Trump trumped, US First Lady dumped, dogs have their day!

Media Watch

[375 words 2 minute read]

Southern News & Feature Service Exclusive

Chennai, March 30 [SNFS]: The United States isn’t Russia or the Philippines.

The White House has begun rebooting Trump 2.0.

Unless ‘old’ Donald changes his ways, his radical, polarizing campaign trail politics may render him into the Walt Disney cartoon character whose second nomenclature part is ‘duck’. The indication comes from a report penned by David Ignatius in The Washington Post.

Women journalists with strong opinions like Kathleen Parker write excellent, sarcastic prose. A sample:

It’s been ages since New York City’s paparazzi have been able to capture the queen — her lapis lazuli eyes and haughty cheekbones mere recollections from snapshots past. These days, Melania Knauss Trump keeps mostly her own company, touring the cells of her vast tower prison, tending the king’s son and remembering colder days in Slovenia when she knitted her own sweaters.

The years of Melania’s father – as a member of the Communist Party is all but erased from a résumé that features the creation of the persona of the first lady of the United States of America.

The above [slightly edited] description of US First Lady Melania Knauss Trump is one of the best humorous and yet thought provoking pieces to be ever written on the wife of an American President.

One should doff one's hat to Kath!

One of India’s best women journalists with an enviable sense of humour is the late celebrity satirist Cho Ramaswamy’s niece Nirupama Subramanian. Her tweet, the other day, said it all in one swift swish:

The Best News Today: Dogs Detect Breast Cancer From Bandage: Study

It was a news item put out by the news agency AFP with a Paris dateline, published in The Hindu.

The show-stopper is also about a wrongly spelt word ‘niece’ by a news outlet “One Tamil”.

The sting in the summarised tail ‘headline’ [reproduced verbatim]:

English summary

Jayalalithaa's nice [sic] deepa election campaign at R.k.Nagar [sic] by election

The copy said that departed CM Jaya’s niece Deepa accused former CM OPS of acting in bad faith over suspicious aspects of Jayalalithaa’s death.

In its multiple language incarnations, One India claims to be a pioneer. One member of its management team claims to possess a degree from Alabama varsity.

Begun in 1820, AU is one of the oldest in the US of A.

Do they teach English so badly there?

Contributors: Vakratund Varma, Océane Guillaume, Cédric Romain, Pyotr Mundolsky and Phyllis D’Souza

RM/M/KMT/TSV

SFNS is a news service with a difference. News is narrated succinctly and in detail - for the reader to understand - every event it its complete perspective.

For further info, contact: haritsv@hotmail.com

TN Assembly Confidence Trick Meant To Hush Up Jaya Murder?

Opinion

TSV Hari, Chennai

2107 words, 12 minutes reading

Southern Features News Services Exclusive

Did Sasikala mar Tamil Nadu’s political horizon to cover up what can be a suspected case of murder of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa?

Sasikala’s flunkey Edappadi Palanisamy [EPS] shamelessly has claimed to have won – what can be termed the ‘mistrust’ vote on the floor of the assembly. Reports said Sasikala was given the privilege of enjoying the scene on a television screen within the Bangalore Parapana Agrahara prison and gloated over the event.

The event points to a crime most foul: the possible murder of former CM J Jayalalithaa.

Pointers:

I.                On September 22, Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospital suffering from ‘fever and dehydration’ Operative portions of a media report: Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospital for fever and dehydration. The hospital then shortly issued a statement saying she was under observation and that she had “no fever now” and was subsisting on a “normal diet.”

II.            But, Ramaseetha, a lady doctor who had been stationed at the emergency ward in Apollo, told the media that the CM was brought in dead. Rather surprisingly, despite the lady being ready to depose in court, no one has asked her to. OPS made fantastic charges. But, he has failed to file a complaint in a police station in this regard. Deepa, Jayalalithaa's niece who can gain from this politically, [the statement was made at a platform provided by Deepa] is yet to make any reaction to this claim public. Why did it take so long for Apollo polo players to challenge this woman and get her jailed?

III.       On September 24 AIADMK party members dismissed reports that Jayalalithaa will be flown to Singapore for further treatment. On these reports that appeared in a section of media, including on social media, AIADMK party spokesperson CR Saraswathi said, “It is false information. She is not going anywhere...someone is spreading wrong news. She will soon return home.”

IV.        Apollo Hospitals said that Jayalalithaa would be discharged from the hospital in a few days and would resume normal official duties soon.

