Politicians’ children, some acceptable and some not so, in the fray

Just over two decades ago, Pattali Makkal Katchi founder S. Ramadoss used to go around the northern districts of Tamil Nadu, where Vanniyars are a significant section of the population, and announce that no one else from his family would ever enter politics.

In fact, he would do something exceedingly dramatic: he would sit in a chair and ask for another chair. On this empty chair, he would place a locally made horsewhip. He would then announce grandly that if anyone from his family ever entered politics, people should take the whip and beat him (Dr Ramadoss). 

Around the turn of the 21st century, the whip vanished, but  the chair remained. Ramadoss’s son,  Anbumani Ramadoss, occupied the chair, went on to become the head of the party’s youth wing, became a member of the Rajya Sabha in 2004 and Union Minister of Health in the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. In 2014, he won the Lok Sabha election to become a Member of Parliament and in 2016 he projected himself as his party’s chief ministerial candidate in the Assembly election in Tamil Nadu. Today, the son has gained acceptance and the out-of-turn “promotion” he received thanks to his father is not a talking point.

M. Karunanidhi, who was president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), is credited to be the longest-serving head of a political party in India. His son, M.K. Stalin, is now the president of the DMK. Karunanidhi made it a point to blur the distinction between the family and the party. “The DMK itself is a large family,” he would say.

Stalin has extensive experience in politics, spanning nearly half a century, and his elevation was not frowned upon. His sister, Kanimozhi, a two-term Rajya Sabha member who is now contesting the Thoothukudi (Tuticorin) seat, still faces the question of jumping the queue even after more than a decade in public service.  

Former Ministers Poongothai Aladi Aruna, Geetha Jeevan, Thangam Thennarasu and his sister and south Chennai DMK candidate Tamilachi Thangapandian, and MLAs I. Senthil Kumar, T.R.B. Raja, P.T.R. Palanivel Rajan, Anbil Mahesh, J. Anbazhagan and T.T.V. Dinakaran— and many more—have a father or a close relation who was the reason for their induction into a particular political party. But these candidates are not counted among those who were pushed by their parents into politics. The AIADMK’s candidate in Tirunelveli, Manoj Pandian, too belongs to this category.

In fact, in the DMK list for the Lok Sabha election, six candidates are children of prominent leaders. The AIADMK, which during Jayalalithaa’s time had allowed father-son combines only as a rarity, has fielded four sons of senior leaders. While the sitting MP J. Jayavardhan, son of D. Jayakumar, who is the only Minister to be in three successive Cabinets of Jayalalithaa, has been renominated, and former Rajya Sabha member P.H. Manoj Pandian, who is former Speaker P.H. Pandian’s son, has been given the ticket, making their electoral debut are O.P. Ravindranathkumar, son of Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam, and V.V.R. Rajsathyan, son of a former AIADMK Mayor.  But it is not the same kind of welcome for the likes of Gautham  Sigamani (former Minister K. Ponmudi’s son and candidate in Kallakuruchi), Kathir Anand, (former Minister Durai Murugan’s son and candidate in Vellore), Karti P. Chidambaram (candidate from Sivaganga), Vishnu Prasad (son of former Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president Krishnaswami and candidate from Arni), and O.P. Ravindranath.

That is because it is an open secret that these sons are candidates only because of the pressure exerted by their politician fathers, say leaders who have knowledge of the discussions that preceded the candidatures. Vishnu Prasad has been an MLA and Karti has lost once from Sivaganga. The remaining are new comers. Already, social media is filled with jokes about the manifold increase in the wealth of Ravindranath, who has claimed, much like Jayalalithaa in the mid 1990s, that the increase was because of his farm income. 

Although the North Chennai candidate, Kalanidhi Veerasamy, is the son of former Minister, Arcot Veerasami, he has not drawn the same kind of adverse reaction possibly because his father is in retirement.

Then there is the case of Congressman Kumari Ananthan. His brother, H. Vasantha Kumar, is the Congress candidate from Kanyakumari. His daughter, Tamilisai Soundararajan, is the BJP’s candidate from Thoothukudi. Both are there on their own strength and not because of their relationship to Kumari Ananthan, who was a marginal force in Tamil Nadu politics for quite some time.