Rediscovering his master's voice

In 1946, when the Dravidar Kazhagam was unveiling its red-in-black flag, a 23-year-old man made a cut on his hand and smeared a blackcloth with his blood. "This is our flag. We will give our blood and lives for this," proclaimed the descendents of the Self RespectMovement. Three years later, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam took birth.The youngster who gave his blood is today 84 years old and answers tothe name Muthuvel Karunanidhi.

The Tamil Nadu chief minister's recent remarks on Ram are but an effort at returning to his rebellious past and revalidate his claim of being the rightful heir of EV PeriyarRamaswamy, the iconoclast of Dravidian rebellion. The hatred for Ram – and hence the love for Ravana – has been Periyar's consistent ammo to hit at 'upper castes' from the 1920s to his end in 1973.

Though Ram was depicted as a Kshatriya, his actions in Ramayana (especially the killing of Sambuka, a Sudra) made him a pro-Brahmin villain in the eyes of Periyar and his disciples. As early as in 1942, Periyar called for the burning of 'KambaRamayana' and penned several scripts reversing the hero-villain roles of Ram and Ravana. The first DMK government paid tributes to Periyar by lifting the ban on a book eulogising Ravana by Pulavar Kulandai, titled 'Ravana Kavyam,' which was banned by the previous Congress government.

Karunanidhi got the first political validation of the anti-Ram posture in the 1972 simultaneous elections. During the run-up to the polls,Periyar organised a rationalists' conference in Salem and burnt Ram inthe effigy. Kamaraj's Old Congress, C Rajagopalachari's SwatantraParty, Jan Sangh and a host of Hindu outfits joined hands and askedpeople to vote against the anti-Hindu DMK. But the DMK bagged 184 ofthe 234 seats and Kamaraj was the only Old Congress candidate to win aLok Sabha seat in the state.

Alliances with the Congress and the BJP have diluted DMK's Dravidian fundamentals and Karunanidhi is badly trying to rediscover his master's voice. Times have changed, but Karunanidhi wants to test if they really have. An insider tells me that Karunanidhi feels he is at the peak of his popularity and, in the event of snap polls to the Lok Sabha, wants to test the waters baring his rebellious self. Vaasanthi, my friend, Tamil writer and author of Cut-Outs, Caste and Cine Stars: The World of Tamil Politics, says Karunanidhi, towards theend of his career, wants to be remembered as another Periyar. But he should know that Periyar lived in different times.

Where tolerance is a four-letter word

Which engineering college did Ram go to? That was Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi making fun of believers of the mythological Ram and his alleged role in building a bridge between Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu and Thalaimannar in Sri Lanka.

Before all the chief minister's men -- and women -- finished laughing their guts out, around 7.30 pm on Tuesday (September 18, 2007), a 'vanar sena' hurled stones and petrol bombs at the house of Selvi, Karunanidhi's daughter in Bangalore. Karunanidhi, watching a light-and-sound-show on the life and times of, well, himself, refused to react immediately. After two hours, some more violent custodians of the Ram legacy torched a bus going from Bangalore to Chennai, at Bommanahalli junction. Two passengers were charred to death. Stoning of Selvi's house will not be forgotten so easily. Two lives lost will be (Remember the three employees of Dinakaran burnt to death on May 9?).

Born to a religious mother and a Marxist father, my transition from a confused atheist to an agnost to a confused believer came with a lesson: faith is an extremely personal affair. I do not question someone's faith unless it fosters oppression, inequality, hatred or poverty (It is another matter that interpretation of faith often does all that). Karunanidhi may have his own reasons for questioning someone's faith and I have no problem with his doubting Ram's structural engineering skills. But I think it is only fair that when you give criticism, you should be graceful enough to accept it, too. One has to be tolerant.

Hah! Tolerance and Dravidian politicians! Let me share my experiences with three leaders, not in the chronological sequence, but probably by the level of their intolerance. A couple of years after J Jayalalithaa came back to power in 2001, I did a cover story for the Tamil edition of India Today on what I titled 'DMK in disarray.' Karunanidhi was arrested and released; the DMK could not take up a protest worth mentioning; the cadres were disoriented; and the AIADMK Amma was riding roughshod. I was interviewing Karunanidhi at his Gopalapuram residence, along with the India Today Tamil editor.

The DMK president was irritated by many questions and finally, when my colleague asked him what was the significance of the yellow shawl he wears, Karunanidhi helped himself up from the chair and said: "Petti mudinju pochu (the interview is over)." I went ahead with the story, along with Karunanidhi's interview (the last comment included). The next week, Murasoli, the DMK mouthpiece dedicated two full columns -- running from the top to the bottom of the page -- personally attacking me. No, Karunanidhi did not write the piece -- it was a 'common reader of Murasoli' who appeared to know everything about me, including my yet-to-be-diagnosed 'psychiatric condition.' One of the sentences read: Arun Ram is known in journalistic circles as "loose" (cranky). I called up Karunanidhi's secretary and thanked him for the coverage I got in Murasoli. I did interview Karunanidhi several times again, but neither of us brought up the matter.

Jayalalithaa was less direct in her expressions of intolerance. I cannot claim to have been singled out for her tantrums, as she filed defamation cases against every journalist who criticised her wrong deeds. I got the first legal notice from the regime in 2001 when then Chennai Police commissioner K Muthukaruppan filed a defamation case (on behalf of the chief minister) for a story I did on how the establishment was trying to silence its political rivals with the threat of booking them under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of 1985. Half-a-dozen more suits followed in the next two years. Demanding as they did my -- and sometimes my Delhi-based editor's -- presence in the court at least once a month, the cases had their nuisance value.