V.             Operative portion of a Press Trust of India report published in the Times of India, September 27 2016 citing an official press release of the Government of Tamil Nadu:

VI.        Holding an official meeting on the Cauvery row at a hospital here where she is being treated, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today deputed a cabinet colleague to attend a meeting with her Karnataka counterpart and the Centre as suggested by the Supreme Court on the issue.

VII.    Jayalalithaa, undergoing treatment for fever and dehydration, held an hour-long consultation with state Chief Secretary P Ramamohana Rao, Advocate General R Muthukumarasamy and other senior state officials at the Apollo Hospital in the city, where she was admitted on September 22.

VIII.  “The chief minister was apprised that the Supreme Court had directed the Attorney General to facilitate a meeting with Executive Heads of the States of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with the Ministry of Water Resources to recommend ways to break the impasse on the issue,” an official press release said. She discussed in detail the issues to be taken up by Tamil Nadu at the meeting and also “dictated” her speech which will be read out there by Rao, it said.

IX.        In her report, Times of India dated the same day, journalist Julie Mariappan added:

X.            The meeting in Apollo Hospitals saw the participation of chief secretary P Rama Mohana Rao, advocate general R Muthukumaraswamy, advisor to government Sheela Balakrishnan, principal secretary I to chief minister K N Venkataramanan and Secretary IV A Ramalingam.

XI.        Operative excerpts from a Times of India report published on October 22 2016 by Julie Mariappan that said: Governor C Vidyasagar Rao visited Apollo Hospitals, where chief minister J Jayalalithaa is undergoing treatment. This is his second visit to the hospital, ever since the chief minister was admitted on September 22.

“The Governor visited the CM in the ward where she is undergoing treatment. The governor was happy to note that the CM is progressing well,” a Raj Bhavan statement said, after Rao’s visit.

Apollo Hospitals chairman Pratap C Reddy briefed the governor in detail about the treatment being given to the CM. Jayalalithaa is being treated by a team of experts consisting of doctors from critical care group of the hospitals, senior cardiologist, senior respiratory physician, senior consultant, infectious diseases, endocrinologist, diabetologist and dieticians.

“The chairman, Apollo hospitals appraised [sic] the governor that the CM continues to be under treatment and observation for all vital parameters, respiratory support and passive physiotherapy. The CM is interacting and responding remarkably to the treatment,” the statement said.

Rao thanked the team of doctors attending the CM for the “excellent care” given by them.

XII.   Rao was one of those who actually never got to see Jayalalithaa, actress Gautami Tadimalla said.

Another media report added thus:

Questioned whether Tamil Nadu Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao met Jayalalithaa in the hospital, Dr Balaji [who was addressing the media along with London physician Dr Beale and Dr A Babu] said the Governor met her during his second visit. “Jayalalithaa showed him a thumbs up sign,” Balaji said.

  

XIII.  A television report averred that Rao actually did not meet Jayalalithaa at all!

There was worse.

XIV.                       Those denied the opportunity of meeting Jayalalithaa include the number 2 in TN cabinet OPS, India’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, TN’s leader of opposition Stalin, and of course, the Governor – all of whom are constitutional authorities.

So, here are queries on the gaffes:

a.             Was Jayalalithaa alive when brought in on September 22 2016?

b.            If yes, why were constitutional authorities like the Governor, PM, acting CM, Leader of Opposition and others prevented from seeing the ailing Jayalalithaa?

c.               When did Jayalalithaa actually die – if one were to go along the Apollo statement on December 5 2016? There were a series of flip flops over the timing. And if one goes by the sheer timing of it all, senior journalist Cho Ramaswamy was wheeled into the ICU – when efforts to revive Jayalalithaa, the hospital claimed, were still underway^[1]. 

Did anyone in authority bother to question the doctors who treated Cho Ramaswamy?

The concentric, complex confirmation of the above:

As the CM, EPS holds the home portfolio and hence has the cops under his control. The brown-shirt fraternity of Tamil Nadu is notorious for hushing up high profile murders. Offhand, two instances can be cited. 

The first is the triple murder of former bureaucrat Dr Saravanan, his wife and servant maid. The second is that of Sadiq Batcha, who could have blown the lid off the 2G telecom spectrum scandal. Together, the 2 scams have caused roughly Rs.80 lakh crores to disappear!

The worst part is that latest confidence trick exercise seen in the assembly in its entirety is illegal. It has left the state’s realpolitik mug permanently pock-marked.

