Jayalalitha---The Caped Wonder-Woman

It is June, 1964; the place -- Stella Maria College for Women, Madras, the first day of the academic year. In the milling crowd of pre-university students, there are some laughing, chattering young women obviously much at ease with one another. I am an outsider from another city, in a smaller group, rather more ill-at-ease, watching everyone else.

At the center of the larger group, there is a fresh-faced young woman, who stands out in the crowd for her looks, her grace, her flower-like charm. People nudge each other, whisper her name with awe, and we all sneak glances, quite unaware of who or what this girl represents, what her destiny is going to be. She does not return for the second day of college. Her life is elsewhere.

Soon her face is plastered all over the city, on luridly-coloured posters, rumours spin of links with male co-stars. Within a few years that fresh flower-like look has gone, her girth is considerable and her films have descended into crass vulgarity. The girls who were at school with her speak regretfully of her academic brilliance, of how she might have won great laurels if she had continued to study.

Between that time and now, 40 years on, she has become a politician of machiavellian proportions, earned the fear and venom of a huge part of the populace, has men falling at her feet for the smallest reason, been convicted on corruption charges, has had temples built to house her image, has earned a doctorate without having graduated from college, had people immolate themselves when she lost an election, and most recently, had strictures passed against her by the Supreme Court for creating a “fear psychosis” in Tamil Nadu in the Sankaracharya case, which has been transferred to a court in Pondicherry.

India has had its share of bad rulers. The world’s “largest democracy” has thrown up a wild and wonderful mix of eccentrics and autocrats, men and women with the highest principles, and the lowest, madmen and robbers and murderers and pseudo-democrats, who by the very nature of the system have been able to wield power over a largely docile people, still horribly poor, and make enough wealth for twenty generations. In Tamil Nadu, poverty, illiteracy and a passion for cinematic heroes and heroines gave Jayalalitha and others of her breed, potent leverage to catapult her to power.

Jayalalitha Jayaram has no progeny. She has not married. Yet people speak in whispers of the vast amounts of money she has made in the last 25 years in politics.

Still in whispers, people speak of her vindictiveness: having her arch-rival Karunanidhi dragged from his bedroom, shouting “Kolai! Kolai! (murder!murder!) by the police in return for putting her in jail a few years before. Having the Sankaracharya arrested, a man similar to the Pope for South Indian Brahmins, for reneging on some deal or for some unforgotten slight. Then early in her political career, there was the incident of the lady IAS officer who questioned her on some deal, and who had acid hurled on her face. There are doughty politicians like Subramaniam Swamy, enfant terrible of Indian politics, and the journalist Cho Ramaswamy who have had the tables turned on them and lived to regret their criticism of her. There are very few people now, who will tilt at Jayalalitha’s windmills.

In the venomous atmosphere of Tamil Nadu politics, with its seething undercurrents, there is still enough room for jokes and comic allusions to the ‘caped wonder’, (does she wear a bullet-proof vest under that all-encompassing cape?), an allusion to the many threats to her life by all her enemies, her ‘live-in lady friend’ with all its snide implications, and even for a film to be made on her and Sasikala Natarajan by a film-maker in the neighbouring state of Kerala,

Her mentor M.G. Ramachandran who was the Tamil equivalent of Amitabh Bachchan, was originally from Sri Lanka, made his fortune in cinema before entering politics; he had enough of a reputation for making large amounts of money but Jayalalitha has long surpassed him. In a state where the Brahmin is still anathema, she is a fair Brahmin woman, an Iyengar from Mysore, and rules over a largely Dravidian population. Her Tamil is impeccable. In the State Assembly when she speaks, Dravidian men who might normally spit on a woman or give her the backs of their hands, listen in complete, respectful silence.

The deals she makes and breaks are openly discussed in the market-place, to the exact amount of the pay-off. Most recently, the Indian bank scam, suspected FERA violations, a 16-crore colour TV deal gone wrong, are among the most-mentioned.
When the tsunami struck Tamil Nadu, her idea to build a sea –wall along the coast for which she demanded Rs. 500 crore from the Centre, was seen by practically everyone as a ridiculous ploy to siphon off the cream and jam.

The awful way she humbled the Sankaracharya, having him seen in this Hindu country as the lynchpin in a murder case is an example of her intelligence and cunning. Political life in India is largely conducted on the basis of rumour and misrepresentation, and enough mud and tar stuck on the acharya’s face and reputation for the case against him and the junior Sankaracharya to seem foolproof. It was only when the Supreme Court which has become for many in the country, the real seat of government, began to look into the facts of the case and the many appeals by the Kanchi Swami’s lawyers that justice began its torturous processes.

She began her political career in the Rajya Sabha, and it was only when she won an election in Tamil Nadu that she began her ascent to power. In the strange fickle way that political games are played in this age of coalition politics, could she ever be a candidate for Prime Minister? Or could she return to jail which was such a nightmarish experience for her in the disproportionate assets case which is now being tried in Bangalore?

What will Jayalalitha’s fate be?