‘Raj Rule OK’ in Independent India
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 4 Oct 2010
Vithal Rajan – TRANSCEND Media Service
Every Indian political party has devised its own unique selling point. The Congress as the mother of all parties distributes patronage and sucks into its vortex corrupt floods of black money. A pattern that others of course follow but with variations. The BJP as the strongest contender for power is risen as the Hindu answer to the Taliban, while the communist parties are home to lost causes. In Tamil Nadu, the southernmost and arguably the best run state, power is divided between two parties, heirs to the great anti-upper-caste, anti-establishment movement of a hundred years ago.
The leader of the DMK, the party in power today, is Karunanidhi, an octogenarian scriptwriter who successfully made films the medium of his political message. Now in his last days in office he turned once again to promote local Tamil culture, a populist project superbly executed which has given perceptible self-assurance to masses of poor people.
This year his failing eyesight shrewdly alighted on the ancient town of Tanjavur, where the great Shiva temple, a UNESCO heritage monument, was constructed exactly a thousand years ago and is famous for its architectural beauty. Legend has it that the king who built it, Raja Raja Chola the First, sang sacred hymns in its courtyard every evening while 400 women danced in honour of God. On the evening of Saturday, September 25, this ancient legend was brought to life on an even grander scale. One thousand gorgeously bedecked women danced in precision formation, each within her four-foot square of space, while 200 priests chanted hymns against the soaring backdrop of the sculpted granite temple that rises 216 feet into the air.
Hundreds of thousand of men, women and children, almost all of them poor villagers, sat in perfect appreciative silence in the courtyard, and waited several hours for their political leaders to arrive. They had all been hustled and hassled into place by the police, which treated peaceful people like a dangerous mob, and they would continue to be hassled late into the night when they left the temple after the event. The politicians came at last in a stream of fast cars with screaming police escorts, and left in similar highhanded manner.
Though India has been independent for over 60 years, the haughty colonial attitude of rulers has changed not at all, neither in Tamil Nadu, nor anywhere else in India. Many expect that Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of India’s strong woman, Indira Gandhi, and son of her dutiful Italian daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi, may be more respectful of his citizen-subjects when he comes to power one day as he undoubtedly will. As for Tamil Nadu, the old leader’s two sons are already squabbling over power, and one can only hope that his charming daughter, a late runner in the race, will win and end colonial style rule. Till the younger generation rises in India, it will be ‘Raj Rule OK’.
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Vithal Rajan, O.C., Ph.D.[L.S.E.]
Hyderabad India
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 4 Oct 2010.
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