From Jayalalithaa To Amma
Just a while ago, I watched Mani Ratnam’s movie Iruvar in which MohanLal and Aishwarya Rai play MGR and Jayalalithaa. Before you read the rest of this piece, take two minutes and watch these two songs from the movie.
At the time, all I knew about MGR and Jayalalithaa was that one always wore sunglasses and a turkish looking hat while the other was called Amma and had her face stamped on all the post flood relief material sent in to Chennai in 2015. Neither of these images fit with that of slender Aishwarya Rai in skimpy green clothing, shimmying up and down a stage. So I googled “Jayalalithaa. Actress. Young. Images.” and got this:
And this:
Total recovery time: indefinite.
The first thing that came to mind was why on earth anyone would ever vote for a film star because I was picturing Alia Bhatt as our next PM. Then I thought of having Dhanush as my Chief Minister instead of Siddaramaiah and promptly dropped whatever objections I had.
Tamil Nadu’s history of actor-turned-politicians goes back a long way and is a story filled with dramatic tales of friendship and separation. In order to understand it, we must begin with Annadurai. (Actually we must begin with Periyar, but when I looked him up, overexcitement happened and there was so much to say that I ended up with a whole new post which you can find here.)
A powerful orator, scriptwriter and actor, Annadurai was the first Dravidian politician to use the world of cinema to fuel his political agenda. In 1949, he formed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and lead anti-Hindi agitations that eventually resulted in a landslide victory in 1967 that made him Chief Minister of Madras State which he renamed Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, two prominent young figures came under his wing; an upcoming superstar by the name of MGR and his close friend and scriptwriter, the born poet, Karunanidhi. Then two years into his term, Annadurai died.
Itself a splinter group, DMK then splintered again into two parties, one lead by the now insanely popular megastar and greatest of Tamil cultural icons, MGR, and the other, by Karunanidhi (who is by the way, now 93 and the only one left living of that day and age). MGR’s party became AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and in 1977 won for the first time, to become the first regional party in the Union Cabinet.
Meanwhile.
Born in Melukote near Mandya (funny isn’t it, how one of the primary areas affected by the Cauvery water dispute is the area Tamil Nadu’s very own Amma was from?), Jayalalithaa grew up in Mysore and Bangalore, studying in fact, in Bishop Cotton’s Girls School. Her father had died when she was only two and her mother Sandhya, now worked in the film industry, single-handedly supporting the family. Jayalalithaa herself then began acting in the mid 1960s.
You know those kids who are good at everything they do and somehow seem to have the time to learn every skill under the sun? Jayalalithaa was one of them. Deep breath, here goes: Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Mohiniyattam, Carnatic music, western classical piano, Gold State award for coming first in 10th standard, government scholarships for further education, fluent in Tamil, Kannada, English, Malayalam and Telugu, starred in 140 films over just 19 years, including a number of them with MGR. I haven’t even done one tenth of this, I can’t even sing happy birthday properly. I’m just gonna go lie down in a corner and die for a little while okay.
If you google for interviews with Jayalalithaa, the first result is her ‘Rendezvous’ with Simi Garewal and the next is ‘Jayalalithaa royally slapping Karan Thapar’. There’s this excerpt from the Simi Garewal interview I once came across on FirstPost, in which Jayalalithaa says that “After mother died, he (MGR) replaced her in my life”. Read out of context this sounds really absurd because there are all these stories about her having an affair with MGR and then she goes and calls him mother. It’s 10 times worse than the friend-zone dude.
But then I watched the interview. (Which you should also do, if not to glimpse a different angle of her personality, then simply to learn how to speak to people, or rather, how to let them speak. Something Thapar clearly never bothered with, the interrupting, keh-keh male that he is). When talking about her mother, Jayalalithaa describes how they were really close, but also how her mother completed dominated her life. She never wanted to get into acting, she never wanted to give up her studies, but her mother wanted her to and so she did. Similarly, she was close to MGR and when the time came, though she didn’t want to shift into politics, he wanted her to and so she did. Doesn’t match with the independent, self-confident, striking figure she was during her term does it?
After his split with Karunanidhi, MGR needed a fiery public speaker to capture his supporters. Known as the Queen of Tamil cinema, Jayalalithaa was the perfect person for the job and in 1982, she was appointed propaganda secretary for the party. Making a dignified exit from the film industry at just the right time in her career, Jayalalithaa then strode right into the political sphere.
In 1987, the fateful year of MGR’s death which plunged the state into chaos, rioting and mourning, Jayalalithaa claimed a right to the position of Chief Minister as MGR’s self-declared political heir. (There was this major drama during his funeral procession when Jayalalithaa tried to climb on the carriage carrying his body and got physical with MGR’s wife Janaki, who had tried to push her off).
AIADMK splintered again into Janaki vs Jaya parties and ceasing the opportune moment, Karunanidhi made his comeback and DMK won the elections. Then Jayalalithaa reunited the parties and became the first female Leader of Opposition. You know how I spoke about this being a story of cinema and politics? Well, here’s an episode (How Jayalalithaa Became Draupadi) of how it often became cinema in politics. On 25th March, 1989, chaos erupted in the Legislative Assembly over allegations by the Opposition of corruption charges against Karunanidhi. In accordance with our great Indian tradition, slippers were thrown, microphones broken, insults hurled and in the midst of it all, a man named Durai Murugan went and yanked at Jayalalithaa’s sari. A shameful move and for Karunanidhi’s future, a disastrous one. Riding on waves of media sympathy, not only for her but also (following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination) the Congress party AIADMK had then aligned with, Jayalalithaa won the following elections in the year 1991 to become Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for the first time.
After this it’s just back and forth between AIADMK and DMK. She lost in 1996, won in 2002, lost again in 2004, 2006 and 2009, won in 2011, got kicked out in 2014 and returned in 2015 and with this, we come to the end of her journey from cinema to politics.
Just yesterday, a friend of mine asked me what I think of Jayalalithaa and I realised that first things first, I admire her. Simply for succeeding as a woman in a world so full of disgusting men. The same friend then went on to shake his head about how people so blindly support their leaders, wondering how it is possible to ignore what these very leaders do with the power given to them. He was also referring to Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary legend, known for his ‘undemocratic’ (to put it lightly) means and methods. So I decided to do some more digging into this rabbit hole of a story and figure out where I stand. It’s work in progress, finger’s crossed I’ll have it up by next week.
