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.