Whatever anti-incumbency you believe the current government has accrued will be set off by that vote split, says R. Mohan Kumaramangalam, working president of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee.
With the Lok Sabha elections coming up in Tamil Nadu, political pundits have been predicting that it would be a clean sweep for the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its I.N.D.I.A partner, the Congress. In 2019, the DMK won 23 seats while the Congress won eight and this time round too, the alliance is confident about their victory. However, the DMK government has been plagued with issues including that of corruption and adverse remarks on Sanatan Dharma, and BJP state president K. Annamalai has been attacking them every day on key aspects. The morale-boosting win of the Congress in Telangana seems to have given a fresh impetus to the party in the run-up to the 2024 elections.
In this exclusive chat with The Sunday Guardian, working president of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC), R. Mohan Kumaramangalam, opens up about the upcoming elections, the DMK, the BJP, the Sanatan Dharma controversy and whether the Congress was still relevant to Tamil Nadu politics today.
Q: Congress has a pre-poll alliance with the DMK. How many seats are you confident of winning in the Lok Sabha elections?
A: I think like the last elections (2019) this time also will be a sweep for the DMK-Congress alliance. It obviously helps that the AIADMK and the BJP have separated ways so the votes will be split in different directions. Whatever anti-incumbency you believe the current government has accrued will be set off by that vote split. Most of the opinion polls too are predicting the same result in the state. Whatever perceived gains the BJP might have made with all the noise they have been making the last couple of years is mostly around their leader K. Annamalai and not gains for the party overall. I don’t think Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image has improved dramatically in Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu and Kerala are probably the two states where the lead that Mr Rahul Gandhi has over Mr Modi is three or four times in terms of popularity. Given our history with elections being completely presidential in Tamil Nadu, that also will favour us to a large extent. Tamil people are very clear that they pick the Chief Minister they want in the Assembly and the PM candidate is separate.
Q: There’s not been much noise on ground from the Congress with regard to the elections but Annamalai’s En Mann En Makkal padayatra is making headlines every day.
A: Annamalai is working hard to get mindshare but he’s fighting a very uphill battle. On January 9, against the wishes of the people in Dharmapuri he went and garlanded a statue of Mother Mary which turned into a controversy. There will be highs and lows for his yatra, I’m sure. Unless yatras or public meetings are focused around key issues that are being reinforced, they fail to register any benefit. If he’s going to town on corruption, he’d rather have done that as an independent candidate than go with BJP whose record on corruption is not great to speak of. Take their record in Madhya Pradesh or Karnataka. They have a history of being as, if not more, corrupt than any other party when they come to power. So, corruption is not an issue you can legitimately run a yatra on, which is the only thing I have heard from Annamalai’s yatra.
Q: When you talk about corruption, DMK, an I.N.D.I.A partner, has been caught in this issue ever since it came to power in Tamil Nadu. Don’t you think it’ll impact the election outcome?
A: It would have impacted the outcome if the investigative agencies weren’t seen as completely discredited as they are today. The only thing a politician needs to do to ensure that he is free of any investigation is to join the BJP and we have seen enough precedents for that. And I guarantee if anyone in Tamil Nadu who has a case against them chooses to join the BJP, the case will disappear. In the last 9 or 10 years, you’ve had CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation), IT (Income Tax) or ED (Enforcement Directorate) file cases against politicians, 90% of which are against the Opposition. You can say even the UPA did that but during the UPA regime, it was only 60% against the Opposition; 40% was against the incumbent parties or ruling party MLAs/MPs. Where is the equivalence? It has become so brazen. Most recently, you saw an ED officer in Tamil Nadu getting caught for a bribe for not pursuing a case. Because of the expansion of the ED, both in terms of structure and using their sweeping powers against the Opposition, they are getting caught now in petty bribe matters. I think the public sees through this completely. If this wasn’t the case, then someone like Edappadi K. Palaniswami, P. Thangamani or S.P. Velumani, would never allow themselves to separate from the BJP. I think they (AIADMK) themselves realised that no matter what files Mr Amit Shah has on them will not help him in Tamil Nadu. The people of Tamil Nadu are very clear that ED, CBI and IT are alliance partners of the BJP.
