M Karunanidhi: Tamil Nadu's Kalaignar and torch bearer of federalism in Indian politics leaves a massive void

M Karunanidhi is dead. The characteristic rasping voice that has been one of the icons of Tamil Nadu's politics for over 60 years will speak no more.

Karunanidhi was arguably the senior most politician in India's history, both in terms of age and by the total number of years he had spent as an elected official. The 94-year-old recently completed 51 years as an MLA. He had also spent two years as a member of the now-abolished Tamil Nadu Legislative Council.

He was elected to the Tamil Nadu Assembly for the first time in 1957. That was only the second time that elections were being held in India after Independence. That was also the first of the 13 times he contested for an Assembly seat. He never lost an election.

Karunanidhi was also one of the most sworn-in Chief Ministers in India's history. He took oath as Tamil Nadu CM a whopping five times. West Bengal’s Jyoti Basu and Sikkim's Pawan Kumar Champing are tied with Karunanidhi. As of now, only Bihar's Nitish Kumar and Karunanidhi's arch-rival J Jayalalithaa have taken oath more number of times, at six each.

Karunanidhi never contested for a Lok Sabha seat, and never aspired for a role in New Delhi. He said as much in the tumultuous years of the late-1990s. A reporter asked him if he had Prime Ministerial ambitions since his ally at the time, GK Moopanar, was being talked about as a PM hopeful. Karunanidhi’s response was a classic, in his markedly indirect style. “I am fully aware of how tall I am,” he said.

Not a very tall man by physique, Karunanidhi was a veritable colossus of India's democratic polity.

He also recently began his 50th year as the president of the DMK. His leadership of the party was remarkable for the accessibility he maintained with both members of the public and journalists.

A master orator who bent the words and syntax of an ancient language to his will, Karunanidhi habitually sent the crowd into raptures each time he began a speech at a rally. After acknowledging everyone who shared the stage with him, he would end his prologue with, “… and you, the Tamil people, who matter more than my life.”

Karunanidhi was a political master in the literal sense. For much of his career, he was unable to defeat his friend-turned-foe MG Ramachandran, or MGR. He then found himself comprehensively unable to defeat MGR's successor, J Jayalalithaa, without stitching a massive alliance. The one time he was unable to pull many parties together, in the 2016 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, he lost.

Remarkably flexible in his politics, Karunanidhi has allied with the Leftists and Congress with the same ease with which he shook hands with the BJP or the Indian Union Muslim League.

Karunanidhi is among the last of a generation of politicians who came up through the anti-caste, anti-Hindi Dravidian Movement who received direct mentorship from giants like 'Periyar' EV Ramaswamy and CN Annadurai.

He rose to public prominence as the script writer for plays and movies that helped the Dravidian Movement spread its ideas and ideologies among a large base of lower-case and under-educated population who had only recently been enfranchised with the vote. It’s for this that he was referred to by the title 'Kalaignar', or artist.

His death now widens the chasm of a political vacuum in Tamil Nadu. The state has now lost its two biggest political presences in quick succession.

His son, MK Stalin, will now try to step in his father’s shoes. But whether the son's brand of politics can rise to the artistry of the father’s craft will play out through Tamil Nadu's years of interregnum that lie ahead.