The Hindu Business Line : <I>Burying hatchets </I>

Many were dumbfounded at the recent coming together of two of Tamil Nadu's bitter political enemies Marumalarchi Dravida Munntera Kazhagam (MDMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagan (AIADMK) for the purpose of contesting the forthcoming Assembly election. It was long assumed that there could be no rapprochement between the two parties and that their leaders Mr Vaiko and Ms Jayalalithaa would not ever set their eyes on each other again.

Mr Vaiko had spent 19 months in jail in a case under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) launched by the State Government and before, during and after his incarceration, he had spared no pungent invectives to show his dislike of Ms Jayalalitha. Both have now unbelievably buried the hatchet.

However, history has a number of parallels where one-time irreconcilable enemies have shaken hands again. India's freedom heroes underwent great suffering and long jail terms (when jails were jails and not home from home) at the hands of the British, but they were magnanimous enough to invite Lord Mountbatten to become the new nation's first Governor-General. Not only that, Jawaharlal Nehru who had spent altogether 14 years as a prisoner of the British, was chiefly instrumental in India joining the Commonwealth accepting the British Monarch as the Head.

The stout opposition of Winston Churchill to Indian independence and his animosity to India's `seditionists' is well-known. But Nehru and Churchill, at their very first meeting in 1948 after Independence, were able to put the past behind them and remained friends till the end.

Nehru's inclusion of C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, the arch separatist, (who had declared the Travancore State independent and even appointed its Ambassador to the US), as a member of the National Integration Council and appointing him the Chairman of its Committee to suggest measures to fight separatism is another of those breathtakingly gracious acts.

There is nothing nobler than making friends of enemies.

B. S. RAGHAVAN