The cult of Jaya: return of the dark goddess

By Shiv Vishvanathan

In politics today, Mother India comes in three incarnations. Three metaphors of force, three different icons of power. There is Mayawati, the Dalit queen; Mamata Banerjee, the noble savage of Bengal politics; and Jayalalithaa. The first two incarnations are easy to read as psycho-social forces and are obvious in their tactics. Mamata is a Rorschach blob representing Bengal’s wish to see the end of the CPM, while Mayawati represents the Dalit understanding of electoral politics. Each is a political vector powered by a societal force. Jayalalithaa, however, represents herself, and has a sense of the inscrutable that is part of her power. She reflects no caste or class identity, no feminist force, no modernising impetus. She is the persona as politics, the personality as pure presence, and therefore looks and feels like a hoarding. She is larger than life, and seems somewhat unreal. She could be a fair and lovely advertisement for the 60-plus. [caption id=“attachment_16016” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Jaya’s politics is an egotistic projection of her self. Voting her in is like installing a goddess in an empty temple. AFP Photo”] [/caption] Jaya’s isolation and authoritarianism are crucial elements of her mystique. The gates of her Poes Garden house conveys that closure, that distance, that space around her which  few can enter and only reverentially. Where Mamata and Mayawati are always seen surrounded by throngs of supporters, Jaya’s power thrives on distance. If the other two are icons because of their politics, Jaya creates politics out of her iconicity. Mamata and Mayawati are more immediately political in their appeal, but Jayalalithaa lingers in the mind as a powerful presence. The three woman embody three different strategies of complexity: Mayawati is ruthless; Mamata populist and tenacious; Jaya looks inevitable, a Machiavellian ticking, waiting for the right moment. Here she is again, back in power, ready to forgive the Tamil masses for voting her out twice. Heir to divinity Propped in the background is the figure of M.G. Ramachandran. MGR was no less than a political God, a semi-divine figure who dominated Tamil politics for 10 years. When he died, Jaya inherited his mantle and his mystique, but with a difference. Her mentor represented the amalgamation of film and politics. The symbolism in his movies was obvious and overt, a wish list of Dravidian emblems. Jayalalithaa’s obvious sociological persona goes beyond party and cinema, to the very roots of folklore. There are stories of MGR drinking Fanta or some other soft drink and of the remnants being sprinkled on the audience like holy water. Jaya, however, does not invoke holiness, but represents the awe of inscrutable power. She is more elemental force than a human being. When politicians touch her feet, they seem grateful for merely being allowed close to her. She creates her own iconography through distance, isolation and indifference. Unlike her political sisters, Mamata and Mayawati, Jaya exudes a sense of sexuality. There is, of course, her career as a sexy film heroine playing consort to MGR. Yet Jaya has transformed sexuality into a new untouchable iconicity, having renounced domesticity for the single-minded pursuit of power. She is that blend of fire and ice: the idea of power as sexuality. But there is also a cold animality to her sense of power. She understands power, especially the symbolic power of violence, the politics of the threat. Her dawn arrest of Karunanidhi on June 30th, 2001, was a classic example. The wily politician was completely ambushed, screaming helplessly like a slum victim before an indifferent bulldozer. The act was reminiscent of the Emergency era and must have put the fear of God, sorry the Goddess, in Karunanidhi. Her vengefulness, her authoritarianism adds to her mercurial appeal. Power, which is irrational and unpredictable always appears more potent. An unpredictable, inscrutable, authoritarian goddess needs to be placated more than others. She demands unquestioning obedience. But this goddess contains no sense of spirituality. She does not convey sacredness but the mana, the awesomeness of power, the elemental rawness of power. Inconspicuous corruption Where Jaya was ordained by MGR as his heir, all the DMK got were ideological scripts of Dravidian nationalism which have long run out of steam. Karunanidhi needs a political machine to be elected, while Jayalalithaa is the party. Her politics is an egotistic projection of her self. Voting her in is like installing a goddess in an empty temple. She does not convey gratitude but a sense of fate and destiny. Next to her, Karunanidhi and his families seem everyday, mundane and quarrelsome. They look like Tamil soap opera while she conveys the iconicity of legend. Electoral politics in Tamil Nadu has been a case of competitive corruption. In anthropology, one reads ethnographies of chiefs, endowing gifts on their tribe. The ritual is called the Potlatch where the more you give, the more you gain in status. The politics of tribes reached a new high in DMK – ADMK jugalbandi on corruption. The DMK today appears like a political machine that has run down, banalised and criminalised by petty greed. Karunadhi’s politics has been a case of conspicuous corruption, while Jaya’s is a case of the insidious and the invisible. They are occasional aberrations like her son’s marriage but for the most part the flaps are down. Her crimes remain backstage while Karunanidhi’s corruption has turned into an overt family spectacle enacted over two generations. Cult of democracy For all her goddess-like mystique, Jayalalithaa reeks of the modern, and understands governance. She likes the populism that votes her in but not a popular will that can defy her. Oddly, it is democracy that produces this version of the authoritarianism. Think of Narendra Modi or even Indira Gandhi. They are modernisers who exploit or channel democracy for their personal ends. All three treat democracy as a rite of passage that they have to occasionally resort to. It completes the irony that democracy as the will of the people gets forged into the will of one individual. A representative democracy gets subverted into an authoritarian polity by electoral means. Of the lot, however, Jayalalithaa is the most Hobbesian figure in Indian politics, the sovereign as empress, the politician as a cult figure. She is the frozen hysteric, obsessive-compulsive about power. Power soothes her, thaws her, makes her forgive the occasional deviancy or disloyalty of electoral democracy. As the cult of Jaya engulfs Tamil Nadu, she exudes a power, contemptuous of citizenship. She reveals the way in which democracy as a cult becomes doubly dangerous: first as populism, second as an authoritarianism without feedback. How democracy produces such oxymoronic figures is one of its mysteries. One needs a new secular iconoclasm to go beyond such fatal idol worship. Shiv Visvanathan is a social science nomad