Here is why:

a.   The whole exercise began with Sasikala being elected the General Secretary of the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam [AIADMK].

The so-called election was patently illegal if one goes by the constitution of that party. AIADMK by-laws available in the Election Commission’s website state that the party general secretary can only be declared elected by the political unit’s representatives from all the states – including those from Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh plus the Andaman and Nicobar Islands during a specially convened General Council to ‘elect’ a ‘proper’ candidate who ought to have been an uninterrupted member for 5 years. Such an event never happened.

b.  The later-day ‘hero’ and currently ex-Chief Minister O Panneerselvam [OPS] bent double when handing over the relevant resolution to Sasikala a few weeks ago. He ‘implored’ her to be the General Secretary. He became an accessory to a patently illegal act.

c.   On the basis of her election as the AIADMK GS, Sasikala Natarajan claimed to be in possession of the Divine Right to rule TN. To achieve that end, a strange logic was presented: Two power centres cannot exist in the AIADMK, a chorus of yes-men and yes-women said. OPS publicly stated that he was resigning to uphold the larger interests of the party as Sasikala was ‘elected’ as the legislative party leader on the strength of her having already been elected as the GS. One lie became the basis of another lie.

d.  More illegal acts followed. Governor Vidyasagar Rao’s office stated that it did not receive the hard copy of OPS’s resignation. The signature on the faxed copy of the quit letter, reports added, did not tally with the signature appended to his accepting to be CM on the wee hours of December 6 2016. So, the resignation and its acceptance were per se illegal acts.

e.   OPS declared that he was coerced to sign – against his will. That constituted an offence under 503 IPC – which could have been tackled at the level of a local police station. Had OPS registered an FIR, holding the Home Portfolio, OPS could have directed the Director General of Police to summon Sasikala Natarajan for questioning in any police station. In a jiffy, the legislators cocooned in the vice den called Golden Bay Resort would have been scared and scampered to safety, thus scuppering Sasikala’s plans. On its part, the police force has the right to take suo motu action to safeguard law and order. That constituted 2 omissions – contributing to other illegal acts.

Finally, on the basis of all these, Governor Vidyasagar Rao claimed that he had no alternative but to invite Sasikala’s major domo Edappadi Palanisamy [EPS] to form the government.

f.     More illegal acts followed.

EPS got senior IPS officers to disguise themselves as watch and ward staff in the assembly – which is per se illegal. The cops brazenly assaulted the Leader of Opposition and allegedly ripped his shirt off.

Seeing the game slipping away, DMK legislators lost the plot, behaved like organ grinder’s monkeys bitten by rabies infested curs, 2 scorpions and a rattlesnake – simultaneously and went berserk inside the house.

g.   The rules of the house clearly state that if the entire opposition places a demand for a secret ballot, the speaker has to accede to the request. It would be pure conjecture now in hindsight to second guess what could have happened if a secret ballot had been taken. But, that accorded speaker Dhanapal the alibi he needed to evict the opposition to get the confidence vote [more of a confidence trick, rather] passed.

h.  That constitutes another illegal act in itself. But, if someone were to question this in courts of law, the age old bad penny about the supremacy of legislature for acts within its precincts would return with a vengeance. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu, the state once ruled by the likes of Rajagopalachari, Bhaktavatsalam, Annadurai, Kamaraj and MGR has the wallow in the filth of those who shamed democracy. Thespian Kamal Haasan correctly corrupted the spelling and called it de-mock-crazy.

There are some other unanswered questions.

i.     Were OPS and Rao blind to all that happened since September 22 2016 when Jaya was admitted to Apollo Hospitals?

ii.              It was OPS who proposed the name of Sasikala for the post of General Secretary. Since that was illegal, will someone seek legal action for that original sin?

iii.          Would OPS care to explain as to why did he not register a police complaint under 503 IPC charging Sasikala with criminal intimidation?

The role of Dr Subramanian Swamy – who continues to demand a ‘royal treatment’ for Sasikala – triggers a few unanswered questions to be raised:

a.   Did doctor Swamy believe Dr Pratap Reddy – the Chairman of Apollo Hospitals who claimed Jaya had recovered when he tweeted thus on October 26 2016?

JJ bhaktas should be happy because I learn that JJ has got back her consciousness and may be discharged soon.

Dr Swamy is a close friend of Pratap Reddy, according to senior journalist GS Chawla, editor, Punjab Kesri.

