Visualise the situation of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a dominant party of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, leader M Karunanidhi pleading before the Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi, the release, on bail, of his beloved daughter M K Kanimozhi. Despite the best of efforts, Karunanidhi couldn't ensure Kanimozhi's release before Diwali, the festival of lights ensuring the arrival of a new year in certain parts of India and the victory of the good over evil.
Kanomozhi has been arrested in connection with a scam involving illegally undercharging mobile telephony companies for frequency allocation licenses, which they would use to create 2G subscriptions for cell phones.
Politics is undoubtedly a great leveler. The octogenarian leader may now be pleading, the Italian-born Indian politician Sonia Gandhi to use her influence to secure the bail of his daughter, but it was the same Karunanidhi who joined former Prime Minister V P Singh and other anti-Congress leaders, including the late Communist Jyoti Basu, to spearhead a movement, which virtually turned into a hate campaign against the now deceased Rajiv Gandhi.
Sonia Gandhi's husband may have been killed by the Tamil Tigers, yet one can hardly doubt that the vitriolic campaign launched against former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi portrayed him as a political villain sipped in corruption.
When V P Singh launched a campaign against Rajiv Gandhi, alleging, he and his close associates received kickbacks in the infamous Bofors arms deal, Karunanidhi, Basu and other anti-Congress leaders put their weight behind it, without properly scrutinizing the facts behind such allegation. As V P Singh displayed a diary, allegedly having the names of the kickback takers, in public rallies, India was agog with sloganeering, which branded Rajiv Gandhi has a 'thief'.
One can't deny that such unfounded yet vitriolic campaign made Rajiv Gandhi politically more vulnerable, leading to his desperate attempts to reach out to the public, which might have contributed to his brutal assassination.
Despite such roles of Karunanidhi, Singh, Basu and other leaders, Sonia Gandhi cobbled together such disparate elements of Indian politics to keep the BJP at bay, and finally attained power in 2004. Although, in a personal interaction, Sonia Gandhi confided that she overlooked the past only to resist the rise of the so called communal forces in Indian polity, yet this only speaks of politics being an art of the possible.
There are allegations of rampant corruption against both Karunanidhi and his arch political rival, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha, yet they enjoyed being in power in the state at regular intervals. This is attributed to their charisma and the partisan nature of the state's political landscape. However, one cannot deny the lack of choice faced by the voters in Tamil Nadu, which speaks of one of the many flaws in India's brand of democratic polity. Taking advantage of such a flaw, both Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha not only remained in power in the state but also made hard bargains with the national parties like the Congress and the BJP to be part of successive central governments.
India may take pride in its brand of democracy, yet the survival instincts of some of its politicians also remind us of the famous adage that politics is the art of the possible.
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Politics as you say is the art of the possible. However flawed, democracy still is the best form of governance. Do not people realize that public figures they sometimes elect are not above board? It is quite possible they do. Maybe it is to make the best of a bad bargain. I cannot see any alternative. That you can make these comments are because you live in a democracy. This would not have been possible under an authoritarian dispensation.
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