Champion of federalism

The death of Jayaram Jayalalithaa, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the supremo of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), calls for an assessment of her role and party’s political role in her times. AIADMK has always been considered to be “softer” on federalism compared to its parent party, the DMK. For starters, the words “All India” as part of the party’s name marks it out to be a party that, while claiming the legacy of DK and DMK, situates itself somewhat apart from that strain of Tamil politics that until the early 1960s had an independent Tamil Nadu (Dravida Nadu in its maximalist form) as part of its political programme. CN Annadurai and his DMK gave up this demand, on Nehru’s request as well as the rising Indian nationalist jingoism in the wake of the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Jayalalithaa led the AIADMK for a period longer than the party founder M.G.Ramachandran did. Thus, the political programme of the AIADMK has a huge imprint of Jayalalithaa herself. AIADMK has always been considered the party that grew out of Dravidian politics but went on to become a party of technocratic and welfarist governance where the Tamil nationalism plank was much subdued in iconography and rhetoric, compared to the DMK. However, such is the hold of Tamil nationalism - for which Indian analysts use the sanitised term “Dravidian politics” - in deciding the relationship of Tamil Nadu with the Indian Union, that Jayalalithaa’s political life and times bear testimony to a commitment to federalism that may fall short by certain Tamil standards but more than surpasses much of what goes under the name of ‘federalism’ in the rest of the Indian Union - in its conviction, consistency and steadfastness. An assessment of the role of Jayalalithaa in the Indian Union’s political space has to have federalism as the central axis, by which light we will realise how important AIADMK has been to the rest of us: non-Tamils in non-Tamil lands. Very often, in the face of the Union government’s steamrolling of state rights and grave assaults on the federal structure from New Delhi, the DMK or AIADMK government of Tamil Nadu has protested and stopped New Delhi’s anti-federal designs in its tracks when our own state governments have been muted at best and in a mode of groveling surrender at worst. For any non-Hindi state in the Indian Union, the stance on the question of federalism is an important indicator about how much the politics and resources of a state are safeguarding the interests of the constituent ethno-linguistic nationalities of the Indian Union, and how much they are simply on offer on a plate, in the service of the New Delhi establishment. Were they a voice of Delhi in their state or were they the voice of the state when speaking to New Delhi? As stated in the basic structure of the Indian Union, just like democracy and secularism, federalism is a fundamental feature.

Ever since the transfer of power on the 15th of August 1947, the rights of the states have been continuously eroded. This has been done by continuous encroachment of the Union in state affairs, through legal and illegal methods. The favourite legal method has included constitutional amendments that have converted state list subjects into concurrent list subjects (thus giving the Union an upper hand in conflict situations), most infamously during the Emergency, when things as vital and grassroots-based as education were snatched away from the state list through governments pliant and subservient to Indira Gandhi.  Those changes have not been reversed. On the other side, there is not a single instance where something has been moved from the Union or concurrent list to the state list. In this extremely adverse atmosphere for federalism, against a unitary New Delhi that wants to amass power and reduce state governments to local implementation agencies for Union government policies, federalist parties (disparagingly called “regional” parties in certain media parlance, never mind that most of these “regional” parties have bigger support bases than most ruling parties of most independent countries worldwide) have always faced an uphill task. The difficulty of this task has been compounded by the fact that many “national” parties have state branches that are run by diktat from New Delhi and not by the opinion of the people of the state.  New Delhi also plays a divide-and-rule game by giving preferential economic treatment to some federalist forces, so that a united front for federalism never emerges. This also reduces the engagement with the federalist temperament and ideology in these parties – jockeying for closeness to a “national” party that can disburse goodies becomes the principal aim. The sad situation of the Akali Dal (now the Shiromani Akali Dal), one of the original torchbearers of federalism being reduced to a BJP appendage that rarely barks and never bites, is a case in point. It is in this context that Jayalalithaa’s contribution to federalism has to be evaluated, because it is not easy to do federalist politics in the Indian Union. All undemocratic lobbies like the big media and big corporate money are stacked against it.

Tamil Nadu is probably the worst sufferer from the centralised powers of the Union government in economic matters

When the UPA 2 government at the centre tried to erode state rights for law and order maintenance by its infamous National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) plan, Jayalalithaa, along with Mamata Banerjee, was at the forefront in the defence of federalism, calling out the violation of state rights that NCTC entailed. She put it succinctly, “There can be no uniform pattern in policing in the country as each State has its own distinct cultural, communal, social and economic aspects. Trying to intimidate and browbeat the States through top down structures particularly when ‘Police’ is a State subject is not acceptable. In other words, there are continuous veiled attempts by the Centre to weaken the States with too much interference which is detrimental to the national interest. Endeavoring to encroach on State powers either by creating parallel authorities monitored from the Centre or vicarious operations of State police powers through creation of Centre monitored caucuses within the States, as was envisaged in the Railway Protection Force, National Counter Terrorism Centre etc., to say the least, are contraventions of the constitutional provisions which accord the ‘Police’ priority status in the State list. The way things are evolving with the creation of the NIA and NCTC and the proposed amendments to the RPF Act and the BSF Act, we seem to be headed towards an autocracy consisting of a government of the Centre, by the Centre, for the Centre”.

She showed that in a multi-national federal union, specific state realities have to be considered when framing foreign policy

Raised by Jayalithaa, this is an alarm that is still relevant and we can chose to ignore it at our own peril.

