Fear inspired DMK's stand on Article 356

An adverse report from the Jain Commission looms large. And the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu is using the past as an insurance for the future.

That is how political analysts view the DMK's stand on Article 356 -- the party stuck to the original Inder Kumar Gujral government decision recommending President's rule -- vis-a-vis the recent Uttar Pradesh imbroglio.

The party has also used the opportunity to prove, in the company of like-minded regional parties, as to what they could do to preserve the spirit of constitutional federalism, notwithstanding earlier BJP criticism of their being a ''hotch-potch coalition''.

The DMK's apprehensions about Article 356 trigger from its bitter experience in the past. It has been a victim of Article 356, not once but twice. On both occasions, current Chief Minister M Karunanidhi was at the helm.

During the Emergency, when the DMK displeased the Indira Gandhi regime, President's rule was imposed on the state on January 31, 1975.

Again in 1991, with the tottering Chandra Shekhar government at the Centre depending on the Congress largesse for survival, it did not take long for the likes of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham's Jayalalitha and Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy to work overtime on Rajiv Gandhi. The Congress, which was then supporting the Chandra Shekhar regime from outside, as it is now doing in the case of the Gujral government, reportedly pressurised Chandra Shekhar into acting. Karunanidhi lost power, once again.

If the Sarkaria Commission of inquiry was appointed to probe the corruption charges against the Karunanidhi regime to find public justification in the first case, the Rajiv Gandhi assassination in Tamil Nadu -- that too by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam -- proved to be the retrospective justification in 1991.

Even before its first dismissal, the DMK, as the harbinger of regional aspirations, had not favoured extraordinary powers coming to rest in the Centre's hands.

With the Indira Gandhi regime at the Centre sacking unfriendly, non-Congress state governments without qualms each passing day, the DMK joined hands with the Akali Dal in Punjab, and also the communist parties, to condemn the provision of Article 356.

Ever since, the DMK's stand on the issue has been consistent. In fact, long before the Union government appointed the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-state relations, the first DMK government appointed the Justice Rajamannar committee.

Headed by a retired chief justice of the Madras high court, the Rajamannar committee was the first of its kind in the country. It gave legitimacy and legal framework for the DMK's ideology on the issue.

If that is so, why did Karunanidhi back the Gujral government's recommendation on slapping President's rule in Uttar Pradesh?

The stand was driven by only political compulsions at Delhi. The DMK chief, even while arguing his ideological case on such sensitive questions, has been known to maintain constitutional proprieties. This, particularly after the early part of his first innings, when undemocratic acts had caused political embarrassment of no mean proportion, for which he had to pay an electoral price in 1977.

Now, by talking loud and clear on Article 356, Karunanidhi has once again emerged as a power to reckon with in national politics, what with coalitions and alliances ruling the roost.

In the company of the Tamil Maanila Congress's G K Moopanar and Telugu Desam Party's Nara Chandrababu Naidu, he literally stole the prime ministership for H D Deve Gowda, from the hands of more than one aspirant with a better political and parliamentary base. He repeated the same feat against Moopanar earlier this year, shifting the alliance a little, without doing much damage to his local coalition with the TMC.

Ideology and ideals apart, the DMK stand on Uttar Pradesh may not go without benefits for the party if the situation so develops in the coming months.

The Jain Commission's interim report on the conspiracy angle in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination is said to have indicted the DMK government of 1989-90, for complicity in the LTTE activities while in power.

The political Opposition in the state, spearheaded by the AIADMK, may demand the Karunanidhi government's dismissal, when the report is published. The Congress, if the electoral equations suit the party at the national level, too may join the chorus.

It is then that the DMK's consistent stand, combined with a similar position the BJP may now be forced to take, that may bail out the party. Even otherwise, the DMK is known to be keeping its political options open, as far as the BJP is concerned.

Last time around, the party was not exactly averse to backing the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government during the confidence vote in Parliament. But it had no intention of wasting its votes as Vajpayee could not muster up a majority.

With the BJP being seen as the party of the future, the DMK would not like the AIADMK to align with the future ruling party at the Centre, only with the hope of getting the state government dismissed.

The DMK sees the BJP as a natural ally of the party at the national-level, with the TMC leadership not being able to forget its ''Congress past''.

With Moopanar not making any secret of the TMC's political ambitions in the state, his party moving closer to the Congress at the national level, in whatever form, would force the DMK into the BJP's hands, their basic ideological differences notwithstanding.

The DMK's stand on Uttar Pradesh, while putting north Indian local 'satraps' like Mulayam Singh Yadav in place in the United Front scheme of things, also takes the party closer to the BJP.