None of M G Ramachandran’s (MGR) female co-stars was as deeply influenced by his politics as Jayalalithaa Jayaram whose first film with MGR was Aayirathil Oruvan in which he was a Robin Hood-type of figure, dashing and adventurous. Despite a 32-year age difference, the pair clicked and the film was a runaway hit.
Till then very little was known about Jayalalithaa—this was only her second film. The only authoritative account of her early life is contained in an autobiographical series of articles in the mass-circulated Tamil magazine, Kumudam,in the late 1970s. Entitled ‘Manamtirandu Solrain’ (I am baring my heart), the series talks about her early life, the abject poverty her family had lived in and, as a result, how she was pushed into the world of cinema by her mother. The series highlights her bitterness about her early life: the relentless discipline of learning dance, music and acting, a lost youth and the circumstances of her father’s death who died in utter penury.
Her relationship with MGR has been the cause for much speculation. He formally inducted her into politics in 1982 when P U Shanmugam was AIADMK general secretary. Bright and ready to learn, she found herself quickly moving up the party hierarchy, becoming MGR’s right hand person, and then the propaganda secretary. An admirer noted that her entry into politics was befitting that of a ‘queen’. She was carried through the streets by enthusiastic AIADMK workers, wearing a golden crown and holding a golden sceptre when she was made propaganda secretary.
MGR died in 1987, and what followed was a free for all. Those opposed to Jayalalithaa in the party propped up V N Janaki, MGR’s widow. Expulsions and counter-expulsions followed, and after various machinations, Jayalalithaa came to power as Chief Minister in 1991. The Imelda Marcos period followed, alleges the opposition. There were also charges of corruption—with a number of allegations against her between 1991 and 1996. The political see-saw continued: she was defeated badly in the 1996 assembly elections, to be reinstalled as Chief Minister in 2001, and then again in the opposition in 2006.
Her relations with the Centre were equally mercurial, allying at different points with the Congress, the BJP and ‘third force’ parties. In 1998, she formed an alliance with entities she had hitherto considered foes: Subramanian Swamy, who had led the anti-corruption campaign against her, and the BJP, which was until then considered an untouchable in Tamil Nadu. Her dysfunctional alliance with the BJP was based on the need to keep a ‘foreigner’—Sonia Gandhi—out of power. And yet, 13 months later, she had a short meeting with Sonia Gandhi, which she herself termed was a political earthquake. And it was. She pulled out of the government.
But when she joined the BJP-led NDA for the 2004 elections after dumping the Congress, she ended up backing the wrong horse, and faced a rout. As the 2009 general elections draw to a close, Jayalalithaa, one of the enigmas in Indian politics, is giving nothing away.
©Business Standard. Excerpted from Business Standard Political Profiles: Of Cabals and Kings, by Aditi Phadnis. Published by Business Standard Books in 2009; available in bookshops and also on www.business-standard.com/books. For more details, contact vineeta.rai@bsmail.in
The book carries detailed profiles of: Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, L K Advani, Pranab Mukherjee, Prakash Karat, Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi, Jayalalithaa Jayaram; Amar Singh, Sharad Pawar, Lalu Prasad, Raj Thackeray, Uddhav Thackeray, Rajnath Singh, P Chidambaram, Jaswant Singh, Narendra Modi, Omar Abdullah, Ahmed Patel, Arun Jaitley, M Karunanidhi, N Chandrababu Naidu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Naveen Patnaik, Sheila Dikshit, Nitish Kumar, Om Prakash Chautala, Mamata Banerjee, Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Singh Badal, Chiranjeevi, Vijayakanth, B S Yeddyurappa, H D Deve Gowda, Digvijay Singh, Murli Deora, Sushma Swaraj, Jairam Ramesh, A K Antony
