The ruling AIADMK will celebrate its 45th founding day on Monday. This would perhaps be the first time when its general secretary and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa would not hoist the party flag and garland its founder MGR’s statue on the big occasion, since she took over the reins of the party 27 years ago.
Consequently, the party’s presidium chairman E. Madhusoothanan would lead the celebrations that are likely to be on a low-key note.
Banking on the charisma of its founder-leader rather than ideology, the AIADMK, like all other personality-centric parties, had faced a crisis after the demise of MGR and during his stay in prolonged stay in a hospital in the US in the 1980s.
But it was a matter of time before it could recoup its position in the Tamil Nadu politics with Ms. Jayalalithaa at the helm. It reflected its organisational and inherent strength and the failure of the DMK and other political parties to win the confidence of the AIADMK’s supporters completely. Today it has grown to be the party with the largest vote share in Tamil Nadu.
Looking back at the AIADMK’s growth, political watchers feel that when the DMK expelled MGR from the party on October 10, 1972, its leader M. Karunanidhi had made a political miscalculation. In fact, even MGR had a lot of reservations about his political future.
“Any reluctance MGR might have had in launching a political party of his own was quickly overcome after the unprecedented mass support for him and the anger against the DMK for having expelled him,” said R. Kannan, whose biography of MGR will be released next year.
MGR had reasons to doubt his success in politics. “Of course, he had a huge fan following. But they were never treated as serious political elements within the DMK. They were just inferior crazy fans of MGR who need not be given any importance. But the way they rallied behind him dispelled all the preconceived notions,” said writer Kalapriya, who worked vigorously as a member of MGR’s fan club before pursuing his higher studies.
Mr. Kannan said MGR was certainly guided by late communist leader M. Kalyanasundaram publicly and most likely helped him in drafting the 29-page AIADMK programme that was released much later.
DMK leader M. Karunanidhi used to say that Mohan Kumaramangalam’s (Communist-turned-Congress leader and Union Minister) people helped design the name and even the flag for the new party and were behind MGR in founding the ADMK (later rechristened AIADMK). Since MGR was the mascot of the DMK and was the king-maker in 1969 after Annadurai’s death, his accusations that the DMK had become corrupt resonated very well with even the common man.
Organisationally strong
Even though Mr. Kannan argued that Ms. Jayalalithaa had no one in the party to match her stature, he felt the AIADMK is organisationally strong and was almost a cult.
“Only time can tell where the womenfolk and the rural masses will gravitate in future,” he said.
