J Jayalalithaa: The Worshipful Leader

Mass adulation is universal. But the hero worship that’s deeply ingrained in Tamil public life is akin to a relationship with divinity.

- Ajay Sukumaran

On a sultry summer evening in April this year, the road leading to Chennai’s Island Grounds was lined with party flags—and fleets of speeding mini buses were ferry­ing in supporters for what was J Jayala­litha’s opening election rally. Outside the gates, many munched on sundal as they browsed through the merchandise on sale. The paper­wrapped chickpea snack was a good cure for the bored and the peckish browsing by items like key chains, posters and purses. Plus, there were pocket­sized photos of the party supremo, the ones that grace the breast­pocket of every white­-shirted AIADMK member. Then, you got swept in, past the towering cutouts of Amma, into the crowds all pumped up by one rousing number after another until with a dramatic drum­roll the leader appeared. The atmosphere was electric.

It was pretty much the same drill in Chennai or in the state’s second-most populous city of Coimbatore. The urban poor or the rural labourer reacted in the same way, nursing the same hope: ‘Amma would take care of us’. Now, it was despair that welled up for thousands as they grieved for her, some inconsolably.

In Tamil Nadu’s pantheon of larger-than-life charismatic leaders who have ruled the state for the last half a century, all of them first wove their magic through films. But does that celluloid bond explain it all—the connect, the adulation that at times spilled over into the absurd? Like, for instance, why couldn’t someone like Sivaji Ganesan, a thespian par excellence, crack the political code. Or, perhaps, how the spectacle of political hero-worship in a state that wears its progressive credentials with such pride, and deservedly so, never fails to amaze everyone else. Or was there a deeper element at work, a Tamil persona that lent itself to building up the images, of M.G. Ramachandran’s unshakeable aura as the