Raja’s independence remarks draw backlash: No place for secession in Indian Constitution

Former Union telecommunications minister and senior DMK leader A Raja’s threat of reviving demand for “independence” for Tamil Nadu is facing a massive backlash.

Incidentally, there are murmurs of disagreement even within the DMK, at the way Raja “embarrassed” the party leadership with his comments and also gave a handle to the Opposition in Tamil Nadu to spin a nationalist narrative to take on the ruling party. The DMK had flirted with separatist notions till the 1960s, when it gave up the notion of a Dravida Nadu under M Karunanidhi.

Publicly, DMK leaders have tried to play down Raja’s remarks saying that “the DMK has been demanding greater autonomy for the states since the 1960s.” Party spokesperson TKS Elangovan said that it has been the DMK’s policy to fight for greater autonomy for the states and there is no change in party stand on it. Privately, DMK leaders concede that Raja has been told to keep quiet on the issue.

Political analyst Sumanth C Raman saw it as Raja’s frustration at being sidelined in the DMK, thus taking the path of embarrassing the party leadership with his loose talks.

Raja’s remarks, however, have given a handle to the BJP to paint the DMK as a party with secessionist tendencies. BJP Tamil Nadu unit vice-president Narayanan Tirupathi said that he was surprised and even shocked that Chief Minister MK Stalin was silent as Raja made the comments. “Tamil Nadu’s ruling party should understand that India has created states for its administrative purposes,” he said.

Condemning Raja’s statement, another BJP state leader CT Ravi said: “We will keep a close watch on the situation and take appropriate action as and when needed. We strongly condemn the tendencies shown by the DMK which is now realising that its Dravidian politics was not working and was trying to raise such issues in frustration.”

Tamil Nadu state unit BJP president, K Annamalai, attributed the DMK leader’s secessionist tendencies to frustration arising out of inability to carry out corruption now that there is a strong Opposition in the state. In a Facebook post, he said that the DMK believes it is entitled to plunder the state when in power, and when questioned, it will pull out its oldest trick called ‘state autonomy’ and propagate separatism. The DMK should realise that this is not the 1960s, Annamalai added.

The ally of BJP and the principal Opposition party in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, the AIADMK, too wasted no time in condemning Raja’s remarks and said that this was nothing but a distraction by the DMK to hide its failures. AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Sathyan said that the DMK has been sowing seeds of divisiveness in the state using three of its pet topics — state rights, federalism and language.

Political analysts, though, are at present not so harsh in their assessment of Raja’s remarks saying that there is a feeling among the non-BJP ruled states that they were being discriminated against. And this feeling has been growing in Tamil Nadu’s ruling party.

Political analyst and former head of Observer Research Foundation in Chennai, N Sathiya Moorthy said that he would not like to give too much importance to Raja’s statements and dismissed it as “an expression of political anguish”.

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“Tamil Nadu has had a history of its fight for greater autonomy, even after it gave up its separatist demand of a Dravida Nadu in the 1960s. It was Karunanidhi who thought it was best to stick to the Constitution of India and seek greater autonomy,” Sathiya Moorthy added.

Be that as it may, the fact is the Constitution of India does not allow Indian states to secede from the Union. And it had its genesis in the 1960s at the height of the Dravidian movement. It was under Jawaharlal Nehru that Parliament passed the Anti-Secession Bill in 1963, amid massive opposition from DMK ideologue CN Annadurai.

The author is a senior journalist tracking social, economic, and political changes across the country. He was associated with the Press Trust of India, The Hindu, Sunday Observer and Hindustan Times. Views expressed are personal.

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