Lessons The BJP Needs To Internalise From Karunanidhi’s Political Life

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is still viewed as a north Indian party in the south despite making deep inroads in Karnataka, should use the demise of M Karunanidhi to seriously rejig its basic political instincts.

Among other things, Karunanidhi’s political life as head of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) brought four issues to the fore: greater state autonomy, pride in regional languages, awareness of caste configurations, and equal partnerships at the Centre.

Apart from Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu has been the one state that came closest to calling for secession. The lesson the BJP needs to draw from the DMK’s abandonment of secessionism is that you can keep states in line only by giving them greater autonomy. India cannot be ruled from the Centre. While this has been true for the last two decades, with the Centre being unable to impose President’s rule in any major state at its own whims and fancies, the logical next step forward is to formally devolve more powers to the states. This is the only way to keep the growth impulses of the Indian economy strong, since states have to be the driving force of reforms and change in future. Narendra Modi will earn brownie points by making the formal devolution of power his next political goal.

The second lesson to learn is to give primacy to regional languages without de-emphasising English as the path to advancement. Hindi may be spoken by the greatest number of Indians, but it is still a regional language. A simple move would be to give all regional languages national language status, and offering large grants to states to focus on English-to-regional and regional-to-regional translations of important technical and literary works so that the slow diminution of proficiency in regional languages is arrested. It will also help the BJP escape from its Hindi-Hindu image trap. The message Modi needs to give is all Indian languages are equal. Hindi ought not to be more equal.

The DMK made anti-Brahminism its calling card; while this logic is past its sell-by date, it sent a powerful message of inclusion and caste empowerment that was also necessary. The BJP has already woken up to the reality of caste-based empowerment. Its leadership is now increasingly OBC (including the PM), and its Dalit outreach is improving despite widespread of reports of “growing” atrocities against Dalits. The recent moves to strengthen the SC/ST Atrocities Act to overturn a Supreme Court verdict that prevented arbitrary arrests, and the passing of the bill to give constitutional status to the National Commission on Backward Classes, are moves in this direction. While the former move is illiberal, and the latter a move away from meritocracy, the BJP is clearly falling in line with the broad imperatives of keeping its caste equations on even keel.

The last message the BJP needs to internalise is that it must build a multi-party partnership at the Centre even if it has a majority of its own. Since 2014, Modi has run his government as though it is comprised of only one party, with allies getting only minor ministries and being sidelined in key decisions. This is one reason why relationships with the Shiv Sena, Telugu Desam Party and even the Akalis have gone downhill, with one of them actually leaving the government. When Karunanidhi was a partner with the BJP under Vajpayee, and with the United Progressive Alliance between 2004-14, his party played a key role at the Centre. In fact, the BJP lost 2004 in part because the regional parties it allied with (TDP in Andhra) and Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, failed to deliver. It dumped Karunanidhi, and paid the price.

Karunanidhi and the BJP are not natural partners, but the national party has to learn the right lessons from the rise of the DMK in national politics. It has to stoop to carry the regional powers with it.

Last November, the Prime Minister visited the ailing nonagenarian leader in Chennai, and the speculation was that he was keeping his options open for a deal with the DMK in case the 2019 elections throw up a hung verdict.