By Sushil Kutty
First Lalu Prasad Yadav and his eldest son Tej Pratap Yadav, also known as ‘Teju Bhaiya’, whose wayward ways irritated Lalu so much that he disowned the son and also threw him out of the Rashtriya Janata Dal for six years, which is the average time for a gone astray politician to mend his ways. Now, Lalu has company “down south”, where another irritated political father, PMK founder S Ramadoss, has made it clear that he won’t take his politician son’s tantrums for granted.
And the son is Anbumani Ramdoss, a one-time central minister, whose mistreatment of his mother has been flagged by father Ramadoss, who has also let it out that Anbumani lacked leadership qualities required to head a political party and lead it to victory or enter into alliances.
Sounds familiar? So soon after ‘TejuBhaiya’ did the inappropriate and improbable, it does sound similar. Lalu’s son Tej Pratap Yadav posted the picture of a young woman on Social Media and told the world that she was his companion of 12 years and that they were in a romantic tie-up even when his father got him married to a former Chief Minister’s daughter!
And then she was evicted from the Lalu household in full public glare. At that time, Lalu did not talk of family prestige or of moral and ethical, nothing of the sort even as his daughter-in-law took the Lalu family to the cleaners, alleging domestic violence and ill-treatment.
But now after Teju Bhaiya’s latest affront, Lalu Prasad Yadav burst his aorta! Unacceptable, he roared and the next thing anybody knew ‘Teju Bhaiya’ was out on a limb with the entire Lalu Parivar, including heir to the Lalu legacy, Tejashvi Yadav, baying for Teju Bhaiya’s blood.
Some people are, however, skeptical. They say it’s a self-inflicted drama, a reality-show enacted to influence the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections, which is round the corner, and that a father disciplining his errant son always makes for great optics!
The Ashoka University professor who used “optics” to press home a slur should learn from the seasoned Lalu Prasad Yadav. Anyway, Lalu must be hoping the Teju episode is now settled and the Bihar Assembly elections would be a cakewalk!
Lalu and the Yadav clan took off for Kolkata minus Tej Pratap Yadav. But people need not worry. If it isn’t ‘north’, ‘there’s always ‘south’. And PMK founder Dr. S Ramdoss publicly going after his son Anbumani, accusing the progeny of “disrespectful behaviour, lies and unilateral decisions regarding party alliances” is as gripping a tale as Lalu on the rampage.
Newspapers are reporting the “rift” and how S Ramadoss and Anbumani Ramadoss are on the worst of terms. Some even equated the rebellion to ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’: An 85-year-old father disparaging a 56-year-old son for throwing a bottle at his mum. The father wondered aloud whether the party was going “in the right direction”?
“Everyone regards their mother as a goddess. During Pongal this year, while sitting and chatting at home with the family, Anbumani’s mother asked him if his second daughter was appointed as youth wing leader, would he have kept quiet? In response, Anbumani lifted a bottle from where he was seated and threw it at his own mother. Fortunately, it didn’t hit her, it hit the wall. This is just a sample.”
Dr. S Ramadoss lives in a farmhouse in Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu and the “household” was in turmoil after Ramadoss appointed his daughter’s son P Mukundan as the PMK’s youth wing president. Anbumani objected and Mukundan stepped down from the post on Thursday. Ramadoss accused Anbumani of lying “without shame” and “creating internal power struggles.”
The problem is the old guard is up against the changes being brought in by the Anbumani-led new-guard. Dr. Ramdoss can’t take the changes as inevitable. Anbumani had been seeking to bring in a series of changes in the party and Dr. Ramdoss was resisting.
The father-son duo is bent on running the party to the ground. If it wasn’t the “bottle at mother”, there would have been something else to trigger the latest bout of rivalry. Anbumani was supposed to convene a meeting on Friday, a meeting of party functionaries.
The battle is for who is powerful in the party? PMK’s executive committee has 19 members. Ramdoss says Anbumani neither listens to them nor allows them to express their opinions. Anbumani discusses and finalises unilaterally. He refuses to form alliances his father wants. He shook off an alliance with the AIADMK but was keen to have an alliance with the BJP.
“They cried for so long that I had no choice but to give in. An AIADMK-PMK alliance would have been a natural one. Had it happened, PMK might have won three seats, and AIADMK six or seven,” said Ramdoss. “I am no longer responsible for my son’s actions as PMK’s working president.”
the final straw on the camel’s back is Ramadoss’s criticism of Anbumani’s leadership qualities. From stray talk, it appears like Ramadoss has made up his mind to convene a general council meeting and remove Anbumani from his party post. If that doesn’t break the party, Ramadoss will consider himself fortunate.
Ramadoss says Anbumani has forgotten PMK’s core principles and that he has been distracting both the people and party members…“It was I, who made the mistake of appointing Anbumani a Union cabinet minister at the young age of 35, going against my own principles. If Anbumani is going to paint me as the culprit and seek sympathy from the cadre, then I have no choice but to respond. I will openly list out all the accusations against him,” said Ramadoss.
This is what’s called washing dirty linen in public. Both Anbumani and Ramadoss are to blame. And from the looks of it, there is no returning from the brink. The father-son duo have crossed a certain rubicon from where there is no return.
“Who shattered the growth of the party…Anbumani has ruined it. I have silently endured many insults and mockery…but when the very calf I raised attacked me in the chest, I lost my balance,” Dr. Ramadoss said, clearly in no mood to forgive and forget.
This isn’t rare in family-run parties. Whether it is the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Prasad Yadav or the Ramadoss family-run PMK. There is even talk of a rivalry between Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Chirag Paswan’s party broke because of his rivalry with his late father’s brother and Mulayam Singh Yadav had his differences with Akhilesh Yadav. No family-run party has ever remained one whole for longer than its founder’s lifetime. (IPA Service)
