidable Amma.

The generous dedication of space to lyricist Kannadasan’s birth anniversary and a two-column to record the arrest of leader of opposition M K Stalin in Sunday’s edition of Namadhu Amma would not bode well for the ruling dispensation.

Disappointment was guaranteed even for the cadres in the rival TTV camp, which did not bother to recall the historic day even on the website of the party organ Dr Namadhu MGR.

One factor that stood out in the editions of the party organs and statements of most leaders on both sides is that they have forgotten the legacy of their late leader even while fighting to claim it.