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Assembly, or the WWF?

Thirteen months ago, Tamil Nadu was rocked by explosions planted by terrorist organisations. Several commentators wondered whether it was the turn of the South to be torn by the same violence that had plagued the rest of India. Those fears have been (somewhat) allayed, but I am afraid another kind of violence has already infected the South, and it is the kind of disease that can't be cured very easily.

A week ago, Rajasekaran, a chartered accountant, alleged that he had been beaten up by no less than Jayalalitha in person. The truth of that assertion remains to be tested, but a second incident certainly can't be denied. This occurred in the Tamil Nadu assembly itself when R Tamaraikkani of the AIADMK assaulted Veerapandi S Arumugam, the agriculture minister. The minister had to be taken to hospital, bleeding from the nose. Tamaraikkani himself was then admitted to hospital in what seemed a transparent bid to escape the police.

The AIADMK is now taking the position that Tamaraikkani was the victim of violence, not the other way round! However, nobody seems to be swallowing that tale and the errant legislator has been released by the high court at the moment of writing. But punishing Tamaraikkani won't restore the faith of the voters in their elected representatives.

Unhappily, Tamaraikkani's resort to physical tactics is far from unique in the annals of the AIADMK. There are persistent rumours that the late M G Ramachandran used to treat his MLAs with a heavy hand. Those who fell foul of him were supposedly summoned to his house and soundly flogged -- rather like schoolboys being punished in the headmaster's study. (Tamil Nadu's voters are probably sighing for the late Chief Minister to return long enough to deal with Tamaraikkani!)

It was possible for MGR to do what he did since he was the undisputed leader of the party. But the animosities that AIADMK members had suppressed for fear of invoking his wrath broke out into the open at his funeral itself. Jayalalitha, long considered his heir, was pushed out of the vehicle carrying his body. Her hair was pulled and she was slapped. All this happened in the presence of Janaki Ramachandran, MGR.'s wife, who had just taken over as chief minister.

Given such intra-party enmity, the AIADMK split into two. The Congress then played its familiar game -- offering support from outside and then withdrawing it. The police had to be called in at the time of Janaki's final vote of confidence.

And so Karunanidhi led his party back to power after a gap of 13 years. But the AIADMK members, those few re-elected anyway, had lost their aggressive attitude. On March 25, 1985 -- a decade before Tamaraikkani's performance -- AIADMK members rushed across the aisle to take on the DMK benches. The chief minister's nose bled then just as copiously as that of his agriculture minister today.

The subsequent return to power didn't exactly improve matters. Chandralekha, a civil servant who had refused to transfer government land to a private party, had acid thrown on her. (She is now a member of Subramanian Swamy's Janata Party, which, ironically, is the AIADMK's most vociferous ally.)

Even Union ministers weren't spared by angry AIADMK cadres. On one occasion, P Chidambaram, then commerce minister in the Narasimha Rao government, was assaulted, with the windows of his car being broken. This happened despite the AIADMK and the Congress being allies in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections!

If that was the fate of a nominal ally, you can imagine what it was like to be perceived as an enemy. Ask Vijayan, an advocate who made the case for the prosecution in the TANSI land deal scandal, where Jayalalitha herself is one of the accused. He was left bleeding after an attack.

I am not saying that the DMK is a party of docile lambs, mind you. But the AIADMK has, generally speaking, made headlines far more often for the wrong reasons. And that is very worrying.

Terrorist threats can be handled. But how do you keep a vigil when the rot begins at the top? Tamil Nadu is still a far more decent and law-abiding society than, say, Bihar. But after decades of violence in high quarters, I can see signs of wear and tear. How do you prevent fisticuffs on the street when even the assembly chamber looks like a scene from the WWF?

T V R Shenoy