Q: What are the programmes and policies that Congress is taking to the people at the grassroots in TN?
A: In terms of articulated programmes and policies, we are yet to finalise them for the Parliament elections. We have just constituted our manifesto committee and out of the joint meetings with the I.N.D.I.A partners, we will come up with some key common agenda points and policy measures that we will take to the people when the campaign kicks off in earnest. Last time, we had the Nyay Scheme (universal basic income). This time also we’ll have measures around the reduction of unemployment and income inequality; means to redistribute growth we’re seeing in the country in a more equitable manner. I’m sure for farmers we’ll make a constitutional mandate for MSP. Farmers were getting much better MSP during Congress’ regime; some of that will definitely be reasserted. Before we come out with the final manifesto, you’ll see the contours of it.
Q: The Lok Sabha elections will take place between April and May. It’s January; don’t you think you’re starting work on your election manifesto quite late?
A: Not necessarily. People are saying we’re starting seat-sharing talks late but I remember seat-sharing talks happening last time in February-March. Anyway, what does the BJP have to talk about other than Ram Mandir? That’s the only thing they are focusing on which has diminishing returns at this point. You can’t take Ram Mandir and fight five elections on it. Ram Mandir is done and over and they’re still trying to draw as much political mileage as possible. They already swept the Hindi heartland last time—there’s no addition there, only deletion or subtraction. In other places like the South corridor, they don’t have anything to talk about. In 2018, Mr Modi came and laid some foundation stones in Tamil Nadu like AIIMS, promised huge amounts of money for schemes and walked away. There’s no difference. You can’t just come at the last minute, make some announcements, talk about development and go. That won’t work.
Q: Senior Congress leaders have turned a blind eye to Udhayanidhi Stalin’s Sanatan Dharma comments which created a major controversy. Meanwhile, Stalin has supported his son.?
A: You’re from Tamil Nadu, is this the first time you’ve heard someone talk about this? This has been spoken about for 70-plus years. This is the DMK’s go-to and they talk about Sanatan Dharma in terms of the caste system. DMK says the caste system is inseparable from what is defined as Sanatan Dharma and we are against the caste system and therefore, against Sanatan Dharma. If you go to the North, they say the caste system is not by birth but by profession and we’re not going to take the Varnashrama dharma and we only believe in the other parts of Sanatan Dharma. This is just a question of translation. In Tamil Nadu, this issue has zero electoral impact. This is a state which has the most temples than any other state in the country. Yet, Tamil Nadu never allowed our politics to be communalised or polarised, except in some instances in the state. If you take a model state in the country with regard to the separation of church and state, to use a common term, it would be Tamil Nadu. Our politics is about welfare and development. Our people vote very clearly on what they are going to get from their politicians— not based on the identity of their politicians. We have a very strong linguistic and cultural identity—the strongest among the Southern states. If identity has to be the main lever on which our people will end up voting, it won’t be religious identity.
Q: In a state dominated by Dravidian politics and with the influx of the BJP, how relevant do you think the Congress party is in Tamil Nadu today?
A: It’s a good question. Congress is a bridge that aids in integration of Tamil Nadu with the rest of the country in a way that we respect the diversity of every state in our country; we work to ensure that the diversity is integrated into the mainstream of the country and things, which are antithetical or not useful to them, imposed upon them. Like NEET, for instance, we said you can get an exception in case you don’t want to pick it up. The situation in Tamil Nadu is not one that requires that sort of legislation to come through. Or whether it be language imposition and so on. Congress is a bridge to the rest of the country for Tamil Nadu. Politically speaking, we are in a tough spot right now in the sense that we’re not in government right now with the DMK nor in Opposition to them as we’re a long-standing strong alliance partner. To be in a political space when you are incumbent but not part of the government, is an extremely hard job. We do hold them to account, politely and nudgingly, when we see them making mistakes but it would be unreasonable to expect us to get on the streets to oppose some of the things we are not in agreement with as we have a long and close alliance with them. It would be hard to make vote share gains or build new constituencies for ourselves independently while we are in this position.