R Kannan's MGR: A Life highlights events that shaped MG Ramachandran, the legend
R Kannan in his book MGR: A Life, has relied on news reports, critical biographies and a few interviews with politicians and journalists to highlight the events that shaped MG Ramachandran.
The life and times of M.G. Ramachandran, one of the most colourful personalities of Indian politics, have been well documented in books and magazines. He was a child of a poor family, a swashbuckling hero of dozens of B-grade movies, a lifelong cultivator of an image, on and off screen, as a do-gooder, a three-time chief minister of Tamil Nadu, and an architect of competitive Dravidian politics and the freebie culture.
In MGR: A Life, career diplomat R. Kannan has relied on news reports, critical biographies and a few interviews with politicians and journalists to highlight the events that shaped the man who was deified by millions of star-crazy followers.
The bulk of the eight chapters, meticulously footnoted, drag on with minutiae about MGR's less controversial, and less interesting, career in the movies. The author takes a sympathetic, almost admiring view of a man who came under the influence of rationalist leader E.V. 'Periyar' Ramaswamy Naicker. The young actor was then systematically cultivated by C.N. Annadurai, who used loaded movie and stage dialogues to further the cause of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which, taking turns with its offshoot, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), has ruled the state for more than 50 years.
The events and speeches occasionally translated here, literally and in bad syntax highlight MGR's king-sized ego, his early craftiness which he continued to practise till the end, encouraging undying loyalty, employing questionable methods, but feeding the hungry and doling out money and favours to preserve a clean image. The book avoids comments and sticks to facts to portray him as a warm-hearted person, but the undercurrent of machinations and petty thinking becomes apparent on reflection.
Each chapter highlights separate incidents, but does not mention the year except on a first reference, forcing one to read the book sequentially.
The book races through the meatier, and possibly more relevant, portion of his life as chief minister. It blandly details his moves to privatise higher education, re-introduce and expand a 1920 noon meal scheme to feed 9.2 million children, his rollercoaster relationship with protege J. Jayalalithaa, the cosying up to shady liquor barons, the flip-flops on prohibition, and his ambivalence on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue while clandestinely funding the Tamil Tigers.
Almost as an afterthought to this unquestioning and bare-bones sketch, Kannan offers a critical summation in the last few pages of a man who profited from the Self-Respect Movement, but set the stage for a culture of entitlement that his successor would expand on, ultimately to erode the democratic consciousness of Tamil voters. Cho Ramaswamy, political commentator and sometime advisor to MGR and Jayalalithaa, is quoted as saying that the former was the epitome of corruption in his later years.