Dissidence brews in DMK: Stalin shouldn't fear Alagiri's legacy claims, but needs to tread path with caution

The first time I saw MK Stalin was in 1989 in Madras, as Chennai was then called. It was at an election meeting in the Thousand Lights Assembly constituency where he was the DMK candidate. I was intrigued by the names of both the constituency and the candidate. I was told that the place got its name from a mosque that is lit with a thousand lights during Muharram every year, but as is common in Tamil Nadu, there is no complete unanimity about the origin of this name.

And I learnt that Stalin was called Stalin because four days after he was born in 1953 came the news of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s death. A rising star of DMK at that time, Karunanidhi had perhaps decided to show off that his airy-fairy Dravidian ideology had a whiff of an equally dubious Soviet socialism. I understood that he had also wanted to tell the family that the second son of his second wife was the dearest child to him, and he wanted a quaint name to call him.

Even in 1989, there was a talk of Stalin succeeding Karunanidhi. But for a long time that remained a rumour, denied and confirmed several times by the father for his own reasons. Yet there was never a doubt that Karunanidhi doted on Stalin. Ever since Stalin was in his early 30s the father was dropping broad hints that he would step into his formidable shoes. But these hints were so broad and were couched in so many words and for so long that his elder son from the same wife Alagiri didn’t see, or refused to see, the point. So Alagiri began to nurse his own ambition.

Alagiri’s undying ambition

That ambition never died and it was in evidence once again on Monday when he questioned Stalin’s leadership, less than a week after Karunanidhi’s death. But whatever little confusion there is about Stalin inheriting his father’s mantle, it’s only because the succession plan Karunanidhi had in mind only remained in his mind. He lacked the courage to execute or even announce it with a finality that would have silenced rival claims early enough.

The reasons for Karunanidhi’s continued vacillation were both hypocritical and practical. He was always at pains to tell the world in general and Alagiri and Kanimozhi, the daughter by his third wife, in particular, that if Stalin would ever be his successor it wouldn’t be because he wanted him to be but only because of his own merit. So he proceeded to give his favourite son every available chance to prove his “merit” instead of unequivocally naming him as his heir.

But party leaders like Vaiko (as Vaiyapuri Gopalsamy is called) weren’t convinced about this merit argument. Protesting against Karunanidhi’s dynastic intentions, Vaiko left DMK in 1993 to launch his own Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK). Stalin’s rise in the party also angered Karunanidhi’s nephew Murasoli Maran. All this and the noises made by Alagiri made Karunanidhi even more circumlocutory about naming Stalin as his heir.

On again, and off-again

A 1997 rally at Salem had all the trappings of a formal coronation of Stalin, but Karunanidhi poured cold water on his son’s joy when he famously said:

“I am neither a king nor Stalin a prince. The DMK is not a mutt to determine the successor. It’s a democratic party and its future leader will be decided only by the party cadres.”

But in 2013, he said at a public meeting : “I will struggle to help the downtrodden as long as I live. For the question ‘who after that’, Stalin who is seated here is the answer, don’t forget.”

But again three years later, when Karunanidhi was 92, he made it clear that he wanted to be the chief minister himself if DMK won the 2016 Assembly election. A few days before polling, he said in an interview to NDTV : **“**Stalin himself doesn’t want to become chief minister. He wants only the DMK chief (me) to become the chief minister. I’ve not lost even a single election since 1957. If I win I’d be the chief minister for the sixth time. Stalin is the first among all who wants me to become the chief minister for a record sixth time … Stalin can become chief minister only if nature does something to me.”

Then five months after his party lost the Assembly poll to AIADMK, he told a Tamil magazine : “…It would be apt that Stalin is my successor because of his hard work, dedication and sense of purpose. Stalin has proved himself that he is the future of the DMK.”

Whenever Karunanidhi spoke about Stalin being his heir, he did so in the tones of a schoolteacher praising the performance of a pupil without a final word about what reward he would get and when. And even as this hide-and-seek was going on, Alagiri destroyed whatever miniscule chance he had of being a successor with his intemperate statements and actions.

Stalin inherits Karunanidhi brand

Despite Karunanidhi’s hemming and hawing about the whole thing, his action in expelling Alagiri from the party in 2014 and making Stalin the working president in 2017, leaves the party with little about whom he wanted as the successor. Alagiri’s latest empty claims about the support he enjoys notwithstanding, his irrelevance and Stalin’s relevance in the party have been established beyond doubt.

Unlike Alagiri, Stalin indeed worked his way up in the party even if his rise was only due to the fact of him being Karunanidhi’s son. Though Alagiri’s so-called rebellion can at best be called a storm in a teacup, it could turn catastrophic if others in the party unhappy with Stalin join hands with his brother, which seems unlikely at this point.

Stalin must, however, never forget that he is Karunanidhi’s son, but not another Karunanidhi. Unlike his father who remained a cult figure for a large section of voters whatever he did, the son has to prove to himself that he is worth the mantle he is inheriting. For starters, he can try to make DMK fighting-fit for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. The party performed miserably in the 2016 Assembly poll, conceding to AIADMK a second consecutive term for an incumbent ruling party for the first time in three decades.

What Stalin also must guard against is a possible dissent from Kanimozhi in the course of time. And that calls for some deft political management.

With the passing of both Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi, both AIADMK and DMK have lost their iconic and megalomaniac leaders who treated their parties like personal fiefdoms, fostering personality cult and breeding corruption in the process in the name of Dravidian politics. Stalin must strive to bring democracy back to his party and good governance back to Tamil Nadu, and make it a model state for the country which it once was. That’s a good way to curb dissidence, small or big.

The author tweets @sprasadindia