The Big Story: Autumn of the matriarch

J Jayalalithaa fought through the brutally patriarchal world of Tamil Nadu politics to become chief minister of the state six times. When she died, she had just defeated her political rivals, M Karunanidhi and his Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, in the second consecutive assembly election. And that was two years after her party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, had wiped them out of Parliament in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The motive moment of her political rise has been traced back to that ugly day in 1989 when she was harried out of the state assembly, DMK members clawing at her sari. Jayalalithaa reportedly vowed to return to the assembly only when she became chief minister.

In the years that followed, she fulfilled all the expectations that Indian electorates have of female politicians. Generally, it means filling in hopped-up, public versions of traditional feminine roles – the mother, the sister, the caregiver, the grieving widow reluctantly taking the reins of her dead husband’s empire. As commentators have pointed out, Jayalalithaa was comfortable slipping into traditional roles created by patriarchy to get the political results she wanted. The film-star glamour of latter years was scrubbed off, though there were occasional bursts of opulence in the 1990s – recall the picture of Jayalalithaa and her aide, VN Sasikala, doused in gold jewellery and armoured in stiff kanjeevarams, the lavish wedding for her foster son. But, by and large, the chief minister and AIADMK supremo fashioned herself as “dear sister” to her party colleagues and “Amma” to her legions of supporters. Even her chosen brand of welfare politics – doling out everything from idlis to packaged water to flood relief under Brand Amma – projected the benevolence of the maternal caregiver.

Of course, Jayalalithaa had plenty of company. Around the same time in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati was becoming famous as “Behenji” and in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee became “Didi” to all her supporters. The Tamil Nadu chief minister knew the struggles that went into such self-fashioning, the taunts it tried to deflect. Just days before she was admitted to hospital, she came to the defence of Mayawati, who had been made the subject of lewd remarks by by male colleagues, alluding to “bad moments” that she herself had faced. Yet there was a dangerous ebullience to the way she lived up to patriarchal fantasies. If she was Amma, she channelled the energies of the mother goddess, who could give life and sustenance, but who also presided over orgies of reverence and could be terrible in her wrath. Amma, in many ways, was the most subversive role Jayalalithaa ever had to play.

The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day’s big story

  1. Sruthisagar Yamunan looks back on the life and career of the “doughty fighter”, J Jayalalithaa. He also asks what will happen to her huge reserves of wealth and dwells on the political significance of VN Sasikala performing her last rites.
  2. Neha Dani charts the milestones of a tempestuous career.
  3. Vinita Govindarajan finds a flood of photos on social media, mapping Jayalalithaa’s transition from movie star to politician.
  4. In this excerpt from her book, Vasanthi wonders about the woman behind the politician. Charu Nivedita writes of the loneliness of being Jayalalithaa.

Subscribe to “The Daily Fix” by either downloading Scroll’s Android app or opting for it to be delivered to your mailbox. If you have thoughts or suggestions about the Fix, please email rohan@scroll.in.

Political pickings

  1. In Tamil Nadu, the Bharatiya Janata Party senses an opportunity in the power vacuum left by Jayalalithaa. So does the Congress.
  2. In Kashmir, separatist leaders invite tourists and pilgrims to the Valley, while mainstream political parties spar over National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah’s sudden support for the Hurriyat.
  3. Meanwhile, after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleged a political conspiracy behind the delay in her flight landing in Kolkata, six pilots have been grounded by the Directoratee General of Civil Aviation.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, M Vijaybaskar traces Jayalalithaa’s popularity to a welfare model where the state replaced the male breadwinner.
  2. In the Hindu, Suresh Nambath on how Jayalalithaa worked around traditional roles to get the results she wanted.
  3. In the Economic Times, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar on how the Supreme Court’s judgment on the national anthem is an example of ultranationalism.

Giggles

Don’t miss...

Vidya Athreya on the wrong-headed policy of culling wild animals and the alternatives to it:

“In India, technological jugaad in conjunction with traditional knowledge can open up a host of possibilities for preventive conflict mitigation, which could then be useful the world over. Currently, there is no research and development potential for this. But it could have economic potential in rural areas. For instance, people could set up barriers based on new technology, with traditional knowledge contributing to what kind of barriers would work in a particular area. State governments could encourage such measures by funding their development and initial subsidy.

The rarest but most publicised conflict is one that affects human lives and safety directly. To deal with this, people must be made more aware of the animals causing conflict. Currently, much of the awareness is spread by conservation groups, who focus on saving wildlife, which is of little use in a conflict situation. Instead, people must be told about the basic behaviour of the animal in relation to the precautionary measures they need to take against it to reduce the threat to their lives and property.”