by Harihar Swarup

From a naive girl to a kingmaker
JAYALALITHA has become an enigma in Indian politics for over a year. She had in March last year reaffirmed AIADMK’s “total and unconditional” support to the BJP-led government. Since then she had dangled the dagger like the sword of Damocles over the head of Atal Behari Vajpayee and other BJP leaders and now allowed it to fall. One wonders if there were sufficient reasons for withdrawing support to the coalition and how long will she feel comfortable in the company of her new-found friends.

Agni II: a symbol of resurgent India
By Dr Nandlal Jotwani
INDIA joined the nuclear club on a hot summer day on May 11, 1998, when Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, doyen of defence research, donned an olive green uniform with a name-tab of Maj Gen Prithviraj Chauhan, pressed the button that detonated a thermonuclear device buried deep under the Thar desert.

75 Years Ago

Election petition against Mr C.R. Das
THE election petition of Rai P.K. Das Gupta, retired Deputy Magistrate, challenging the election of Mr C.R. Das to the Bengal Legislative Council from the Midnapore non-Mohamedan Constituency, came up for hearing today before the Election Tribunal at Alipore.

by Harihar Swarup
From a naive girl to a kingmaker

JAYALALITHA has become an enigma in Indian politics for over a year. She had in March last year reaffirmed AIADMK’s “total and unconditional” support to the BJP-led government. Since then she had dangled the dagger like the sword of Damocles over the head of Atal Behari Vajpayee and other BJP leaders and now allowed it to fall. One wonders if there were sufficient reasons for withdrawing support to the coalition and how long will she feel comfortable in the company of her new-found friends.

At the moment Jayalalitha dominates national politics like a colossus; she has developed a domineering personality. She is a very complex person indeed. Many facets of her personality include firmness, intelligence, clarity of expression, a good command over English, a highly inflated ego, ruthlessness, vengefulness and unpredictability. She was also dubbed by her adversaries as the “most corrupt” Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. A senior BJP leader, obviously flabbergasted at the way she pushed the Vajpayee Government to the brink, quoted an oft-repeated Sanskrit couplet to sum up her temperament: “Triya Charitram, Purushasya Bhagyam, Devo Na Janati, Kuto Manushya” (Woman’s mind, man’s fate ... Gods do not know, what to talk of human beings).

Jayalalitha has herself summed up her own personality and how from a “native, vulnerable, gullible” girl, she became a domineering leader. There was a time when she would “cringe inwardly, keep quiet, wait to go home, shut the door and cry”. She told a TV channel: “That Jayalalitha who used to be tongue-tied, did not know how to answer back if someone insulted her, has gone now, dead for ever”.

“Nowadays most men are terrified of me. I don’t take any nonsense from anyone nowadays. I am not the one who goes looking for a fight. Generally I am reserved. But if a fight comes my way, I will not run away. If someone gives me one blow, I will give 30”. Rightly or wrongly she has picked up the cudgels against the Vajpayee Government. The hard knocks of life, frustration and suppression of her personality has made her irrepressible. Two persons — her mother, Sandhya, a noted actress, and the state’s charismatic Chief Minister, M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) — dominated her. Jayalalitha’s mother forced her to enter the film industry at the age of 15 owing to family circumstances.

In her words: “One-third of my life was dominated by my mother, the other part — a major one — was dominated by MGR. Two-third of my life is thus over. One third remains and this part of my life remains for myself but there are some responsibilities and duties to be fulfilled”. And what are these? These included bringing down of the DMK Government led by Karunanidhi; she has destabilised the Vajpayee Government.

Talking about her personal life, perhaps, for the first time she said in a TV interview: “I value my freedom and independence. I am happy I never got married; and do not have children” but the woman in her comes out. It was not that she never wanted to get married. “I would have settled down had I got married at the age of 18. Like any young girl I too, had a dream that I will meet at prince charming”.

When Jayalalitha began her career as a film actress, she never thought that she would one day stray into politics and become the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and play a king-maker’s role in national politics. She was groomed in films by her mother. It was, in fact, her meeting with MGR, known as the “Mughal” of Tamil films, which changed the course of her life. He spotted talent in her and gave her a break. The young and talented Jayalalitha became very close to MGR and acted in as many as 50 films produced by him.

Jayalalitha briefly moved away from MGR in the late seventies and lived with a Telugu actor in Hyderabad but the relationship did not last for long and she returned to Madras to be with her mentor again. MGR had by that time become Chief Minister and he had other plans for her. He became Jayalalitha’s political guru having initiated her in politics and soon elevated her to the key position of the Secretary of the AIADMK. Soon Jayalalitha was given a Rajya Sabha nomination. Though generally withdrawn, she turned out to be centre of attraction.

Jayalalitha’s enemy No 1 is Karunanidhi. She can never forget the humiliation and scorn heaped upon her by him nine years back. In a bizarre incident in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, Jayalalitha (then in opposition) was attacked, her sari torn and filthy abuses hurled at her. She then took a vow not to enter the House till she liquidated the DMK. Five months later, in June 1991, a triumphant Jayalalitha entered the assembly having routed the DMK lock, stock and barrel in elections. Karunanidhi was the sole DMK candidate to have been returned after the electoral battle. He, too, resigned in disgust.

Come the 1996 elections and it was the DMK’s turn to settle scores with her. In alliance with G.K. Moopanar, Karunanidhi wiped out the AIADMK. As many as 40 cases of corruption were slammed on her and she was even imprisoned once. Jayalalitha says while remaining in jail for one month she has “steeled” herself. “They wanted to break my spirit but did not succeed”, she remarked.

