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In defence of Jayalalitha

It is highly debatable if, in recent history, any Indian political leader has faced as much opprobrium as that laid at the doorsteps of Jayalalitha Jayaram, general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham. Even at the height of his unpopularity, thanks to the Bofors hysteria generated by Vishwanath Pratap Singh, I don't think Rajiv Gandhi met with the kind of mass antipathy as that reserved for the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

It obviously must have been this public resistance to her recent shenanigans that forced her mind, and made her support the Bharatiya Janata Party government in New Delhi.

Given the public outcry against her -- which is boosted every time her misrule of Tamil Nadu is mentioned -- it must be a very foolish man who will set out to portray the other side of the picture. And, since reader response over the last couple of weeks has clearly pitted me in the category of the morons, let me seal my place there.

The crux of the problem posed by Jayalalitha to Atal Bihari Vajpayee's continued tenure as the prime minister is that she is insistent that the Centre invoke Article 356 in Tamil Nadu and send Chief Minister M Karunanidhi packing. This demand at once, is termed unconstitutional, and suchlike. Jayalalitha's argument is that she is merely asking the BJP to fulfil what it had told her it would do first thing it formed the government at the Centre. Since then, various BJP leaders have gone on record to say that there was no assurance made to the AIADMK leader in the pre-election days.

However, when you look back at the days before the 12th General Election, there is immense possibility that the BJP may have, informally at least, spoken about the terrible law and order situation in Tamil Nadu as it existed then. Especially around the time of the Coimbatore serial blasts in February, in which BJP president L K Advani had a narrow escape, the party would have very likely spoken of dismissing Karunanidhi if it formed the government. Now such an assurance may not have been written out in stamped paper and notarised, but it surely is in the realm of possibility that Jayalalitha was led to believe that the Tamil Nadu government's end was nigh.

Subsequently, of course, the situation changed to such an extent that there was no way the BJP government could have carried out its intention. Specifically, the resort to Article 356 by a party whose state government was only recently at the receiving end and which found succour thanks only to presidential and judicial intervention could hardly wield the same Article with relish.

Not only was the Kalyan Singh government's dismissal and subsequent reinstatement on election-eve instrumental in ushering in a change of heart on the part of the BJP over the question of dismissing the TN government, even the subsequent improvement in the law and order situation in Tamil Nadu since February made the BJP averse to sacking Karunanidhi. After all, despite the massive hunt for terrorists across the state for their involvement in the Coimbatore blasts, it can be no one's case that Tamil Nadu is a killing field like some other states.

The only time Art 356 could have been invoked vis-à-vis Tamil Nadu was during the Coimbatore blasts, but even here there is a precedent: after all, when a series of explosions rocked Bombay five years ago the Congress government in Maharashtra was not dismissed. In fact, since the perpetrators of such heinous crimes have the disruption of the status quo as their main objective, the use of Art 356 in such situations would be nothing short of conceding their agenda.

Given such a background, Jayalalitha cannot be entirely blamed for asking for something that she believes was a commitment made to her on election eve. She, after all, is a politician, who has entered into an electoral understanding with the BJP with certain expectations. In politics, especially during election time, all such arrangements involve a quid pro quo. The price Jaya expected to be paid for pushing the BJP's line in a state that had so far rebuffed the saffron party was the sacking of the state government. In the normal course of time, the Karunanidhi government has a long way to go before facing the electorate again, and Jaya knows that she cannot afford to wait so long -- if the Indian voter was fickle to start with, the Tamil voter is even more so, his inconsistency proved by the resounding endorsement of the woman whom he had rejected only a little while ago. Flush with her party's victory in the Lok Sabha elections, Jaya believes there is no way she can lose the assembly elections.

To be fair to the BJP, it has tried to accommodate most of Jayalalitha's demands. The prime minister's bending over backwards to please the AIADMK leader has less to do with the fact that she is his largest ally and more with a desire to please her. The Central government has done what is in its powers to concede her demands, but clearly, her position on Art 356 is not something that could be conceded without the BJP government losing much of its moral sheen.

As I said earlier, defending Jayalalitha is not exactly the right way to popularity. Trying to explain her position, however, should not be construed as support for a blind use of Art 356. The Article has been included by the Constitution-framers for a specific purpose, on the presumption that it will be wielded with discretion. Politicians, however, have played politics with this, as well as other provisions of the Constitution, their stance on the subject depending on their current station in life. The BJP, alas, has been no better vis-à-vis Art 356.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy