The tag of being the son of party chief M Karunanidhi is something that M K Stalin could never shrug off. Attached to this tag would always come the accusation of dynastic politics in the DMK hierarchy.
But unlike some of his counterparts in other regions of the country, Stalin was someone who put in the hard work and rose steadily through the ranks.
Born on March 1, 1953, Stalin’s political career began when as a 14-year-old he campaigned for the DMK in the 1967 elections. Two years later he addressed his first public meeting in Chennai at the Kodambakkam High Road. The watershed moment in Stalin’s career came in January 1976. Three years after he was inducted into the party’s general committee, Stalin was arrested under MISA for protesting against the proclamation of Emergency. It is alleged that he was so brutally beaten up in jail that a fellow prisoner who tried to save him died in the police onslaught.
The later 1980s witnessed Stalin’s silent tussle with fellow party man V Gopalasamy, who later became ‘Vaiko’ and launched the MDMK. Journalists of the era pointed out to Express that Vaiko was the most popular leader after Karunanidhi in the DMK. This hardly impressed Stalin and fuelled Vaiko’s expulsion in 1992.
Stalin’s popularity in the public eye was given a fillip in 1996 when he was elected Mayor of Chennai city. Many observers feel this was the beginning of the golden era of the Chennai Corporation, which for the first time took independent decisions on various issues, given Stalin’s position as the son of the Chief Minister.
There has been no dearth of controversies surrounding the son. He was embroiled in a fly-over scam in 2001 which also saw the arrest of his father. Complaints were registered against Stalin for amassing wealth disproportionate to his income.
While he fought pitched battles with his older brother M K Alagiri, the move to make Stalin the deputy chief minister in 2009 virtually sealed questions on succession.
As political observer Gnani pointed out, it was only a matter of time before the declaration was made. “Even elderly leaders like Anbazhagan have accepted that this would be the case. The issues with Alagiri were only a minor hiccup as Karunanidhi never saw any major role for his older son in State politics,” he said.