So far as corruption cases against her are concerned, she says: “I will be vindicated. The cases foisted on me are false and politically motivated and will not stand in courts”. The biggest challenge to Jayalalitha is not in the political arena but in the ongoing court cases against her.

Agni II: a symbol of resurgent India
By Dr Nandlal Jotwani

INDIA joined the nuclear club on a hot summer day on May 11, 1998, when Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, doyen of defence research, donned an olive green uniform with a name-tab of Maj Gen Prithviraj Chauhan, pressed the button that detonated a thermonuclear device buried deep under the Thar desert.

Our nuclear weaponisation programme is a tribute to the scientists and technologists led by Dr Kalam, who turned dreams into forty-kiloton explosions. This writer had then reflected the general jubilation in the country by exclaiming the great event as “India re-writes its own history and that of the world”.

Precisely 11 months after Pokhran-II, India successfully carried out its first intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) test on April 11, 1999. The Agni-II, as an essential nuclear delivery vehicle, was a logical corollary to the Shakti tests, which demonstrated India’s capability to build a range of sophisticated nuclear weapons. The grateful nation salutes our scientists, technologists and the government of the day which signalled them to take the momentous step towards building a credible minimal deterrent.

In a global scenario wherein power respects power, and the weak remain meek, the acquisition of IRBM will surely enhance India’s international stature. Our step is also vindicated by the NATO missile-strikes in the Balkans. The message is loud and clear: a country is liable to incur enormous costs unless it is equipped with credible deterrence.

The 2,000-3,000 km range Agni-II ballistic missile appears to be “operationally ready” for deployment with a nuclear warhead. India has now emerged as an independent missile power and can now deter any regional adversary. While the scientists have accomplished their given task, it was now for the government to proceed with its appropriate deployment.

Dr Kalam has indicated that there is no need to conduct more flight-tests of the extended range IRBM in the already tested configuration. The technology has progressed so rapidly that it is no longer necessary to conduct multiple tests of the same missile system before operationalising it.

The Agni-II, intended to counter the Chinese nuclear might, was tested in an operational configuration, with its payload range and mobile-launching capabilities geared towards achieving a minimal deterrence.

With the successful flight-test of Agni-II, India is launched into the exclusive club of a few geostrategic players who have such hardware, but far more importantly, on whom rests the concomitant responsibility of display of highly developed maturity, poise and wisdom to use it most judiciously for peace and stability.

Pakistan, too, test-fired its Ghauri-II, on April 14, 1999, ostensibly in response to the Indian Agni-II test. Ghauri-II has a range of 1500 km and can be tipped with any kind of warhead. The Pakistani strategic experts privately concede that Agni-II does not really have significant impact on their security scenario, because the Prithvi missile and the IAF aircraft can, as it were, target Pakistan, with its given demography and the proximity of its cities to the Indian border. But one observes streaks of obsessive compulsion, in Pakistan, to try to match India, move by move, test by test.

A similar Soviet obsession of equality and equal strategic security with the USA ended up in its own disintegration. The West, regrettably, aids and abets this equality syndrome. Washington may not be interested in real and strategic peace between Pakistan and India, for such a configuration necessarily alters the regional and transnational equilibrium, probably to the disadvantage of the US hegemony.

The Ghauri-II show-off appeared to be more a status symbol for Pakistan than its security need. One ought to appreciate the Indian need for IRBM vis-a-vis China, which can target India with its lethal missile arsenal, especially after its having concluded missile de-targeting pacts with the USA and Russia.

Beijing appears to have actively assisted Islamabad in acquiring various missiles, maybe using North Korea as a conduit for surreptitious supply of Chinese technology and components, so as to equalise Indian strategic advances, while Washington has been wilfully looking the other way.

The prospects of good relations between India and Pakistan mainly rested on their mutual recognition of the state of stable deterrence obtaining between them, thereby decreasing the chances of a direct war. The friendly ‘Lahore spirit’ generated by the Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s path-breaking visit to Lahore (Pakistan) in February, 1999, must pervade the whole gamut of relationship between the two nice neighbours.

“A stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s interest”, the Indian Prime Minister had declared at Minar-i-Pakistan. Let India and Pakistan attain a state of positive peace, as distinct from only having a no-war deal. — CNF

Wing Commander (retd) Dr Nandlal Jotwani, is the former editor of the “I.A.F. Journal”, a senior journalist and defence analyst.

75 YEARS AGO
Election petition against Mr C.R. Das

THE election petition of Rai P.K. Das Gupta, retired Deputy Magistrate, challenging the election of Mr C.R. Das to the Bengal Legislative Council from the Midnapore non-Mohamedan Constituency, came up for hearing today before the Election Tribunal at Alipore.

The petitioner’s case was that as Mr Das was either at Bombay or Coconada on January 2nd when his nomination paper was filed, it was invalid.

The counsel for Mr Das informed the court that he had not yet received a reply from the Governor to his petition for a fresh tribunal to hear this petition. He, however, argued the case and submitted that the presence of the candidate before the returning officer was not necessary under the Act or under the rules and regulations framed thereunder.

Again, after the rejection of the petitioner’s nomination paper he withdrew his deposit money which showed that he accepted the returning officer’s decision and this petition was an afterthought and not genuine on behalf of the petitioner.

The Commissioners will duly forward their report to the government.