Tamil cinema’s current mega-star Rajinikanth has announced that he will not have his usual birthday bash and has called on his myriad fans to also avoid celebrating their idol’s birthday which falls this week. This is in reverence to the late Jayaram Jayalalitha, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and one-time Tamil cinema mega-star herself, who died last week.
This action by the world’s best known Tamil film star typifies not just the tremendous societal significance of the late Chief Minister but also signifies the close link between cinema and politics not just in Tamil Nadu or India but in the whole of South Asia. Across the Palk Strait, in Sri Lanka too, there is some cross fertilisation between Sinhala cinema and politics but, being a small country with a correspondingly small cinema industry and culture, neither politics or cinema creates the kind of powerful mass fervour that the massive entertainment industry as well as politics can generate among the vast audiences in Tamil Nadu and, India as a whole.
Rajnikanth, himself, like his equally famous predecessor mega-star, the late M. G. Ramachandran – or, ‘MGR’ as he was known among his cult following – has toyed with Tamil Nadu state politics but has yet to commit himself. In the pre-war decades, MGR and Jayalalitha were household names among Sri Lankan viewers of Tamil cinema including many Sinhalese. Those were ethnically quieter times when Tamil (and Hindi) cinema was watched by most Sri Lankans (except for the Anglicised elite) irrespective of language differences. Many older generation (non-Anglicised) Sinhalese today yet recall their enthusiasm for Tamil hit films in the 1960s and ’70s, especially those films jointly starring one of world cinema’s most prolific acting duos, MGR and Jayalalitha.
Sinhala cinema too once had a famous acting duo in Gamini Fonseka and Malini Fonseka. But Sinhala cinema cannot hope to even begin to match the sheer social scale of cinema audiences in Tamil Nadu, with its 77 million population, as well as the combined audiences in all four south Indian Dravidian language states.
Nevertheless, the parallel socio-cultural features on both sides of the Palk Strait as well as the geographical proximity only emphasises the regional intimacy that has intertwined the destinies of people on both shores. Hence, a development as significant as the passing away of Tamil Nadu’s most powerful woman leader cannot be ignored.
Of course enjoyment of Tamil cinema is only the cultural dimension of the intimacy across the Palk Strait. Given the decades-long and brutal internal war in Sri Lanka which, simply put, pitted Sinhalese against Tamils, it is inevitable that politics is the far bigger dimension of this intimacy.
I use the term ‘intimacy’ advisedly. I wish to emphasise that despite the war, the residual war trauma, and competing ethno-nationalisms, the larger geographical proximity and, resultant historical and anthropological linkages, yet presents us with a reality that is as tangible as it is advantageous to society on both sides of the Strait.
This foregrounding of my brief survey of post-Jayalalitha Tamil Nadu politics on Sri Lanka is intended to make one simple point: the intertwining of destinies on both sides of the Strait is so close that the destinities will remain interactive even as charismatic politicians come and go.
A quick look at the past record of the politics of Tamil Nadu in relation to Sri Lanka only shows one general trend: the politics of this large South Indian state has largely settled on to a general track that provides for a consistent concern about what goes on in Sri Lanka, especially in relation to the Sri Lankan Tamil and Hillcountry Tamil communities here.
This concern has remained constant for decades whichever the party or coalition is in power in Chennai. At the same time, the mainstream politics in Tamil Nadu frames this concern about Sri Lanka firmly within the discursive limits of Indian democratic politics. No state government in Chennai has ever advocated any serious action by India vis-à-vis Sri Lanka that transgresses the conventions of international law and bilateral inter-state relations.
The five major and mainstream political formations in Tamil Nadu have all operated broadly within these conventions – namely Jayalalitha’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of veteran Opposition Leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the state branch parties of the Congress Party, the Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CP-M).
Even the military intervention by India in 1987 – the Indian Peace Keeping Force - was cautiously supported by these large parties and there was relatively little sabre rattling as one may hear when it comes to Indo-Pak relations.
This is not the case, however, with some smaller parties in Tamil Nadu, which embrace an exclusivist pan-Dravidian nationalism that, for some of them, may include a residual Tamil secessionism. At one time, in the early decades of post-colonial India, this separatist nationalism thrived at the mainstream level among the founders of the DMK. But with the rapid development of Tamil Nadu into one of Indian post powerful economies and parallel social development, this secessionism has waned as is limited to the fringes of state politics.
Today, such identity politics have been superseded by strategic economic interests as states now compete for bigger shares of the rapidly blossoming Indian economic cake, This also includes inter-state issues such as sharing of river water for power and irrigation purposes, mineral resource exploitation and environment issues, financial regulations etc.
Hence, identity issues are now raised purely or mainly for vote-catching politics. That is, after voter mobilisation has been done on such priority issues as the sharing of Cauvery River water between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (of huge significance for the large farmer populations), poverty, un-employment, caste discrimination, social development, food costs and other local governance issues, then, politicians may raise the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils as a late vote-catcher. In the recent decade – even with the Sri Lankan war rising to a pitch – elections in Tamil Nadu as well as at Indian national level, have not featured the Sri Lankan issue prominently.
Thus, the fear on this side of the Strait, especially among the Sinhalese, that the Tamil horde in South India is poised to invade our little island, is completely unfounded although such paranoias need other ideological fixing before they fade away.
A close examination of how both Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi have performed in relation to Sri Lanka in the recent decade and more will show that neither they or their parties have ever made the Sri Lankan ethnic issue a decisive slogan in either state political contests or at national level.
In fact both major parties – as well as the other larger parties – in Tamil Nadu have supported the ban on the LTTE. In fact in the final stages of the war, while LTTE was being decimated by the Sri Lankan government-initiated no-holds-barred, onslaught on the North and East, neither Jayalalitha or Karunanidhi raised their voices in protest or pressured Delhi to intervene. Thus, the departure of Jayalalitha is likely to see a younger generation leadership emerge in state politics that will focus even more on economic issues rather than ethnic issues. In this, Tamil Nadu politics may be ahead than the politics in our own country.
Indeed, for both major parties, Sri Lanka has been raised as an issue only in terms of other issues more relevant to Tamil Nadu economic interests – namely, the Palk Strait fisheries issue, the Kachchathivu island issue, the need for a strong hub port to compete with Colombo and the possibility of dredging the Strait to enable larger ships to pass through to avoid the circuitous route around Sri Lanka.
True, the loss of Jayalalitha’s towering personality leaves a big gap in Tamil Nadu politics, the uncertainty as to who will fill this void or if this void needs to be filled, is an issue more for the Tamil Nadu electorate in terms of better governance (and less corruption) than of concern to us across the Strait.