Operative portions of a citation:

In a recent article by Punjab Kesri journalist G.S. Chawla the following was said: “People do not know that Subramanian Swamy has been close to the controversial godman Chandraswami and Dr Prathap Reddy of Apollo hospital. All of them were members of a trust founded by Chandraswami. The enforcement directorate had found serious irregularities in the accounts of the trust in which some foreign currency was deposited. The finance ministry planned to act against all the three trustees.”

All along Dr Reddy has been endorsing whatever Sasikala said about Jaya treatment in Apollo.

Dr Swamy was insisting on Sasikala being made CM by Governor Rao.

Now, Dr Swamy has said that “Sasikala should be shifted to a a jail in Tamil Nadu after Palanisamy becomes CM in the interest of security”

b.  Why is Dr Swamy, whose complaint had resulted in the final verdict that sent Sasikala to jail going overboard in being protective of Jaya’s former maid?

[1]

Operative excerpts from an earlier report:

Around 3-o-clock in the evening, senior journalist Cho S Ramaswamy – also unwell and an in-patient at Apollo – was being shifted to the ICCU – as he too had become critical, or so the grapevine said.

One wondered as to how another person would be shifted into the ICCU when it was out of bounds for everyone as Jayalalithaa was in it. Whenever, she occupied that room, it was out of bounds for the rest of humanity.

A little bit of thinking, led to the raising of eyebrows.

“Has something bad happened to Jaya?”

Before long, news channels broke the story that Jaya was no more.

It was retracted a few minutes later by a press statement from Apollo.

The little grey cells in the brain yelled: “It is a ruse by the hospital and the state’s police machinery to disperse the crowds, fearing harm to the hospital.

“Soon, close to midnight, the announcement that she is no more would come,” one muttered under the breath.

It did.

End of Jallikkattu Drama Marks Start of Sasikala's Troubles?

From TSV Hari, Chennai, Vakratund Varma, New Delhi

1746 words, 20 minutes reading

Southern Features News Services Exclusive

Chennai, New Delhi [SFNS]: Has Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a clever move to defuse the political situation in Tamil Nadu that had arisen due to the massive Jallikkattu protests? Has the PM thereby checkmated the sinister designs of Sasikala and her scheming husband M Natarajan who were believed to be behind the stir?

Should one read more into protestors' rejection of the ordinance passed by the Tamil Nadu government - demanding a more permanent solution to the Jallikkattu imbroglio?

Is there more than what meets the eye in protesters' refusal to leave Chennai's Marina Beach demanding a permanent amendment of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in order to allow Jallikkattu for ever?

Are these attempts meant to prevent a probe Sasikala’s hand in the mysterious death of Jayalalithaa? ^[1]

Will the illegal stay of Sasikala and co at Veda Nilayam, Jaya’s residence sans any will and/or testament come to an end?

The Jallikkattu restoration demand - relegated to the cold storage for 3 years - had been suddenly resurrected to pose a challenge to the centre, intelligence reports are said to have indicated to the centre. It was an operation, meant to directly pose twin challenges to the leadership of PM Modi and also to the office of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister - currently held by O Panneerselvam. The underlying message from Sasikala and her husband Natarajan - “either allow Sasikala, currently General Secretary of the AIADMK, to peacefully ascend the throne and rule Tamil Nadu for the rest of the term - or face an unprecedented backlash of violence in the state.”

In a day of swift developments - the decks for restoration of Jallikkattu were cleared in a jiffy by the centre, its Presidential assent necessity circumvented, passed by the state cabinet and okayed by the state's acting Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao - all within a span of 24 hours.

The week-long dormant issue of Jayalalithaa's sudden, mysterious death has returned like the proverbial bad penny triggering a startling question - will there be a questioning of Sasikala on her role in the unexplained worsening of late Jayalalithaa's health by the Central Bureau of Investigation as the Madras High Court expressed an intention to even exhume her interred body if necessary?

Meanwhile, following the promulgation of the ordinance to hold the bull-taming festival, the curiously meaningless pro-Jallikkattu protests have come to an end. A popular Tamil periodical welcomed the passage, but expressed fears of courts stymieing the issue again.

Prime Minister Modi had paved the way for the facile passage of an ordinance to hold the bull-taming festival. For 5 days running, Chennai remained closed for business. The globe’s 2^nd longest sea-front had remained grid-locked throwing transportation out of gear.

But, the so-called “closure” of the issue has raised more questions than provision of answers.

“The whole thing is meaningless. The ‘official’ day for Jallikkattu will occur only a year later, so what was this hullabaloo all about?”

