Jayalalithaa: Courage sermon

Chennai, May 19: S. Subban held no party post and owed no responsibility for the ADMK defeat. Yet when the election results came in, the tireless grassroots worker from the poultry belt of Namakkal jumped into a well.

Pannerselvam of Pudukottai drank poison, K. Manimaran of Tiruchirappalli hanged himself, and Dalit woman Mayili had a cardiac arrest.

The death of 42 ADMK workers ? by their own hands or in heart attacks ? within a week has left even a state used to self-immolation by political protesters groping for answers. Ten of them died today.

A concerned Jayalalithaa has appealed for resilience, saying: “Suicide is no medicine for defeat, courage is the way to overcome it.”

Party sources said the answer lies in the combination of cadre-based, emotive politics practised by the state’s two major Dravidian parties and the personality cult they encourage.

Both the DMK and ADMK have an army of committed workers who toil for their party “without expectation of any kind of reward or office”. These emotionally-charged village men and women just can’t cope when their party ? and leader ? is defeated.

In that disconsolate state of mind, even the jeers from fellow villagers and political opponents can become the trigger for a suicide attempt.

“It’s an instinctive reaction ? the suicides happen mainly at the grassroots level and not among those who hold party posts of some note,” a source said.

“The cadre’s mental state is no different from that of a high school student who fails the Class X or XII exam and is terrified of facing his peers or parents.”

Another reason is the party workers’ “complete identification with the leader, who is for them indistinguishable from the party machinery”, an analyst said.

“Amma, you are everything for us,” a woman had cried out even on Wednesday at the secretariat when Jayalalithaa came to take oath as MLA.

To the cadre, therefore, suicide may seem a sort of martyrdom, perhaps fulfilling a subconscious wish of “dying for my leader”.

The sentiment was first witnessed when Dravidian stalwart C.N. Annadurai suddenly died of cancer in 1969, and festered again three years later when dozens of M.G. Ramachandran fans ended their lives after the DMK expelled the actor-politician.

Some ADMK supporters did it when MGR fell seriously ill in 1985; DMK workers followed suit when M. Karunanidhi was arrested by Jayalalithaa five years ago.

The leaders are quick to defend the personality cult.

“Can you think of politics without personalities?” Jayalalithaa had shot back when asked why her party cadre and leaders had a habit of prostrating themselves at her feet. Nevertheless, she has announced Rs 1 lakh for the family of each of the 32 dead.

Party sources said a small number of the suicides, by “wayward elements” among the workers, had a different reason.

These people often bet on the outcome of elections. When they lose heavily, they tend to launch themselves into a heavy bout of drinking. Then, in a moment of acute depression, the drunken cadre finds the temptation to mix pesticide in the drink too strong to resist.