M Karunanidhi's worst nightmare happened in the summer of 2001. The DMK leader, at the age of 77, was literally lifted from his bed in the wee hours of June 30 and arrested by the Tamil Nadu police.
The force behind the sudden development was none other than AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa, who was the then chief minister.
One adjective that Karunanidhi used to attribute to Jayalalithaa was the 'sweetheart' of MGR, who founded the AIADMK in 1972 after parting ways with MK owing to serious differences between them over a span of three years. The trigger for Jayalalithaa’s action was a decade-old instance in the state assembly where DMK members assaulted legislators from the rival party she led.
True, rivalry is a key part of politics, but its bitterness as manifested in the relations between Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa has had no parallels in the history of modern India. MK had been out of power for 10 years from 1977 when MGR became the chief minister.
The star leader’s death in 1987, MK thought, would usher in his political supremacy in the state. Least did he expect actress-politician Jayalalithaa to become a formidable rival in the domain Karunanidhi had so emphatically made his in the Dravidian state.
When Jayalalithaa had become chief minister in 1991 at the age of 43, she had vowed to oust Karunanidhi from the assembly, where her party members had faced an attack from DMK legislators. All the time, the two leaders would hurl allegations of corruption against each other.
Karunanidhi had maintained personal warmth with MGR even as the two remained political rivals. Such a bond was completely missing between MK and Jayalalithaa. While Karunanidhi took a soft stand against Sri Lanka LTTE, Jayalalithaa was strong in her opposition for the Tamil militants in the island-nation.
Two Tamil Nadu governors became virtually martyrs in the epic battle between the DMK and Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. One was P S Ramamohan Rao, a retired Andhra Pradesh DGP, who had to quit the gubernatorial post in 2004 (after two years of service) when the Centre got a report on the law and order situation in Tamil Nadu without having consulted the Opposition DMK. That was courtesy Karunanidhi’s complaint submitted before the Union government.
The second was following the 2001 arrest of Karunanidhi. The then governor, Fathima Beevi, sided with the DMK leader over the issue.
The eminent Keralite jurist, who was a judge of the Supreme Court of India, exited Raj Bhavan in controversial situations, as the Centre was displeased with her alleged inability to file an independent and comprehensive assessment of the sequence of events that led to the arrest of MK, along with fellow DMK leaders Murasoli Maran and T R Baalu.
