Politics in the State touched a new low this week. A new high, rather, if you look at things upside down, and come to think of it, that’s the way you have to look at it, because the subject is liquor. TN’s political theatre has witnessed much melodrama, glamour and violence in the past few weeks, but a bit of vice was certainly overdue. Now we have it in barrels.
It all started it with Jayalalithaa demoting the Captain to some kind of a ‘vice’ captain, suggesting that he was a drunkard.
The undiluted on-the-rocks criticism quickly elicited a stiff one from the Captain, who wanted to know if she was the one who poured out the stuff. He went on to add that he was not a person who curls up in an A/C room after getting sozzled unlike …well, the insinuation is obvious. The party faithful and the second rung leaders have since taken over, having got the cue from the spirited leaders. While V’Kanth’s followers are busy burning J’s effigies, the latter’s partymen are feverishly filling out and delivering brandy bottles to the former’s offices. Statement wars are also on in full swing. And the script-writer CM, for a change, is now a sober spectator, gleefully watching his political enemies, potential allies against him, engaged in a brawl.
But isn’t all this muckraking over vices in general and drink in particular, a bit too superfluous? When did TN turn into a land of virtues, particularly, w.r.t to its political class? Indeed, values have never been the highpoint of dravidian politics which has dominated the State’s life since Independence. Not just the raging debate over drink, but the frequent invocation of Tamil culture itself by dravidian politicos of all hues belies their true proclivities. Their literature, if you can call it that, is littered with such explicit material that would make even porn authors develop an inferiority complex. And to enlighten oneself of the private behaviour and conduct of some of the stalwarts, one has to only read Kannadasan, a self-confessed alcoholic, no doubt.
Indeed, the moral deterioration of the State has been in direct relation to the tendencies of its ruling class. But this does not exonerate the voting class, who have scrupulously adhered to the cardinal principle: ‘Yatha raja, thatha prajah’. True citizens, which translated in chaste Tamil, reads, Kudimagans, coincidentally. After all, if even the possession of virtually every vice, quoted in the scriptures as well as statutes, has not kept away these worldly-’vice’ leaders from power, are not the Kudimagans responsible? On the contrary, it looks as if it is exactly those vices that seem to endear the people to those leaders. Strange, for a rational state.
Even in the West that is notorious for its permissiveness, while personal promiscuity is commonplace, higher moral standards are expected of public leaders. Reason why sexcapades of and alcoholism amidst politicians make not just sensational headlines, but make the people too indignant, to the point of prudishness. But in TN, where moral police abound, it is just the opposite. From corruption to having concubines, and bigamy to having a drink one too many, all are deemed sterling ‘leadership qualities’. And public knowledge of these vices is actually rewarded with victory. Given such a trend, the chances are that, whether her allegations are true or not, J might have inadvertently boosted the prospects of V’kanth!
But let’s get back to the subject on hand, namely, liquor. And let’s leave out the leaders, be they drunk in public, in the Assembly, in AC rooms or just drunk in their own glory. The larger picture too overflows with alcohol. TN’s tryst with the intoxicating stuff is heady history. The year 1971 was a watershed, (or liquor-shed?), when a steady kalaingar relaxed prohibition that was in force for over three decades, and thus ended a generation of abstinence. And addiction was ‘kick’ started straight away, with liquor not just filling the guts of its thirsty citizens, but also the state coffers. Since then, water might have been scarce but ‘Thanni’, never!
Rajaji, who introduced prohibition in TN in 1937, writes in the Swarajya after K lifted prohibition: ‘When I see the bazars in Madras City, studded with blazoned sign-boards of licensed wine shops and young men in small groups encouraging one another visiting these shops, my eyes are filled with tears for what I have brought about without intending it, for I imagine I am not a little responsible for the DMK being in office. Our young men, hitherto totally innocent and ignorant of the allurements of brandy, whisky or wine, are being permanently sold to the Devil for the sake of a trifling addition to the Government Revenue’.
The revenue to the government remains a strong alibi for the perpetuation of a wet State; a grand toast to the fiscal health of TN, shall we say? While many bootleggers became barons overnight with the patronage of the ‘welfare’ State, politicos soon found licking the liquor off the back of their hands also a lucrative exercise.The ‘vice’-grip of the liquor lobby over TN’s ruling elite has always been an open secret, a quid pro quo that has enriched both no end. With booze thus reigning supreme, at the personal, political and policy levels, there is little surprise that even avowed champions of abstinence invariably bowed before the bottle. Indeed, having thus inundated the State with rivers of that pernicious liquid, for the dravidian leaders to be pontificating and moralising over it looks a bit, er, tipsy!
So beer readers, I mean, dear readers, kindly bar, sorry, bear with me if these columns reek of alcohol. A whisky, sorry again, risky venture, no doubt. But how can one resist the lure of liquor and keep it off pint, pardon, print, particularly when CMs, past, present and prospective, are all so exercised over it? The hangover was inevitable. Joining the party, therefore, looked to be the best course.
So, how do I sign off for the weekend? How else …Cheers!
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