Chennai: The government of Tamil Nadu was in a cleft stick after having decided to oppose the last rites and burial of five-time chief minister Muthuvel Karnunanidhi on the Marina beach. Considered a premium site of the city and reckoned to be the second longest beach in the world, the Marina has become a status symbol after the burial there of three chief ministers who died in office — CN Annadurai, MG Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa.
The matter was taken to court in a late night hearing by DMK lawyers seeking a rightful place for their leader M Karunanidhi. Opposing his burial on the prestigious sands was chief minister of Tamil Nadu Edappadi Palaniswami who may have taken such a decision on his own even without even consulting his deputy O. Panneerselvam. At the time of going to press, there were signs that the government was having second thoughts on the unpopular decision taken by the CM and could even reverse its decision in the hearing before the acting chief justice of Madras HC heading a bench with another judge in Justice Sundar.
The row over the burial did not happen only after the death of Karunaidihi early evening of Tuesday. Permission had been sought from the government and approaches made to the National Green Tribunal to allow one more burial on the sands although such an action would be in breach of coastal regulations when it comes to building memorials for leaders and against the recommendation of the NGT that Jayalalithaa's burial should be the last at the site.
The historic stretch of sands with a walking promenade dominated by the Gandhi statue at one end and the memorials to Anna, MGR and Jayalalithaa on the other, would be no less if a fourth burial and memorial were to be allowed. n P3
The point being made in defence of the government that burial could be allowed only if serving CMs were to die like the first three did in office does not hold water as Karunanidhi could be considered as great a Tamil Nadu leader and a charismatic national figure as his predecessors.
The DMK was not making a political point of the burial as much as a sentimental one. Great Tamil leaders had been afforded a burial on the sands as much as historical figures in great Tamil poets and even the tragedienne Kannagi of Silapathigaram fame have been honoured with statues on the famous Kamaraj Salai along the Marina drive. It would have been magnanimous on the part of the government to have accepted the genuine claim and allowed the burial instead of making an issue of it and allotting two acres of land at Gandhi Mandapam in the Gunidy national park area next to the virtually forgotten memorials to the likes of Rajaji and Kamaraj.
This is not a question of allowing one more burial even if the NGT and such other bodies were against more memorials on the beach close to the Bay of Bengal waters on the Marina. Karunanidhi has a right to claim a place there by virtue of having been a tall leader of the Tamils as well as a regional satrap who had determined who would rule in New Delhi by virtue of his DMK party's support. He was a nationalist as much as any of the others, including his mentor Annadurai and his party colleague who was later to become his rival in MGR and his protégé Jayalalithaa.
If common sense were to prevail, Edapaddi Palaniswami would have reversed his decision to oppose the Marina interment of Karunanidhi's remains as much as he did the honouring of the celebrated life of Jayalalithaa on the same promenade less than two years ago when she died in December 2016.
