Some finer points that will get in the way of esteemed folks of this forum:
1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sivakasi_( ... stituency)
Vaiko -- the more Tamil than Tamil despite being Telugu-origin, anjaa nenjan, kalingappattith thalaivan, paindamizhkk kaavalan -- was always a winner from Sivakasi constituency since 1998 when the MDMK contested as a separate party. In 2004, JJ slammed POTA on Vaiko and his hand-picked nominee won. In 2008, due to a delimitation exercise, Sivakasi constituency became the enhanced Virudhungar constituency and Vaiko had to stand there in the 2009 elections. And Vaiko was defeated by Congress nominee Manick Tagore by 15,000 votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. At the height of LTTE defeat, before VP could have been saved, before the real ilaya thalapadhi Charles Anthony was given as the bali kadaa, before JJ & alliance could have strong-armed the hands of GoI to pull back the marauding Sinhalese army, the people threw out Vaiko showing who is really the boss in India.
2)
Chidambaram was participating in the 108th birth anniversary celebrations of former chief minister Kamaraj and 125th anniversary of the Congress party.
The much-touted vision of any red-blooded Congress-ite in TN is to see a rehash of the Kamaraj rule. Kamaraj was one man that even the DK could nt find issues with. EVR was so deeply stunned when KK was nominated as the Congress party candidate that he withdrew all "anti-brahminical" congress chants in deference to KK. Kamaraj united what the DK divided. Bhaktavatsalam and Rajaji dont even come close, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. PC and his ex-companion GK Moopanar were always behind this dream and when they saw INC seriously vacillating from this dream, they promptly discarded INC to form TMC. GK Moopanar is dead, PC is alive. PC still yearns for Kamaraj rule in TN, and PC may be old, but he aint changing his dream for any sonia or mania or sonia-mania. Rahul is the accessory, Kamaraj rule is the vision, any game is par for the course in using the accessory to get to the vision.
3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virudhunag ... stituency)
PC was talking in Virudhunagar, Vaiko's constituency where ~38% still voted for Vaiko. That is a significant % whatever one says, whoever the boss is.
4) And there is no assurance that these 38% will vote for MDMK in the 2014 elections (or sooner) or the 40% that found Vaiko's stand idiotic will continue to find Manick Tagore's non-performance good enough. For those who want to know, the core bottomline in Sivakasi -- as in most of what is the casteist belt of south TN with the worst than imaginable casteist crimes that man can ever conjure up -- is THE casteist divide: Thevars vs. Nadars vs. Nayakars. Vaiko is Telugu-speaking Nayakar, so is Vijayakanth of DMDK. One Nayakar has never had any traction in Sivakasi and surroundings and you should know who that man is. The Nadar vote is split between the Kamaraj Nadar-loving votebank and the alienated business-folks, of which PC can empathize.
The Thevars have almost always voted for ADMK, and before MGR in an anti-DMK way, while actor Karthik of the Forward Bloc, who is also a Thevar, is trying to pull this mass in a different direction. Now the antipathy between Thevars and DMK spreads all over south TN, and the DMK always starts its political checkerboard modulo the Thevar vote. The reason for this is that: there used to be what is called "criminal castes" of which the Thevars were the main part (in fact, a sub-group of the Thevars goes by the name Malai Kallar -- those who steal with a mountain as the base). The famous leader of Thevars, Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._Muthuramalingam_Thevar
fought hard for abandoning such stupid ideas even pre-47 and made demands to every CM of the then Madras Province. The Congress vacillated and promised this would be taken care of post-independence, but never did. On the other hand, the Justice Party in fact went ahead and made the range where criminal castes appelation would be used wide. So much for DK being non-casteist and nice to the non-brahminical castes. The only thing that was common between INC pre-47 and DK was their thirst for power -- DK wanted power for itself, a small clique of non-brahmins with no care or worries for the community at large, while the INC power was vested in a few select brahmins -- the whole wide brahmin community was picking litter on the streets.
Only after, Rajaji was thrown out and Kamaraj came aboard INC, was the notion of criminal castes abandoned. And true to their word, the Thevars have always voted for INC (then) and voted against anyone who stands on a DMK ticket (the legacy of the Justice Party and DK) ever since. Now if you still have the patience, go check the electoral record at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sivakasi_( ... stituency)
For those who shall choose to ignore the casteist bullshite, and want to focus on the standard dhoti, upma and lagaan issues, the main issues are power for the matchstick and firecracker industry, inflation and price rise, and terrible roads. None of these have been solved by Manick Tagore, and none of them will be before 2014. So it is back to caste, de javu, did I prick the balloon of the idealist on this forum?
5) And more to the issue, VP is dead, long gone. Buried or cremated as per his very wishes, whatever that crap was, not like anyone cares.
Now the message is: you can be a tru-blue brfite and show yourself when asked for a wall. And you can continue with your ululation game because somehow you think that you can be more street-smart than the wily politician of India, who has survived this game for decades. Perhaps, perhaps, the ululating mass will decline and people who will try to understand why things are the way they are will rise up. May be, but I doubt it. As the more people get "educated", the more will turn up. Cos we are a country of 1 billion and counting. Counting faster than getting "educated."
