On the evening of May 8, I stood in the offering hall of a Hindu temple in Chennai, the capital of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, amid a phalanx of anxious politicians dressed in their customary white shirts and dhotis. ‘‘Lord Perumal, we pray that justice will prevail,’’ a priest intoned. ‘‘Tamil Nadu was on the verge of prosperity, but evil powers have left it stagnant. Let Amma resume her work. Let her opponents be punished. Let the evil that has imprisoned her be banished into hell.’’ While we waited for the ceremony to begin, the politicians showed me their tattoos. The minister of higher education had a woman’s plump face inscribed on his forearm. A district secretary had the words ‘‘Long Live Amma.’’
Amma means ‘‘mother,’’ and in Tamil Nadu, it’s the nickname for an indestructible politician named Jayalalithaa Jayaram, a former actress who is now the general secretary of the state’s ruling party, the A.I.A.D.M.K. Until Sept. 27, when she was sentenced to four years in prison, she was also the state’s chief minister. The charge was ‘‘disproportionate assets’’: the court found that her wealth exceeded her known sources of income by 660 million rupees, or around $10 million. A raid on her house found 10,500 saris, 750 pairs of shoes and 66 pounds of gold. It is a pittance compared with the 10-billion-rupee hauls some North Indian public servants are said to have amassed. Nevertheless, she was the first chief minister in India to be ejected from office for corruption.
Across the state, her followers pelted buses with stones and set them on fire. At Perungalathur junction, on the highway to Chennai, people lay down in the road and tried to persuade bus drivers to turn the buses on them. ‘‘Run us over, run us over!’’ they yelled. ‘‘Why should we live when our Amma is in jail?’’ According to the A.I.A.D.M.K., hundreds of people committed suicide in response to her conviction, dozens by self-immolation.
How to account for this histrionic devotion? You don’t find people begging bus drivers to kill them in Kerala, the state just next door. One explanation is movie mania. Before she went into politics, Jayalalithaa was the most popular Tamil movie actress of her time, the heroine in more than 100 films. She followed the model of her mentor and co-star, an actor-politician named Marudhur Gopalan Ramachandran but more commonly known by his initials M.G.R. He ruled Tamil Nadu for 11 years, and since his death in 1987, Jayalalithaa and her archenemy, a wily 92-year-old screenwriter named Muthuvel Karunanidhi, have taken turns running the state. As the head of the D.M.K. — the party to which M.G.R. belonged until their rivalry forced a split — Karunanidhi has built a cult following on par with Jayalalithaa’s. The two of them rule as if in a melodrama, having each other arrested, dropping snide insults and wild accusations, destroying each other’s pet projects. The D.M.K. and the A.I.A.D.M.K. have almost no policy differences, but no other party can gain a foothold. Full story...
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Amma means ‘‘mother,’’ and in Tamil Nadu, it’s the nickname for an indestructible politician named Jayalalithaa Jayaram, a former actress who is now the general secretary of the state’s ruling party, the A.I.A.D.M.K. Until Sept. 27, when she was sentenced to four years in prison, she was also the state’s chief minister. The charge was ‘‘disproportionate assets’’: the court found that her wealth exceeded her known sources of income by 660 million rupees, or around $10 million. A raid on her house found 10,500 saris, 750 pairs of shoes and 66 pounds of gold. It is a pittance compared with the 10-billion-rupee hauls some North Indian public servants are said to have amassed. Nevertheless, she was the first chief minister in India to be ejected from office for corruption.
Across the state, her followers pelted buses with stones and set them on fire. At Perungalathur junction, on the highway to Chennai, people lay down in the road and tried to persuade bus drivers to turn the buses on them. ‘‘Run us over, run us over!’’ they yelled. ‘‘Why should we live when our Amma is in jail?’’ According to the A.I.A.D.M.K., hundreds of people committed suicide in response to her conviction, dozens by self-immolation.
How to account for this histrionic devotion? You don’t find people begging bus drivers to kill them in Kerala, the state just next door. One explanation is movie mania. Before she went into politics, Jayalalithaa was the most popular Tamil movie actress of her time, the heroine in more than 100 films. She followed the model of her mentor and co-star, an actor-politician named Marudhur Gopalan Ramachandran but more commonly known by his initials M.G.R. He ruled Tamil Nadu for 11 years, and since his death in 1987, Jayalalithaa and her archenemy, a wily 92-year-old screenwriter named Muthuvel Karunanidhi, have taken turns running the state. As the head of the D.M.K. — the party to which M.G.R. belonged until their rivalry forced a split — Karunanidhi has built a cult following on par with Jayalalithaa’s. The two of them rule as if in a melodrama, having each other arrested, dropping snide insults and wild accusations, destroying each other’s pet projects. The D.M.K. and the A.I.A.D.M.K. have almost no policy differences, but no other party can gain a foothold. Full story...
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