The Hindu Business Line : DMK's withdrawal of Ministers — Start of the great political churn?

IT WAS like living for a long time in a rented house where neither the tenant is comfortable nor the landlord happy. So after occupying for over four years a slot in the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre, the DMK has at long last opted out.

Of course, the DMK president, Mr M. Karunanidhi, has made it clear that his party provide issue-based support to the Vajpayee Government for the time being. Thus, its exit has not caused any major ripples.

Even if it decides otherwise, the DMK's 11 MPs are not critical to the NDA Government's sailing through a full five-year term in office. Hence, the BJP leadership has paid little more than lip service in asking Mr Karunanidhi to reconsider his decision to leave the NDA Government.

Right from the beginning, it was an uneasy relationship; the DMK got on to the NDA platform in the first place because the space for an ally in Tamil Nadu was vacated by the AIADMK.

After tormenting the NDA Government in its first avatar, of which the AIADMK was a component, the party chief, Ms Jayalalithaa, finally withdrew support, bringing the NDA government down.

In those heady days of 1999, she flirted with Ms Sonia Gandhi's Congress(I), and trips to Chennai by any number of high-level emissaries deputed by the BJP leadership — the most frequent visitor being the Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes — could make the AIADMK supremo change her mind.

Of course, those were days when she did not bother too much about Sonia's maiden name being Maino and her Italian origins.

Political pundits are agreed that Ms Jayalalithaa who, unlike many other Kazhagam leaders, has never felt the need to be defensive about being a practising Hindu, and whose day begins with a pooja, is a natural ally of the BJP.

Whether for political advantage or otherwise, her ideology has been the closest to that of the Sangh Parivar, be it in banning cow slaughter or coming down heavily on religious conversions.

Though ideologically suited to the BJP, her demands from the earlier NDA government, of which she was a component, just could not be met and she parted ways with the NDA, paving the way for the entry of the DMK into the NDA.

It is well known that the DMK chief is a great admirer of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal BihariVajpayee.

After the 13-day government led by the BJP lost the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha in 1996, because the BJP was still considered "politically untouchable", this correspondent had asked Mr Karunanidhi in an interview why the DMK had rejected the BJP's desperate requests to support the Vajpayee government.

He had then said: "Mr Vajpayee is a very good man and I like him very much. But he is in the wrong party. He is the right man, but in the wrong party."

Mr Karunanidhi had at great pains explained how whatever the BJP stood for — be it the resolve to build a Ram temple at Ayodhya after the "shameful destruction of the Babri Masjid", the uniform civil code and other tenets of its Hindutva agenda — a secular party like the DMK could never join a government led by it.

But there are no constant enemies or friends in politics, and the DMK, led by the same Mr Karunanidhi, contested elections in alliance with the BJP and even joined the government at the Centre.

Of course, part of the reason for this was that the BJP had refused to toe Ms Jayalalithaa's line and dismiss the Karunanidhi Government in Tamil Nadu after the Jain Commission on Rajiv Gandhi's assassination came out with its report.

But the last couple of years have seen a souring of the relationship between the DMK and the BJP's Tamil Nadu unit, many leaders of which admire Ms Jayalalithaa.

This admiration, of course, grew after she stormed back to power in Tamil Nadu in the 2001 elections.

On the other hand, right from the issue of cow slaughter to the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, from religious conversions to POTA, the DMK has spoken in a voice drastically weakened.

Things came to a head when the DMK launched an agitation last fortnight on the issue of the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) being misused in Tamil Nadu to settle political scores.

When the DMK announced its plan to picket government offices — both Central and State — as part of its agitation against what it called the misuse of POTA, the BJP president, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, observed acidly that a party remaining within the NDA and yet launching an agitation against the Central Government was not "an ideal situation."

The DMK's high-level policy-making committee decided it had had enough of the BJP's constituents "talking ill" of the party, and resolved to pull out its two ministers, Mr T. R. Baalu and Mr A. Raja, from the Union Cabinet.

For a brief while, there was speculation that the MDMK would have little option but to pull out from the NDA too, as it was mainly on the issue of extending support to its jailed leader Mr Vaiko that the DMK had embarked on the agitation.

But with the MDMK leader, Mr M. Kannappan, clarifying that the MDMK would not take such a step, and the other ally of the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the Pattali Makkal Katchi of Dr S. Ramadoss, declaring at the outset that it had no problem with remaining in the NDA for the moment, the DMK stands isolated.

But, of course, its exit from the NDA has been welcomed by the Congress(I) which, after its drubbing in the recent Assembly elections in the Hindi heartland, seems to have realised the value of alliances before elections rather than later.

With nine more months to go for the Lok Sabha elections, the country will surely see a lot more old friends parting ways and former foes shaking hands.

After all who would have thought that Maulana Mulayam, such a bitter critic of the BJP's policies, would one day sit on the Lucknow gaddi with the blessings of the saffron party?

Not only has he been studiously avoiding going anywhere near Ms. Sonia Gandhi, he has been inching towards the BJP. The three-day RSS conclave, now on in UP, has been heaping praises on the UP Chief Minister for supporting RSS policies on such issues as Hindi and Swadeshi.

The RSS regional chief in UP, Mr Ishwar Chandra Gupta, was more than effusive when he exclaimed at the conclave: "He (Mulayam) is now a changed man with an attitude that brings him closer to Hindutva. We are hopeful that Mr Yadav will not only extend increasing support to the Sangh's nationalist agenda but will even join us on issues of national importance."

With the UP Yadav on this side of the "secular divide", his Bihari counterpart — Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav — will now have to work overtime to ensure that the Congress does come down from its high horse to begin a dialogue with similar-minded, anti-BJP parties to offer at least some competition to the NDA constituents in the next general election.

So, in a way, the DMK's exit is only the beginning of a churn in our polity.

The country is surely set to see interesting and stormy times ahead. But the most intriguing question that begs an answer is whether the BJP will once again woo Ms Jayalalithaa, after the experience with her.

(Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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