“I’ve nothing to regret. I’m used to public life throwing up all kinds of controversies at my face from the time I was born. This is nothing new.” That’s Kanimozhi, Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Karunanidhi’s youngest child, speaking with steel in her voice on the unwelcome 2G spotlight on her. In her calm voice is the timbre of years lived, a depth that goes beyond her 42 years.
Her Father’s Daughter
In the forensics of the 2G controversy was revealed the convoluted DNA of the Karunanidhi clan; it now threatens to poison a young political career that once represented Dravidian politics in evolution. Kanimozhi’s childhood was one of filial exile — the octogenarian Karunanidhi has a soft spot for the only child of his third wife Rajathiammal but did not acknowledge it in public for years. Kani was a bright student, someone who won prizes for creativity. Unlike her half-brothers — M K Muthu, Alagiri and Stalin, the anointed political heirs of the DMK — she could never share her childhood triumphs with her father. But Kanimozhi was special to her father, who treated her as one who brought him good luck — his sudden ascendance to chief ministership in 1969 came in the wake of Kanimozhi’s birth in 1968 to Karunanidhi’s then girl friend, Dharmambal alias Rajathiammal. During that time, there was a legendary
riposte by Karunanidhi in the state Assembly to a question on who Dharmambal was to him. The reply, “my daughter Kanimozhi’s mother”, is still cited as an example of Karunanidhi’s quick-wit and power of repartee. Later, as Karunanidhi split his time between his two homes — Gopalapuram, where his wife Dayaluammal and her children lived, and Rajathiammal’s house in Oliver Road, Kanimozhi grew up outside the pale of active politics.
Gopalapuram was the chief minister’s official residence. As a child growing up without a father, Kanimozhi turned the pain of his absence into poetry. Family confidants and party old-timers say Karunanidhi read his daughter’s verse — which expressed the agony of a growing child — only much after they were published. He was so moved that their evolving relationship acquired a pattern. “We discuss poetry and shared our reading lists,” says Kanimozhi. Family insiders say that it is Karunanidhi’s guilt towards Kani that brought out the protective fatherly instinct in him. It plays out to this day, when, even in the face of a national scam and a none-too-helpful extended family, the Dravidian patriarch is unwilling to let his daughter fight a lone battle. Her proximity to her father was on public display when Karunanidhi was arrested in June 2001 by the AIADMK regime. Kani was seen as the young woman standing by her father’s side — the poignant much-televised vignette of her squatting on the outer courtyard of the Chennai prison along with Karunanidhi was an image that perpetuated her importance to Kalaignar.
So, though her associate A Raja awaits his fate in Tihar jail and a CBI interrogation looms large, Karunanidhi’s formidable political clout continues to save Kani. A questionnaire on the Rs 206 crore that flowed from scam-accused Shahid Balwa’s DB Realty to Kalaignar TV is probably the closest the CBI can get to Kanimozhi. “I am not running away. Bigger controversies have hit people with bigger political profiles. They didn’t run away. Why should I?” she asks defiantly.
Kanimozhi has been married twice: first to Athiban Bose from Sivakasi in a 1989 wedding which saw a star cast of national-level politicians attending it as the DMK had just then, for the first time, joined the National Front alliance to form a government at the Centre. Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal flew down in a special aircraft for the event, though many members of the Karunanidhi first family were conspicuous by their absence. After her divorce, Kanimozhi married G Aravindan in 1997 and the couple have a son, Aditya. After her marriage to Aravindan, Kanimozhi was seen more in public in literary and cultural events.
Delhi’s Darling
Kanimozhi entered the political corridors and select drawing rooms of Delhi as the young, urbane face of the DMK and an ambassador of her father.
Like her cousins, the Marans, she speaks English well and would accompany Karunanidhi when he met Sonia and the Prime Minister. She was active culturally and intellectually too; a familiar face at all the right seminars. Kanimozhi’s advantage over her brothers was in her being seen at all the politically correct dinner parties that cut across party lines.
Karuna divided the political spoils of his legacy between Kanimozhi and Stalin — she for Delhi and Stalin for Chennai. Kanimozhi says she plans to campaign for the DMK in the coming assembly elections. Will she do it with her brothers, Stalin and Alagiri who are widely perceived to be antagonistic towards her and prepared to isolate her politically; or with her father? “No, I’ll campaign on my own, like I always do.” She’s unruffled and matter of fact while speaking of her brothers.
