The Empress Without Anyone to Call Her Own

​The bright star that shone almost for three decades over Tamil Nadu is gone forever. Larger than life, it’s difficult to believe that she is no more. Hundreds of thousands who came to see their Amma for the last time were testimony to the fact that she was not just a leader but had grown into a phenomenon.

- Vijay Dutt

And this was not due to her mentor M.G. Ramachandran, who had died long time ago, but because of her pro-poor policies she had envisaged and implemented with great determination. “It came to me suddenly that my maker gave me fame and good fortune, I must do something for the poor,” she told me. I had not taken her seriously but in retrospect I realise she was earnest about helping the less fortunate.

Her welfare schemes ultimately replaced the breadwinner of families. Her ‘mother politics’, her giver image, led to her becoming more popular and more loved than her mentor, M.G. Ramachandran. And the number of dignitaries who flew to Chennai to pay their tribute to her indicated as well that she grew taller than MGR and more known as an outstanding administrator and politician than her mentor.

When she came to Delhi as a Rajya Sabha member, she was still known as a protégé of MGR. Yet her speeches in the House impressed Indira Gandhi. She invited her to a dinner she hosted for a visiting dignitary couple.

True, MG Ramachandran helped her rise in films and also inducted her in politics but it was her courage, her conviction and determination that brought her all that she desired, to be at the top in films where she was the highest earning heroine in Tamil films and when she joined politics, sweeping aside all her opponents and conspirators, she could, after MGR, become chief minister.