Tamil Nadu is probably the worst sufferer from the centralised powers of the Union government when it comes to economic matters. This industrial powerhouse produces massive revenue, much of which is grabbed by New Delhi, which then uses it to subsidise Hindi states as well as AFSPA states. Almost three decades ago, Jayalalithaa pointed out this undue suffering of Tamil Nadu and other Dravidian states which all suffer similarly at the hands of New Delhi as a Rajya Sabha MP, in the following words: “Where the northern States of India are concerned, whichever political party has been the ruling party in power at the Centre has also been the ruling party in those States all along. If no industries have been started in those northern States all these years, certainly Tamil Nadu or any of the other southern States cannot be blamed for this deplorable state of affairs. If no industries have been developed in so many districts of the northern States, that is entirely due to the gross inefficiency and glaring acts of omission of the governments of those States. Why should Tamil Nadu have to pay the penalty for this gross negligence and maladministration on the part of those north Indian State Governments? Indeed, why should all the four southern States be penalised for no fault of theirs?”

In 2014, just one day after taking power in New Delhi, the BJP went overdrive with its ideological Hindi imposition game-plan. The Union Home Ministry passed a directive that said that officials of all ministries, departments, corporations or banks “should use Hindi” in all social media platforms. The directive said that Hindi and English can both be used but Hindi has to be “written above or first”. This slyly makes Hindi compulsory and English optional and is a naked case of Hindi imposition on non Hindi people. Jayalalithaa, as premier of Tamil Nadu, wrote to Narendra Modi, protesting this.  M Karunanidhi also lodged a strong protest. Faced with leaders who would call a spade a spade on issues of Hindi imposition, the Union Home Ministry hurriedly issued a clarification that the order only applied to Hindi states. Time and again, Union ministries, especially those associated with education like the MHRD and their agencies like the UGC, pass directives that seek to impose Hindi on non-Hindi people. In these dark moments of assault on non-Hindi people’s culture, language and identity, Jayalalithaa has stood as a watchdog, often lodging the first protest and making sure that these Hindi imposition schemes are thwarted in her own Tamil homeland. These powers of the MHRD stem from the fact that Education was moved to the concurrent list from the state list during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. In the 2016 Inter State Council meeting, Jayalalithaa sent a note that demanded the return of Education to the state list. The dangers of Hindi-isation and the CBSEisation of education in the Indian Union is a danger that was highlighted by the recent debate around NEET where Jayalalithaa batted for linguistic equality, Tamil rights and for state boards.

Jayalalithaa has off-and-on voiced support for a sovereign Tamil Eelam, though there has been good amount of inconsistency on this issue. One must not forget that the draconian Article 356 was imposed on the DMK government of Tamil Nadu in the wake of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and the AIADMK did not really protest the imposition of Delhi rule on Tamil Nadu. If at all, it supported it. Nonetheless, Jayalalithaa has made important signals for the greater Tamil nationalist cause – signifying that the Tamil national identity is something that is not limited by the confines of the Indian Union. For example, she famously declared that all seven convicts serving life sentences for their role in the conspiracy leading to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination would be eventually released. It is probably true that these stances came from the urge to cash in on the huge surge in anger against the DMK for their inaction during the India-assisted decimation of the Tamil national resistance in Sri Lanka by the predominantly Sinhalese Sri Lankan Army. Still, these were important steps that made pan-Tamil solidarity politics mainstream again. Till her death, she disallowed any sports event in Tamil Nadu that had the Sri Lankan team as participant.  She showed time and again that in a multi-national federal union, specific state realities have to be taken into account in terms of foreign policy. This is an important lesson for the future.

During the present administration in New Delhi, she opposed the coercive federalism being practiced by the Union government when it came to implementing the National Food Security Act (NFSA) or joining UDAY (Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna). During her long illness this year, with O. Panneerselvam and bureaucrats in charge, the Tamil Nadu government chose to bend on both NFSA and UDAY. These are ominous signs of days to come and might explain the chemistry that a Jayalalithaa-less AIADMK leadership seems to be developing with the BJP.

As her final stamp on the question of federalism and state rights, she dictated Tamil Nadu’s position on GST. Tamil Nadu not only stood to lose revenue, it was also a matter of principle since after GST is implemented, a state cannot raise its own tax rates according to its own fiscal and economic realities. Jayalalithaa rightly saw this right to change tax rates - and hence change revenue generation - as part of the basic structure of the constitution, insofar as federal structure is a basic structure of the constitution, unchangeable by the Union parliament. It is for this reason that in the Rajya Sabha, the AIADMK did not vote for or against the GST bill. They walked out. Before they did, the AIADMK member of Parliament A. Navaneethakrishnan said, “I would like to humbly submit that this Constitution (Amendment) Bill is not valid. It is not Constitutional because it violates the States’ fiscal autonomy....Sir, my humble submission is that democracy and federalism are the basic features of the Indian Constitution. Now, this Bill violates the basic structure of the Constitution; particularly, it encroaches upon the right of Tamil Nadu Assembly to pass laws with regard to levy of taxes. So, it is unconstitutional...My humble submission to this august House is that the Constitutional Bill is not a validly enacted law because I am of the view that this Parliament, this Council of States, has no jurisdiction or the legislative competence to enact this Constitutional Bill as it violates the federal structure of our Constitution...So, now, the proposal by the Central Government is unfair, arbitrary, unconstitutional and illegal”.

That was Jayalalithaa’s will and opinion voiced through her party’s MP. With the demise of Jayalalithaa, we have lost a voice that posited a fundamental critique of the state of affairs and the state of association called the Indian Union.

Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is a member of faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com