The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) observed death anniversaries of two leaders on Saturday, who exemplified contrasting strands in the party organisation. Their respective roles can be seen as a division of labour of sorts in the party structure.
Writer, film-maker, historian of the Dravidian movement and an ace parliamentarian Murasoli Maran, who died in 2003, was the DMK’s intellectual face, and was content with playing second fiddle to DMK president M. Karunanidhi.
Veerapandi S. Arumugam, whose first death anniversary was observed on Saturday, was a grassroots leader in touch with the lowest rung in the party hierarchy.
He articulated the interests of a specific class that formed the backbone of the DMK during its embryonic days.
As a senior functionary in the DMK, his ascendancy in the party organisation was also no less important than that of Maran.
“A political party needs both such men. Murasoli Maran sustained the ideology of the party through intellectual work and Veerapandi Arumugam took care of the organisation at the ground level,” said Professor M.S.S. Pandian of Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Mr. Pandian argued that Arumugam was the product of the decentralisation of power in the organisation, akin to leaders of the old Congress at the national level before Indira Gandhi took control of the organisation.
“These leaders knew the pulse of the people. While the party leadership had control over them, it exercised only loose control and left local issues to them,” said Mr. Pandian.
Veerapandi Arumugam was one of the many leaders patronised by DMK leader M. Karunanidhi despite his negative image, which springs from his impulsive ways.
Mr. Karunanidhi endorsed Arumugam when he named him “Lion of Salem. ”
While the party continues to produce local leaders with varying degrees of aggressive functioning, a leader of the calibre of Murasoli Maran is missing from its ranks.
“The party is without people who can do intellectual work. It has been ideologically impoverished,” said Mr. Pandian.
But V.M.S. Subagunarajan, a Dravidian ideologue and editor of Kaatchippizhai , a magazine on popular cinema, said the emergence of both Murasoli Maran and Veerapandi Arumugam was necessitated by the era they belonged to.
“Maran was moulded by his close association with the early leaders of the Dravidian movement...Today, the party consciously keeps the ideology out of its ambit as politics as a career has occupied centre stage,” he said.
Mr. Subagunarajan said Arumugam was truly a DMK man in the sense that he, like Anbil Dharmalingam in Tiruchi and Muthu in Madurai, had grassroots connections and dared to take on Congress leaders, who were also feudal lords. As the educated class was reluctant to take to politics, leaders like Veerapandi filled the vacuum.
