M Karunanidhi invites Jaya to bout of sparring over health

CHENNAI: DMK leader M Karunanidhi has begun inquiring about chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s health. And it is not out of courtesy.
Karunanidhi asking “ailing” Jayalalithaa to divulge her medical condition and “take rest” in recent statements could well be an attempt to take their battle back to the days of personal attacks, but AIADMK analysts say Amma is unlikely to take the bait.
The DMK leader, technically, said nothing derogatory, but it was an invitation to another round of sparring. “The chief minister is not discharging her duties because she is not in good health,” Karunanidhi said on Tuesday at a meeting the DMK organised to thank itself for gifting Chennai the metro rail project.
This wasn’t the first time. Last Thursday, a day after Jayalalithaa skipped an iftar party citing “sudden illness,” the DMK chief said, “Information about her illness should have been made public; people would be eager to know.” While analysts are in agreement that citizens have the right to know about the health of their leaders if it affects governance, asking for details of one’s ailment could be invasion of privacy.
Coming as it does from a veteran political angler whose spats with his bete noire are legendary, the inquiry smacks of an unhealthy agenda. “The demand in itself is not an unfair one,” says political commentator Gnani Sankaran. “But Karunanidhi would do well by coming out with his own medical details. He never told the public about his ailments when he got admitted to hospitals while being the CM.”
Vaasanthi, author of the banned book ‘Jayalalithaa: A Portrait,’ feels Karunanidhi’s statement was in bad taste. “DMK has a history of making nasty remarks on her, criticising her on health grounds is not done. Would Karunanidhi like to be asked why he couldn’t sit for long at public meetings during the last election campaign?”
Personal attacks, as much as intolerance to each other’s remarks, has been the hallmark of both Dravidian leaders. Journalist and Jaya TV anchor Sudhangan says the rivalry stems from Karunanidhi’s refusal to accept AIADMK as a political party and his treatment of its leaders as personal adversaries. “When he launched the ADMK in 1972, MGR became Karunanidhi’s enemy; by taking over as MGR’s political heir, Jayalalithaa filled the slot,” he says.
The defining moment of this rivalry came in March 25, 1989, when DMK MLAs manhandled Jayalalithaa. Having walked out of the assembly with dishevelled hair, vowing to return only as CM – which she did two years later – Jayalalithaa never forgave her rival.
During 2011 polls, by when Karunanidhi was on a wheelchair, Jayalalithaa reportedly said he was being moved around like a ‘moottai,’ a sack. Stalin retorted, calling her ‘puluku moottai,’ a bag of lies. Many other remarks, often not in public, are unprintable.
Now practising the same policies of populism and empowerment of backwards, DMK and AIADMK have barely a programme or agenda that distinguish them from each other. It all boils down to a personality cult, and hence the personal attacks to keep cadres engaged ahead of an election year.
Jayalalithaa may be in a quandary: AIADMK cadres may mistake her silence for timidity; but a ‘fitting’ retort would only drag her back into an unsavoury exchange of words. Sudhangan says this time she may not play into Karunanidhi’s hands. “The RK Nagar bypoll was a sampler,” he says. “She stuck to her government’s achievements.”
But DMK wasn’t in the fray then. Only the campaign for next year’s assembly polls will tell who aims for the head and who hits below the belt.