Bungling Birthday Script!

On
April 14 2008, the entire state was celebrating Tamil New Year Day
despite the government’s ‘(ir)rational dictum that Tamil New Year must
be celebrated only on 14 January (Thai Pongal day). On that auspicious
day, the state’s Electricity Minister Arcot Veerasamy made a thundering
declaration that, the party would ensure the movement of the first ship
through the Sethu canal on Kalaignar’s birthday, that is, the 3^rd of June.

 

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK Patriarch, Kalaignar Karunanidhi
has celebrated his eighty fifth birthday in a grand manner. In the
aftermath of the Supreme Court’s direction to the GOI on the Rama Sethu
case, he decided not to celebrate his birthday, especially after his
brief hospitalization due to neck and back pain. Political observers
felt that, the covert feud between the three power centres within the
family circles have induced him to take that decision. But,
Karunanidhi’s longtime colleague and the state’s Finance Minister
Anbazhagan prevailed upon him and convinced him to give his assent for
a big birthday bash on the grounds that the cadres would get
de-motivated and demoralized and that the DMK adversaries would have a
whale of a time in concocting stories maligning the party and the CM’s
family if the b-day is not celebrated. So, the birthday boy (!!!)
made himself ready for the big bash with well-scripted dialogues, after
all he has been a script writer and a dramatist through out his life.

 

On
the eve of his birthday, Karunanidhi has written a poem in the party
organ ‘Murasoli’ appealing to the opponents of SSCP not to oppose the
project in the name of Bhagwan Rama and sought to placate them by
saying that he was even prepared to name the project as ‘Sethu Ram Ship
Canal Project’. Also in the General Council meeting and later in the
evening in the cassette release function of the film ‘Uliyin Osai’
(Chisel’s sound), he claimed that the opposition to SSCP has been only
to thwart the good name and credibility likely to be earned by him and
Congress President Sonia. He felt that the opposition was not religion,
but pure politics in the guise of religion. He asked the politicians
(BJP/RSS/VHP) to come out of their religious guise and face the issue
politically. It is an irony that Kalaignar, who has used ‘religion’
to the hilt in the name of secularism and social justice in his
political career, is blaming the rightwing politicians as abusers of
religion. .

 

 In
his speech at the general council meeting, he had stated that he was
never an adversary of Bhagwan Rama. It can be recalled that only in
September 2007, he insulted this nation by asking, ‘was the Adams
Bridge built by Rama? Is Rama an engineer? If so in which engineering
college did he study? Not satisfied with this, he hurt the religious
sentiments of Hindu majority by saying that Rama was a drunkard. He
also ridiculed the epic and insulted Sage Tulsi Das by saying that
Tulsi Das has projected Rama and Seetha as brother and sister in his
Ramayana Kaavya. After ridiculing Ramayana and Rama Sethu,
insulting Rama and Tulasidas and questioning the faith of the Hindu
majority, he now has the audacity to say that he is not an enemy of
Rama. This is what is called as the ‘Double standards of the Dravidian
order!

 

He
went on to say that the Sethupathis (Kings of Ramnad) have protected
the Sethu waters for ages and hence the name ‘Sethu’ could be connected
with the name of Bhagwan Rama, so as to name the project as ‘Sethu
Ram’, which would satisfy both the government and the Hindu
Religionists. He reiterated that the SSCP has been a 150 year old dream
of the Tamil people and that it is the only project, which could pave
the way for the over all development of the state, as the three
neighbours Karnataka, Andhra and Kerala are not willing to help it by
giving its legitimate share of Cauvery, Krishna and Periyar waters
respectively. The state’s political history shows that he has
played a vital role in bringing the Cauvery, Krishna and Periyar River
issues to this sordid state of affairs.  After writing the prologue in
the early seventies for the Ramnad District Gazetteer, which glorifies
Rama Sethu and the Sethupathis of Ramnad, he now tries to give a
picture as though he is doing a favour for Bhagwan Ram and the
Sethupathis by suggesting the renaming of the project as ‘Sethu Ram’!
In other words, he is trying to show that he gives credence to the
faith of millions of Hindus worldwide and it is also an attempt to
equate Bhagwan Rama with the likes of Anna and Periyar, which would
give him immense ‘sadistic’ pleasure.

