Jayalalithaa's supporters have in the past weeks achieved the impossible -- made Congress sycophants look good.

By Vivek Bharadwaj

The National Anthem of India can be easily tweaked for the people of Tamil Nadu, ending instead with an extra syllable: Jaya, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya hai.

When Jayalalithaa was sent to jail, hundreds of citizens of Tamil Nadu went into mourning. Even as ministers and party workers wept, dozens committed suicide. Movie stars and schools threatened to raise arms against the carriage of justice.

The scenes of bereavement repeated themselves yesterday when the former TN CM was denied bail, but with the added animosity against Karnataka for the temerity of incarcerating their 'goddess of justice.'

Their act of devotion towards the reigning queen of whichever jail she is lodged in is a bit puzzling.

Jayalalithaa is accused of the gross misuse of power. Essentially, those protesting her conviction and incarceration are unhappy because she is being punished for allegedly leeching off public money.

The victims, ironically, are ready to die for the alleged perpetrator of the crime. Stockholm Syndrome is the only thing that may even partially explain the phenomenon.

Sycophancy and subservience are ingrained deep into the Indian psyche. We are the country of mai baap, huzoor, barra sahab, bade babu and respected sir ji. Barriers to chamchagiri do not exist for us. But some in Tamil Nadu take it to a different level.

Take, for instance, the widespread hara-kiri that followed MG Ramachandran's death.

Perhaps the average Tamil heart is too emotional for logic. What it once accepts as its own remains its object of affection and devotion forever. Tamil loyalty—once apportioned—remains unwavering. And you have got to respect them for being liberally subservient to their deities from across caste, communal and geographic barriers. (Rajnikanth is from Maharashtra and Khushboo was born Nakhat Khan).

And sometimes they swing between two extremes. Consider the stark contrast between 1991 and 2013, when the pendulum of emotion swung between sympathy for the victim and then the assassins after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed. Soon after his assassination, Tamil Nadu had voted for the Congress and its then ally AIDMK; in 2013 the voters threatened to sway towards those in favour of letting the convicted assassins escape the gallows.

We can say that cultures that wish to assert their independent identities protect their symbols—political, social, and artistic— with mindless zeal. It can be argued that Tamilians can’t bear to see their idols being turned into villains. And, if the LTTE suicide bombers are the right example, we can infer that dying for a cause comes naturally to them.

There have been similar instances in north and central India without the suicidal drama.

When the Chautalas of Haryana were sent to jail, when Lalu was convicted and when Rajiv and Indira Gandhi were killed, there wasn’t a maddening melee of self destruction among their devotees -- though there was plenty of destruction of others, as is the 'healthy' way in Indian politics.

In spite of it being a shrine of sycophancy, nobody expects the Congress bhakts to skip even a meal, leave alone this existence, if the Gandhis were to be convicted in that National Journal case.

Jayalalithaa's supporters have in the past weeks achieved the impossible -- made Congress sycophants look good. Jaya, Jaya, Jaya, Jaya hai, indeed.