Vaiko: An Anna in the making in Amma country?
If it looked a bit incongruous to some that Anna Hazare and Medha Patkar, leading the protest against the NDA’s Land Acquisition Bill, shared the protest dais in Delhi with V Gopalaswamy (alias Vaiko), it would come as no surprise to those familiar with incorrigible Vaiko's ways in his home turf, Tamil Nadu.
The man has tried all possible tricks to earn some political traction to move from fringe to a reckonable track ever since he broke away from the DMK in 1994 to launch his own Marumalarchi Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK). But most of it, including his last outing with the NDA alliance, which he exited two months back alleging it to be anti-Tamil, has not worked.
Despite his rapidly eroding political base, he has carefully nurtured his brand equity as a local crusader of sorts throughout – in issues as different as the Tamil Eelam struggle in Sri Lanka to the Mullaperiyar waters, and from leading a farmers agitation against the Methane gas project in Cauvery delta to protesting the Neutrino research coming up in Pottipuram and more.
Sharing space with Anna Hazare might be another attempt to save his MDMK from increasing political irrelevance. Despite Vaiko’s efforts to leverage all possible emotive issues, the MDMK's vote share has hovered between three and six per cent in Tamil Nadu. Even in the last Lok Sabha elections, which it had fought with the BJP and other allies, he could not muster more than 3.5 per cent of votes.
Perhaps AAP's victory in Delhi has given him some fresh hopes – he was very quick to hog TV screens asking Narendra Modi to quit, soon after the results were announced. While Tamil Nadu politicians, including Karti Chidambaram and Anbumani Ramadoss had merely kept referring to the Arvind Kejriwal win, Vaiko had seized the opportunity to be seen with Kejriwal in Delhi. Given that Kejriwal enjoys some resonance in the Tamil youth segment, Vaiko might be able to use that in his favour.
But it was not just Hazare that he had in his sights during his Delhi visit, Vaiko had called up on everyone, from Manmohan Singh to Lalu Prasad Yadav, and is also scheduled to meet Kejriwal soon again. While MDMK claims that this meeting is to seek Kejriwal's help to force the Centre to declassify documents relating to the death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, party sources say Vaiko might also invite Kejriwal to Tamil Nadu. Of course this they believe could be a win-win for both in the state, even if it might look a little too far-fetched to expect Vaiko to do a Kejriwal in Tamil Nadu’s Assembly poll coming up next year – with or without an MDMK-AAP alliance.
Officially the MDMK maintains there was nothing unnatural in Vaiko rubbing shoulders with Hazare. "It is only natural for our leader to join hands with those like Hazare who too works for the cause of lay people. The youth in Tamil Nadu see Vaiko as the Hazare of Tamil Nadu. He had hardly cared about the political mileage he would gain from taking up issues", says Minnal Mohammed Ali, the MDMK’s social media coordinator.
Vaiko, his party says, had taken part in the anti-Land Acquisition Bill protest on a personal invitation from Medha Patkar. But there is also a quid pro quo: Patkar will reciprocate by taking part in MDMK's awareness rally against the Neutrino project at Madurai on March 1. "We will soon have Hazare and Kejriwal too in our protests against anti-people projects in the state," claims Ali. He believes Vaiko convinced Hazare to invite Arvind Kejriwal onto the protest stage and made him speak.