 

 

 He
demanded that the project, which was dreamt by stalwarts like Kamaraj
and Ramasamy Mudaliyar and okayed by engineers and scientists must be
implemented at any cost. Ramasamy Mudaliyar had never supported a ‘sea
based’ channel, but only a land based channel and he was also emphatic
in his opposition to break Rama Sethu. So far, Karunanidhi has never
talked about Kamaraj in connection with this issue, but now he is
raking up his name with an intention of putting pressure on Congress
party. One also wonders which engineers he was talking about, when the
experts from various fields have clearly established that the SSCP is a
good for nothing project and a disastrous one too!

 

In
a veiled threat, he has said that he was even prepared to lose his
Chiefministership and the government, for the sake of the project. In a
more threatening tone, he had called upon his party cadres to be ready
for a ‘massive battle’ for the implementation of the project. This is
just to indicate that, his party would go to any extent to achieve its
goal.

 

Finally,
sounding apologetic and in a tone of begging, he pleaded to the
opponents of the project to sanction his birthday wish by clearing the
project for implementation. He begged his opponents to award the
project as a birthday gift, not for him or his family or his
grandchildren or his party, but for the poor people of the state and
for the future generation. As a last attempt he begged his
opponents to award this project for the so-called service he rendered
to Tamil, Tamil people and Tamil Nadu! This again shows the level to
which he is prepared to descent down to achieve his objective!

 

After
going down begging to the ‘communal’ forces on the eve of his birthday,
he climbed again on top of the tree of ‘pseudo-secularism’ on his
birthday, probably emboldened by the company of the likes of Pranab
Mukherjee, Prakash Karat, D.Raja and Raghuvansh Prasad. At the public
meeting organized by the party in the evening at the ‘island grounds’,
he declared that the ‘communal forces’ (read BJP) must not be allowed
to gain grounds, as they would spoil the secular fabric of the country.
The patriarch, who brazenly enjoyed everything under the sun during
the NDA regime sharing power with the very same ‘communal’ forces, gave
a clarion birthday call to all the so-called secular forces to come
together to fight against the ‘Sanatana Dharma’, which is a danger to
the peace and progress of the country! Probably for the first time in
his ‘Adharmic’ political career spanning more than fifty years he has
‘publicly’ espoused the cause of ‘Adharma’.

 

The
political pundits, who have been watching Karunanidhi’s politics for
the last fifty years are well aware of his antics, mannerisms and his
speeches saddled with sarcasm, avarice and audacity. The point to
note in the whole ‘birthday-script’ is that he has repeatedly harped on
the so-called ‘dream’ and ‘development’, but not a word on how the
state would develop and how employment opportunities would be created
and how thousands of fishermen and their families would be
rehabilitated and how thousands of rare species and organisms would be
protected. The script doesn’t have answers for the various opinions and
objections raised by the experts against the project and its
implementation.

 

On
the Tamil New Year Day, when Arcot Veeerasamy said that the first ship
would sail through the Sethu Canal on Karunanidhi’s birthday, one
wondered how it could be possible in such a short span of time! But, no
one would have imagined that he would have meant only a symbolic
representation. He made it a reality by erecting the stage of the
public meeting in the shape of a ‘SHIP’ and the meeting was held at
‘ISLAND’ grounds near the ‘Bay of Bengal’!

 

So,
what is the motive behind such a prepared birthday script? It might be
intended to convince his electorate in future that despite his sincere
attempts, he couldn’t attain success with regards to SSCP. Or it might
be intended to indirectly threaten the Congress, conveying a message of
quitting the alliance if it doesn’t improve its electoral fortunes in
the coming days. Or it might be intended to convey a message of
readiness to the BJP for rejoining NDA. Or it might have been prepared
with all the three motives of quitting UPA, joining NDA and convincing
the party cadres and supporters, which could be done in one stroke! Or
it might be a simple tactic of diverting the attention of people from
the ‘smoking’ family feud. What ever said and done, it is very clear
that he has taken the people for granted and that is what he has been
doing for the last fifty years!  

 

Cheers to Dravidianism! Long live Kalaignar! Doom for Tamils and Tamil Nadu!

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