Tamil Nadu's PMK in crisis as son challenges patriarch

Chennai: In July 1989, when doctor-turned-activist S Ramadoss donned the hat of a politician by founding the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) before a sea of Vanniyars, a dominant community spread across northern and central Tamil Nadu, he made a promise before the rapturous crowd: neither he nor his family members would ever assume positions within or outside the party.

Seventeen years later, in 2004, Ramadoss, now 85, broke his promise by securing the high-profile health ministry in the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government for his only son, Anbumani Ramadoss, then just 36. Since then, Anbumani has had a solo reign in the PMK for about two decades, culminating in his ascendancy as party president in May 2022.

In an ironic twist, Anbumani, on December 28, publicly accused his father of promoting dynastic politics following Ramadoss's decision to parachute one of his grandsons, Parasuraman Mukundan, into the post of youth wing chief of the party.

"Another member from the family, oh...," Anbumani told Ramadoss at the PMK's special general council meeting, bringing to the forefront the simmering differences between the father-son duo over party affairs.

The thinning trust of Vanniyars in the PMK and the gradual decline of the party's committed vote bank are reasons, in addition to securing his supremacy in party affairs, behind Anbumani's opposition to his father’s proposal.

The public spat underscored not only the power struggle within the PMK's first family but also over the cash-and-asset-rich public trusts, including the party's parent organisation, the Vanniyar Sangam, formed for the community's welfare.

The worst-ever political crisis in the PMK has yet to blow over: Ramadoss is standing his ground, implying he is the boss and cannot be vetoed. At the same time, his son continues to hold one-on-one meetings with district presidents and functionaries at his residence near Chennai.

The father-son duo is believed to have been sparring privately, especially over alliances, with Ramadoss preferring the AIADMK and Anbumani siding with the BJP.

Though he positions himself as a change agent, Anbumani has never been able to escape the caste conundrum despite a conscious image makeover and a massive media blitz projecting him as the chief ministerial candidate with a catchy slogan, "Change. Progress. Anbumani," in 2016. This came two years after he won the Dharmapuri Lok Sabha seat by stoking caste passions and loyalty.

Anbumani's bids to build bridges with other communities have also not taken off, with the PMK still being viewed as a party of Vanniyars, limiting its growth beyond a particular region in Tamil Nadu. To be fair, the PMK is one of the very few parties in the state to draft well-researched responses to public issues while playing the role of constructive opposition by releasing shadow and agriculture budgets.

Caste card

Ramadoss launched the PMK with unflinching support from Vanniyars, who trusted him to place the community under the Most Backward Classes (MBC) category along with denotified communities with an exclusive 20% reservation. He led a year-long struggle that turned violent in 1987, claiming 21 lives.

A shrewd politician with a sharp mind, Ramadoss cleverly utilised the hospitalisation of the late M G Ramachandran to intensify the reservation agitation, which bore fruit in 1989 after M Karunanidhi returned to power. Vanniyars continue to revere Ramadoss for their inclusion in the MBC category, which opened the floodgates to education and jobs.

Decades later, Ramadoss and Anbumani led another agitation in 2021 to ensure a 10.5 per cent horizontal reservation for Vanniyars within the MBC quota. This resulted in the then AIADMK government passing a bill in return for the PMK's electoral support. However, the bill did not bring political dividends, and the Supreme Court later struck it down.

The PMK has a checkered history and still carries the stain of violence it unleashed during the reservation protests, particularly by cutting down trees to block traffic — a tactic synonymous with the party. When Ramadoss launched a campaign in the 1990s to plant lakhs of saplings through his NGO, many wondered whether he was atoning for his past actions.

Seemingly emerging as the representative of Vanniyars, the PMK won four seats on its own in the 1996 Assembly elections, which saw the DMK-Tamil Maanila Congress alliance decimate the AIADMK. This performance validated the PMK's hold over the Vanniyar voters and forced the Dravidian majors to court the party, which enjoyed its heyday from 1998 to 2011.

Waning influence

Ramadoss proved that even a caste-based political party could succeed in Tamil Nadu and coexist with the DMK and AIADMK, which harp on social justice.

The party ventured into neighbouring Puducherry by forcing the DMK to overlook the Congress and allot the lone Lok Sabha seat to it in 2004. However, the PMK could not replicate its Tamil Nadu success. Speculation was rife that Ramadoss’s goal was to install his son as chief minister of the Union Territory.

After courting the BJP in 2014, the PMK's solo experiment in the 2016 Assembly polls—losing all 234 seats—highlighted the waning influence of the party.

Ramadoss's knack for political maneuvering — swinging alliances — seems to have cost the PMK dearly.

"Ramadoss is a weathercock, but he has been repeatedly struck down by the unanticipated political weather in Tamil Nadu. He commands a vote bank that is no longer loyal to him. And the baseline is that the PMK does not represent the entire state," said Ramu Manivannan, a former political science professor at the University of Madras.

Though Ramadoss calls himself a protector of social justice, his heart has beaten only for Vanniyars, with his talk of harmony with Dalits being largely symbolic. While the PMK's first Union Cabinet nominee was a Dalit, Ezhilmalai, Ramadoss at one point had called for an alliance of intermediary castes against Dalits.

Pledging to end naadaga kaathal or fake love (the alleged conspiracy by Dalit youths to woo Vanniyar women), the party also milked controversies like the marriage of a Dalit man, Ilavarasan, and a Vanniyar girl, which ended in the Dalit youth’s suicide followed by an anti-Dalit riot in Dharmapuri, allegedly triggered by a PMK-led Vanniyar mob, in 2012.

With new players like actor Vijay entering politics, Anbumani may have realised that dynastic politics is no longer well-received and diluted his party's attacks on the DMK. His alliance with the BJP, unpopular with Ramadoss and PMK senior leaders who prefer the AIADMK, adds to the party’s woes.

For the PMK to survive, Anbumani must groom a second-rung leadership and resolve the family feud ahead of the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, where parties other than the two Dravidian majors pin their hopes on coalition governments.