Sasikala, Jayalalithaa and Barkha Dutt

These are random thoughts on reading an article from Barkha Dutt on how Sasikala was judged in the context of what happened to Jayalalithaa. Here is the link to the article. https://t.co/kmqV8Qw3Nk
In fact I have noticed that in recent times almost every act is judged in relation to another similar act in the past. It is ok for Congress to disrupt the parliament because BJP did that when they were in opposition. What happened in the case of Wendy Doniger’s book is acceptable because Congress government banned Satanic Verses. The judgement on Sasikala was too harsh because Jayalalithaa did not get the same treatment. It is quite silly to to be outraged on what happened to Tarek Fatah in the Urdu festival because you did not protest when someone poured ink on someone else.


It is as if there is no way of judging the merit of the case in point without leaning on a precedent. It is not that this approach of comparison makes it any easier to conclude on the issue. There are always multiple conflicting precedents to look at. The never ending twitter wars go on with ‘what about this case’, ‘what about that case’, and so on as long as the participants want to keep at that thread.


Now coming back to the Sasikala story as seen by Barkha. She hints that Sasikala being a maid in her past has something to do with how she was judged. She was led to this stand based on a couple of why’s that she asked herself. Let’s look at some of those why’s.
  1. Why did OPS celebrate when Sasikala was convicted when he did not celebrate the conviction of JJ? To me, answer to this question is quite simple as it does not have anything to do with Sasikala being a maid once. OPS saw Sasikala as his competition for the throne. As long as JJ was around, he did not even aspire to it. So the case is different there.
  2. Why did people of TN protest against JJ’s conviction when they did nothing against Sasikala’s? The answer to this not as simple as the first one. The wide protests of the people of TN in JJ’s cased was not based on any cold rationale of criminal justice. It was based on bhakti. That word is abused quite a lot these days, but I had to use it as I did not see any other good alternative. As of today, Sasikala does not invoke any emotion close to bhakti in people. Not because she was once a ‘maid’, but because so far she has not done anything to deserve the bhakti.
Bringing up the class dimension to this discussion appears quite mischievous. First of all, even if Sasikala was a rich relative of JJ, I don’t think she would have got any more sympathy from the people. On the contrary, she might have even received less. Secondly, Sasikala does not belong to any ‘maid’ class any more. So why rake it up now?

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