The question came from a devout septuagenarian Hindu supporter of the sport – Srinivasan Ramaseshan.

Very curiously, the fever-pitched clamour for Sasikala’s elevation as the Chief Minister, loudly audible and brazenly visible till a few days ago, had disappeared from the news radars following the publication a report that punched holes in the tales put out by Apollo Hospital and Sasikala about the events leading to Jaya's abrupt death and her aide's questionable role in preventing visits by constitutionally empowered VVIPs to meet the ailing CM. The report had suggested that Apollo has reportedly worked out its "exit route" from the imbroglio as has the centre - leaving Sasikala and her coterie exposed and at the centre of the cross-hairs of the wrath of the judiciary.

Must read:

http://wp.me/p7bYkZ-SX
http://wp.me/p7bYkZ-RX

“It seemed as though Sasikala’s suspect role in late CM Jayalalithaa’s death had slipped from everyone’s memory. All of a sudden the frenzy to make her CM has evaporated thanks to Jallikkattu stir. The whole drama was too pat and too much loaded in favour of only Sasikala and her husband Natarajan. Everyone else – including Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and PM Narendra Modi were being verbally brick-batted. Further, few in the crowd have heard of Alanganallur, the headquarters of Jallikkattu, located some 400 km south of capital Chennai. Members of uniformed police force, under the alibi of openly canvassing for the sport, made public statements at the protest bang opposite the state police headdquarters that could start a violent anti-national wave. All these were unhealthy trends, and left one extremely worried. I am on the wrong side of 70 and remember how under the guise of anti-Hindi agitations ^[2], our holy threads were cut by DMK youths shouting separatist slogans. There was large scale violence, looting and worse. Significantly, the entire Dravidian movement was born of fissiparous tendencies that demanded – among other things – continuance of British rule or a separate, independent Dravidastan – the exact replica of the demand one sees in Kashmir – albeit under a different alibi,” Ramaseshan averred.

The hurried manner in which the whole thing happened citing law and order issues raised eyebrows.

“Decks were cleared to hold the sport in a jiffy. All the political stakeholders have said ‘aye’ to the project. The state cabinet and the Governor have affixed signatures on the ordinance within a few hours – ending a 3-year wait. If it was this easy, and did not need the President’s assent and other procedural niceties, why did all this drama take place? Who benefited from it? And very importantly, can the game be held on a non-official day [the official one being January 15] just like that? Wouldn’t that be the violation of the cultural ethos as well? Frankly, I do not understand any of this,” Ramaseshan observed.

“Schools, colleges, varsities and government establishments being ‘unofficially’ asked to remain shut0 seems a mystery. Shops were ‘advised’ to down shutters across the state. One wonders as to who issued the orders and why. The state’s police HQ and the Fort St George Secretariat are like 2 door posts to the Beach Road and hence a vast crowd of a few lakhs cannot gather unobtrusively. That such an event happened, in itself, is suspicious. The worst part is that separatist slogans and shouts hailing slain terrorists - ex-Tamil Tiger boss V Prabhakaran and Osama bin Laden with huge posters in tow were prominently seen ^[3] triggering fears of Tamil Nadu becoming a Kashmir,” Ramaseshan, a resident of Triplicane, abutting the Marina pointed out.

Media reports revealed this phenomenon.

Even as sections of the media continued to hail the “orderly conduct” of the protest, a different view of the reality emerged. And it is rowdy behaviour of the protestors – pure and simple. ^[4]

The separatist angle has ominous portents.

Pakistan’s dreaded ISI operates brazenly from neighbouring Sri Lanka.

During the United Progressive Alliance regime, the Manmohan Singh government had wantonly overlooked a startling fact that the ISI is known to have close links with members of the LTTE - who survived the 2009 decimation by the Lankan army.

For over 11 years, India’s intelligence agencies have been dreading the large scale influx of separatist influence in southern India through the ISI-LTTE nexus.

Has the PM has checkmated Sasikala and defeated what is believed to be the diabolic brinkmanship of her husband Natarajan through a series of measures to clear the Jallikkattu do? 

Will Natarajan stretch a hitherto little-known culturally relevant sporting event of interior Tamil Nadu to gigantic proportions to challenge the might and majesty of the Indian state?

Only time can provide the answer to that one.

Obviously, the centre has its task cut out. At this point in time – on can only say that the hubby-wife duo has bitten off more than it can chew.

