In what might evoke sheer disbelief today, there was a phase in the early 2000s when Oommen Chandy got written off in Kerala politics. The torn shirts of Chandy, which has acquired legendary status today, accentuated the pathos-themed political cartoons published by Kerala dailies such as Malayala Manorama and Deepika back then, depicting the long-standing Puthuppally legislator as having been passed over.
The K Karunakaran-AK Antony duo had come to dominate the state’s Congress polity from the early ‘70s till the turn of the century, when K Muraleedharan, son of Karunakaran, took over as the state’s Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief the very day Antony was sworn in as CM in 2001 – in what was a compromise formula worked out by Sonia Gandhi. Worse still, Chandy couldn’t find a berth in Antony’s cabinet owing to communal equations and coalition dharma, with Karunakaran pushing for the inclusion of KV Thomas instead.
A Turn Of Fortune In 2004
Having won a tight election against former protégé Cherian Philip, fielded by the Left Democratic Front (LDF), Chandy gamely took charge as the convener of the United Democratic Front (UDF), a position he had similarly occupied when he failed to find a spot in Karunakaran’s cabinet in 1982. It marked the continued sidelining of Chandy ever since he quit Karunakaran’s cabinet protesting the latter’s “non-democratic style of functioning” in 1994, leading to a change of guard, with Antony ending up as the beneficiary of the former’s revolt.
But it doesn’t take much to change circumstances in politics, and in what might have seemed thoroughly improbable in 2001, the stars seemed to conspire to align in Chandy’s favour when the Congress drew a blank in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls in Kerala – leading to Antony’s resignation and the sidelining of the Karunakaran faction, and the veteran’s eventual exit.
Thus, within three years of that low phase in 2001, when premature political obituaries wrote him off, Chandy was firmly in charge of the Congress politics in the state. And he remained so until his demise early this morning, aged 79, at Bengaluru.
The People’s CM
Having served as CM on the basis of this stroke of luck or happenstance in 2004, Chandy led the party to a win in 2011, albeit by a tight margin. If the first two years of this tenure marked Chandy as the most popular chief minister Kerala had seen until then, with his United Nations-awarded ‘mass contact’ programme making for a huge spectacle across the length and breadth of the state, the second half of his term was besieged by controversies, especially on account of the solar scandal milked by the visual media for its TRPs.
The scandal was also stoked by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), almost becoming a party in the case with its diabolic interventions. Chandy overcame multiple bids by the CPI(M) to topple him and saw through his term, nothing short of a miracle in hindsight, and remained the most popular Congress face in Kerala until his death.
Chandy loved to be in the midst of people all the time. While many leaders hated the chaos that symbolised Chandy’s “mass contact” programmes as CM, he seemed to revel in it. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Chandy’s funeral too would mark the kind of chaos that marked his public events.
A Rooted Politician
There are many legends surrounding Chandy’s enduring love affair with Puthuppally constituency, having served as its legislator from his maiden win in 1970, until his demise. Forever a mass leader, Chandy was known to keep his date with his constituents every Sunday till the very end. In fact, the endeavours of the Congress high command to engage Chandy with “national” politics post his tenure as CM was thoroughly resisted by the latter.
This was the case even earlier when the likes of Antony and Vayalar Ravi held Rajya Sabha berths and made a switch to national politics as the situation demanded. In fact, Chandy had to be coaxed to take charge as general secretary in Andhra Pradesh eventually. The only major position Chandy did not wield in Congress was that of PCC chief, and despite being offered the position on a platter in the wake of VM Sudheeran’s shock resignation in 2017, Chandy felt he was well past it.
And just as Chandy’s enduring Sunday date with Puthuppally was legendary, lately he was not in the best of terms with the Malankara Orthodox Church of which he was a member, which only went on to burnish his secular credentials.
Antony And Chandy
A major aspect of Chandy’s realpolitik which hasn’t found enough recognition in tales of comradeship with AK Antony is the former’s role in perpetuating the myth of St. Antony. A lot of what went into the making of Antony’s image was, in fact, a result of the skullduggery that Chandy and his band of merrymen indulged in, to keep Antony above board.
Of course, Chandy emerged out of Antony’s shadow to tower over the Congress in Kerala in due course. Chandy was more in the Karunakaran mould when it came to realpolitik although his methods were vastly different. That Chandy sought Karunakaran’s resignation on moral grounds when he himself resorted to the ‘conscience’ argument in 2013 will always be held against him, but as destiny would have it, Chandy managed to absolve himself of all charges in time. It is another matter that people never took those charges seriously or held Chandy culpable of it.
Clichéd as it may seem, Chandy’s passing truly marks the end of an era in Kerala politics.
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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