I first tasted the intolerance of a Dravidian leader in 1999, soon after I moved from Deccan Chronicle in Hyderabad to The New Indian Express in Chennai. I was covering the general elections and landed up in Sivakasi, where Vaiko, the 'charismatic' MDMK leader, was pitted against retired justice V Ramaswamy of the AIADMK. I was to travel with Vaiko for the usual a-day-with-the-leader piece. Before getting into his campaign vehicle, Vaiko asked me if I had breakfast. When I replied in the negative, he shouted at his partymen for "not treating me well." I kept chatting him up between his roadside speeches peppered with history and histrionics.

And then we came to the topic of the cottage industry of matchbox-making in Sivakasi. "Your opponents hold you responsible for rapid mechanisation which is displacing poor employees," I told him, at which Vaiko snapped: "Nobody dares ask me such questions." Sensing that I have not been reporting from Tamil Nadu for long, he continued, "I will talk to your bureau chief. Till then, the interview is put off." I got down from his campaign vehicle in an interior village, walked a few kilometers to a narrow road, hitch-hiked my way to the bus station and back to my hotel room to file the story. Vaiko, I learnt later, was surprised to see my story which spoke about the popular support he had in Sivakasi and why his victory was a foregone conclusion. I have travelled and dined with him as part of my work several times after that and we are yet to have a tiff.

The three leaders have different perceptions, different interpersonal skills and different styles of functioning. What they share is but one trait: intolerance.

An epic in the unmaking

Govt chants Ram, Ram - Times of India

UPA govt rediscovers lord Ram- DNA

U-turn in the name of lord- Hindustan Times

All good lead headlines from three leading newspapers in Mumbai on Friday (September 14, 2007). Forgive me, for once, sub editors, I give the credit to the government, which tried to put its foot down on the Sethusamudram conflict, but found its foot firmly in its mouth instead.

What, pray, was the need for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to present as an affidavit, the scientifically untested hypothesis that the bridge-like formation between Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu and Thalaimannar in Sri Lanka is a natural formation? Worse, why did the government try to preside over the authenticity of Ramayana and its protagonist Ram? Mythology is not history, we all know, and Sonia Gandhi is a master of neither. We also know that Lal Krishna Advani is not Hanuman, though he tries to sound more knowledgable than the mythological monkey god, on matters of the Palk Straits.

I would love to see a scientific attempt to validate -- or invalidate -- the existence of Ram (and that has got nothing to do with my second name). The same with other mythological/ religious figures. But the arguments over the need and feasibility of the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project (SSCP) is just not the lab for that. Let us be clear, the debate is whether SSCP will do good or bad. Or neither, at a cost of more than Rs 2,400 crore. If it does good, can the canal be dug without disturbing what was called the 'Ramar Sethu' till 1804 when the first surveyor general of East India Company James Rennell called it the Adam's Bridge?

The idea behind the canal is to cut down the sailing time of ships -- that now circumvent Sri Lanka -- between the east and west coasts of India by more than 30 hours and 450 km. It will also help us develop a string of ports. That makes sense. Till we consider that the original plan was made 147 years ago, by AD Taylor of the Indian Marines. Ships have changed and so have navigational methods. Since I am not an expert on this, I will but share some points raised by experts during my interviews with them for scores of stories on the vexed issue.

KRA Narasaiah, former chief mechanical engineer, Vizag Port and a World Bank consultant for port construction: "The project is no longer economically feasible. Modern ships are of more than 100,000 dwt (dead weight tonne) capacity, while the proposed canal can let only ships of 30,000 dwt to pass through."

KS Ramakrishnan, former deputy chairperson, Chennai Port Trust: "A 36,000-tonne coal ship calling at Chennai port through a 7-km channel has to pay approximately Rs 21.75 a tonne, or a total of Rs 7.83 lakhs, as pilotage charges averaging Rs 1.11 lakh per km. The same ship will have to pay more than Rs 60 lakh for passing through the SSCP. The saving of sailing time around Sri Lanka does not justify this cost."

Whenever I have spoken to shipping minister TR Baalu and former chairman of SSCP NK Raghupathi (he was working too hard that Baalu had to ask him to go on leave), there has been no counter to the points raised by Narasaiah and Ramakrishnan. Raghupathi always had the habit of saying "I will get back to you" (which he never did), while the minister's refrain has been "the project has the clearance of the concerned agencies and ministries."

Now, even if the canal is financially viable and useful, is it imperative that the bridge be damaged? Whether it was built by Ram's 'vanarsena' or the toiling men and women of the times; or it was a natural formation, should such a wonderful reef of corals and stones dating back to tens of thousands of years and guarding one of the most unique marine ecosystems in the world (the Gulf of Mannar is designated as a world biosphere reserve by UNESCO) be damaged?

According to Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court whom I interviewed soon after the ASI's submission on Wednesday, the probable route of the canal was studied 16 times since 1860 and 15 of them suggested that the bridge should not be touched. By experience, I take Swamy's words with a generous pinch of salt, but I am yet to hear anything from Baalu & Co against this argument.

I am waiting for the conflict to be resolved. Not that I am thrilled at the prospect of having a canal -- usable or not -- in my state's backyard. Just that we can get to the more interesting point: Was the bridge man-made or natural? ASI, mind you, has not based its submission on any scientific data. Micropaleantological studies, among others, can tell us the truth. A senior scientist friend claims to have done that, but the government has not taken it on record. I promise to get back with more of a scientific argument, once curtains come down on the present scene of the political drama. And, if the political players push me enough, a bit on a secret 'ledger' of payments at the SSCP site.