Chennai: The coronation of M.K. Stalin on Tuesday, though long-expected, had all the ingredients of a poignant political drama. The grand event at the packed session of the DMK general council at Anna Arivalayam was a unique demonstration of a devoted son's passing-out parade at the end of a gruelling training period stretching over five decades under a demanding general, who also happened to be his father. He is now only the third leader of the DMK after party founder C.N. Annadurai and father M. Karunanidhi.
Kalaignar Karunanidhi, who passed away on August 7 at the age of 94, had been liberal in his public display of fatherly love as well as a political guru's trust in a competent pupil when he declared Stalin as his heir to DMK leadership (January 2013) and made him the party’s working president (January 2017). But the old man would not vacate the president's chair for his devoted son, even if his own health was failing fast and he could not do most of the things he used to even a couple of years ago.
Yet, Stalin showed no visible signs of frustration and anger at playing Thalapathi (commander) for such a long period and be denied the position of Thalaivar (leader); in fact, he often demonstrated to the cadres and the public how he held Karunanidhi, more as a thalaivar than as a father a fact that he reminded himself while breaking down after getting the sad news from the hospital ICU.
Stalin had joined the DMK when he was a student barely 14 and campaigned first for the DMK in 1967 when the party trounced the Congress and wrested power from the national party. In fact, Stalin should be given credit as one of the able lieutenants of Karunanidhi in ensuring that the Congress never raised its head again in the Dravidian land a sweet revenge for his harsh incarceration under the dreadful MISA during Indira Gandhi's Emergency, which incidentally multiplied his political stock in the DMK.
The son became Chennai's Mayor in 1996, a minister in the Karunanidhi government in 2006 and his Deputy CM in 2009.
And now that he has finally donned the mantle of leadership of this huge cadre-based party, it remains to be seen whether Stalin, now 65, will be able to live up to his father's stature as a man who could hold the party together even in the trying times of political wilderness through electoral debacles, and lead the battle into the Fort St.George.