[1]

“One has to take a close look at various aspects of the Jallikkattu struggle where pro LTTE, separatist, Tamil Eelam, Tamil nationalist, anti-India, anti PM and anti state CM slogans are being shouted with impunity. There are reports that managements of a few private schools in Chennai that remained open during the unofficial shut-down were not-so-politely questioned about their belief in Tamil causes. Senior police officials who used to subscribe to nationalist blogs till the other day, have opted out – either out of fear or because they have joined ‘the other side.’ Tamil Nadu’s former Chief Secretary Ram Mohan Rao and his business pals – considered very close to CM OPS were raided by central authorities at the alleged behest of Sasikala and her husband Natarajan. The central government’s Finance Portfolio is being handled by Arun Jaitley who is not exactly loyal to PM Modi. Only someone very politically smart like M Natarajan who claims to have authored the success of Jayalalithaa herself can dream all this up. And finally, let us remember that Natarajan had been arrested when Jayalalithaa was alive and Sasikala even changed her name to VK Sasikala [her maiden name] to keep herself in Jayalalithaa’s home. After her brief sojourn in wilderness between December 2011 [when Sasikala was chased out of Jaya’s residence] and April 2012, when the aide returned, reports had indicated Sasikala had no interests in politics or any trappings of power. ‘I am only Madam’s personal aide,’ Sasikala had been quoted as saying in a letter to the then CM. The term has now acquired a different spelling, meaning and significance. Sasikala seems to be Tamil Nadu’s political AIDS,” a police officer requesting anonymity said.

[2]

Operative excerpts from the relevant Wikipedia dossier:

As the day (26 January 1965) of switching over to Hindi as sole official language approached, the anti-Hindi movement gained momentum in Madras State with increased support from college students. On 25 January, a full-scale riot broke out in the southern city of Madurai, sparked off by a minor altercation between agitating students and Congress party members. The riots spread all over Madras State, continued unabated for the next two months, and were marked by acts of violence, arson, looting, police firing and lathi charges. The Congress Government of the Madras State, called in paramilitary forces to quell the agitation; their involvement resulted in the deaths of about seventy persons (by official estimates) including two policemen. To calm the situation, Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave assurances that English would continue to be used as the official language as long as the non-Hindi speaking states wanted. The riots subsided after Shastri’s assurance, as did the student agitation.

The agitations of 1965 led to major political changes in the state. The DMK won the 1967 assembly election and the Congress Party never managed to recapture power in the state since then. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Congress Government headed by Indira Gandhi to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" of the Indian Republic. There were also two similar (but smaller) agitations in 1968 and 1986 which had varying degrees of success.

[3]

Operative excerpts from an article carried in a prominent website:

The protest is no longer, and perhaps never was, only about Jallikkattu. It has, however, become the rallying point for disgruntlement of the Tamil people, from Tamil Eelam to Cauvery River water-sharing, helped by the general discontent over demonetisation.

The slogans raised, the posters displayed and the beach-side conversations are testimony to the different issues being raised in Tamil Nadu. And couched in the calls for justice is victimhood, the eternal lament of being a Tamil and ‘Indian government’ never caring for it.

Several posters of slain LTTE chief Prabhakaran were also seen at the protests. All these issues tie up, and that is why there is such mass outpouring, says 36-year-old Selvakumar, a professor. “It may not be relevant today, but this shows why so many people are out here. Tamilians and our issues are never taken seriously,” he says.

A group of ten boys from the near fishing hamlets have also come. Dressed in black, and some sporting a fish-shaped gold locket on their necks, they are busy patching together an effigy to burn it. “You know how many Tamil fishermen are killed or arrested by Sri Lanka every month?” one of them asks angrily.

[4]

Operative excerpts by Deccan Chronicle columnist Charu Nivedita

“Trisha should be stripped naked and be chased on the road”.

This is just another abuse faced by Kollywood actor Trisha Krishnan, who left the shooting venue after an angry mob of Jallikkattu supporters protested against her for endorsing PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A complete list of all these expletives can be found on Facebook that has been used against the actor.

LTTE’s Prabhakaran was the proud symbol of Tamil ethnic identity [also proudly displayed in posters at the protest]. Many Tamil film directors are still claiming Prabhakaran as their leader, and this is the critical background with which the Jallikkattu protest has to be viewed.

Jallikkattu protests and connected rage are based on racial feelings.

Though the struggle is pointed towards Tamil identity, a major part of the youths cannot write in Tamil. Tamil is just a spoken language here and that is an irony.