“I have a good relationship with them. I have a job to do, and they
understand that.” She refuses to be drawn too much into the subject, or to choose between Alagiri and Stalin. In June 2008 when the DMK organised its first women’s conclave at Cuddalore — significantly held at the same venue where J Jayalalithaa was launched into active politics by her mentor M G Ramachandran in 1982 — with a view to propping Kani up as the top leader of the party’s women’s wing, the first signs of political intrigue in the family surfaced. At Cuddalore it was Kanimozhi’s niece Kayalvizhi, the daughter of Alagiri, who stole the limelight by making a speech watched over by an adoring father. A party insider confides that Karunanidhi doesn’t think highly of Alagiri’s political skills — when he wanted Raja to be expelled, Kalaignar is said to have scoffed at his son underestimating the potential backlash
of sacrificing a Dalit leader just before the elections.
The Lady Appears
When exactly did the young sub-editor who endeared herself to journalists through her simplicity after joining an English newspaper in Chennai some time in 1992 — she was humble enough to travel even by auto rickshaw, they recall — start veering towards the dark alley of political machinations that ultimately led her to break bread with lobbyists like Niira Radia is something no one is able to figure out. Her literary and social pursuits were once seen as a virtue that earned her the sobriquet of a ‘red lotus sprouting out of muck’. She cultivated the media by being accessible to them — a trait not common to politicians in Tamil Nadu — and also was seen by Tamil literary lords as a connoisseur of literature; the cultural heir apparent of her multi-faceted father.
In the decade since then, Kanimozhi had been a regular feature in the media. In 2005 when she launched a website called Karuthu (opinion), along with Union Minister P Chidambaram’s son, Karti Chidambaram, she was seen as a champion of free speech and expression. In early 2007 when she launched the folk arts festival Chennai Sangamam Kani was hailed as the DMK’s cultural ambassador. In between, she started Naam an organisation whose charter was the intellectual and academic exploration of relevant modern issues. Her image was that of an apolitical daughter of the state’s most seasoned politician. Kanimozhi started earning political brownie points first by organising job fairs titled ‘Kalaignar 85’ in small towns, starting from Kariapatti in Virudhunagar. During the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, she donned the poll campaigners’ hat for the first time.
Kanimozhi was perceived as DMK’s counter to Jayalalithaa; both went to the same school, had been journalists, and started their parliamentary
careers in the Rajya Sabha.
Leaving It Behind
Kanimozhi is upbeat about the party’s alliance with the Congress. Wouldn’t the 2G scam sully the relationship? Won’t the corruption cases help the formidable AIADMK alliance? “What corruption?” asks Kani.“ If it is a question of corruption, Jayalalithaa has nowhere to stand. We are at least facing the courts. She refuses to do even that,” says Kanimozhi. Jayalalithaa has publicly suggested that a 525 acre Windsor Estate in Nilgiris district belongs to Kanimozhi. Coincidentally, the Nilgiris is a common factor between the two; Jayalalithaa regularly stays at the Kodanad estate in the hill district.
In the days ahead, as she tries to rescue a political career shadowed early by darkness, Kanimozhi faces the sort of challenge that she probably didn’t have to face in her days as a poet, cultural czarina or journalist.
It is a fact that “ munni badnaam hui ”, but it is also an undeniable truth that Kanimozhi is crucial to the survival of the DMK, both in Delhi and in Tamil Nadu. The party’s support among the urban middle classes is marginal compared to the clout it enjoys in rural areas. In the DMK, only Kanimozhi has the skills to communicate with a modern generation whose values have moved away a lot from the DMK’s pastoral Dravidian roots. To be a force in both the Centre and the state, it is critical to have a rapport with the ruling party and allies, which the well-networked, articulate Kanimozhi is immensely capable of sustaining.
Raja and Baalu failed to connect with the Blackberry generation of the Congress, while Kanimozhi had made considerable inroads. If the DMK’s first family is to retain power in Tamil Nadu, Stalin will need Kanimozhi’s clout in Delhi. Before that happens, she will have to first emerge from the eclipse of scandal.
— babujayakumar@expressbuzz.com, santwana.bhattacharya@gmail.com