#RIPAmma: Tamil Nadu’s Towering Mass Leader Died In A Blaze of Media Glare

This was perhaps the most tweeted and televised news event involving the death of a mass political leader in India. Morbid as it may sound, there is really no better phrase than ‘news event’ to describe the heightened media activity outside Apollo Hospital in Chennai following the news of J Jayalalithaa’s cardiac arrest on late Sunday night.

Delhi media, along with regional channels, had stationed themselves outside the hospital to give us a blow-by-blow account of events as they unfolded inside the hospital. Updates – some hasty and incorrect – came in swiftly even as there was no real news. The Chief Minister’s condition had been serious since October when Apollo Hospitals said she was on “necessary respiratory support”. In the past two days, when it became evident that she was not going to make it, the tweet officially replaced the sound byte as breaking news.

The final update of her death came in soon after midnight, but it is unlikely that newsrooms weren’t prepared for it. Indeed the first set of obit-style articles, looking back at the life and times of Jayalalithaa, had started pouring in close to 5pm, when the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) briefly lowered its flag to half-mast at its headquarters. Jaya TV, the AIADMK mouthpiece, flashed news of her demise and other channels and newspaper websites followed frantically. As incidents of violence broke out sporadically, Apollo Hospitals released a press release announcing that Amma was still on life support.

While the doctors may have wanted those gathered outside Apollo to keep the faith, the media started looking at a post-Jayalalithaa era. Television prime-time news discussed AIADMK’s succession plans and the swearing-in of the next chief minister of Tamil Nadu. A segment of prime-time news across channels was dedicated to Amma’s political career – it had the soft nostalgic quality that news reports generally lend to those who are no more.

This morning, newspapers took off from where television channels signed off last night. All front-page lead copies talk of Amma’s phenomenal rise as a political leader from a top film actress of 1960s and 1970s.

The Times of India Chennai edition’s front-page is solely dedicated to the news of Amma’s demise unlike the Delhi edition. The obit on the front page calls her a “Warrior queen with welfare heart who won many a war”.

The Hindu carried a striking image of Amma by photographer Shaju John with “Jayalalithaa No More” as the headline. The Indian Express had a similar headline: “Jayalalithaa is no more”. The anchor obituary traces her journey to becoming one of the most charismatic Dravidian leaders, “fighting singlehandedly against the crude and cruel sexist politics of Tamil Nadu”.

Hindustan Times’ front-page headline stressed on the state of mourning in Tamil Nadu. The obituary is written by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. In it, he says, “Jayalalithaa did not know how to come second. At school, she was the brightest in her class, top athlete on the sports field, star of the stage whether in dancing, drama or debates, favourite teacher’s pet.”

The Telegraph went with a headline that Jayalalithaa would have thoroughly disapproved of: “Iron Butterfly’s Last Lap”. She was apparently nicknamed thus “with a mixture of fondness and fear,” as journalist Sankarshan Thakur informs us in his front-page obit in the newspaper. Amma when asked what she thought of the description had famously stated: “I agree with the description ‘iron’, but why ‘butterfly’? I don’t think the word ‘butterfly’ fits me at all.”

Indeed, the ‘butterfly’ descriptor does no justice to the political career for a five-time chief minister. And surely The Telegraph could have been more imaginative than use a term probably ascribed to her by her largely male colleagues conditioned to look at women as mere ‘titlis’.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Financial Times focused on Amma’s rise to power despite setbacks like being jailed twice for corruption. FT points at a 2009 Wikileaks cable involving an American diplomat who wrote: “Her supporters have run into trouble with religious groups for depicting her variously as a Hindu goddess and the Virgin Mary,” while also noting that “near the consulate there is a three-storey picture of Jayalalithaa with the words ‘Amma is God’.”

Ellen Barry of NYT quotes Badri Seshadri, a political analyst based in Chennai, who said that while the elite may have had their reservations about Amma’s rise as a political figure, that “ambivalence” did not extend to the masses and women in particular “who have enjoyed the vicarious pleasure of seeing a woman completely in control.”

Journalists stationed in Chennai would testify to the difficulties of reporting in AIADMK-governed Tamil Nadu: the party has filed more than 200 criminal defamation cases against those who had the temerity to “criticise Jayalalithaa”. About 50 of these were against journalists and media organisations. None of that, though, is reflected in the obituaries today. While most mentioned controversial aspects of Amma’s career – especially the corruption cases – The Hindu Business Line is perhaps the only to elaborate on her rocky relationship with the media. (Websites like The Wire and The Scroll mention it in passing.) In that sense, the media has been kinder to Amma than she was, especially in her later years when she blocked all access to the press and her government went after critical voices.