Why Are Ailments of Indian Politicians Regarded as State Secrets?

In context of reports of Jaya being unwell, TS Sudhir asks why are ailments of politicians regarded as state secret.

All is well in Chennai. Or so the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu would like us to believe. A press release issued on Tuesday said Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa chaired a meeting on Cauvery in her room at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai.

With rumours about her ill-health circulating wildly, prompting many to wonder who is in charge of the Tamil Nadu government while the CM is in hospital, the government decided to tell the world that Amma was at work even from her hospital bed. A photograph would have worked even better but in Tamil Nadu’s over-secretive milieu, that is like asking for the moon.

Speculations Around Jaya’s Health

Jayalalithaa's suspected medical ailments are strictly off bounds for the media. Particularly after two publications and BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy received defamation notices last year for ascribing false illnesses to its leader, according to AIADMK. This time the media has only faithfully reproduced Apollo Hospitals’ press release which only says that the CM is under observation and on normal diet.

There are no clear answers on why then she has been in hospital since Thursday night or why the hospital chose not to let reporters into a press conference about Jayalalithaa's health status. Only the cameras were allowed to record a statement on Sunday.

Brushing Health Issues Under the Carpet

It is this highly secretive approach that fans wild rumours in over-imaginative mode, with WhatsApp forwards – the 21st century Narada in cyber town – giving it momentum.

Three decades ago, when the then AIADMK supremo MG Ramachandran was similarly admitted to hospital, no one had a clue what he suffered from. A veteran journalist recalls that it was only when some people saw him being wheeled one day to the floor where dialysis took place at the hospital, the world put two and two together and gathered that he suffered from a kidney ailment.

‘Top Secret’ is on the medical file of most Indian politicians given the larger-than-life persona that they try to cultivate. Leaders perhaps do not like to be seen suffering from ailments as it would dent the image assiduously built up over the years. That information should be given only on a need-to-know basis is what most politicians and even industrialists in India believe.

Ailments are a State Secret

Which is why when Congress President Sonia Gandhi, arguably the most powerful leader during the UPA decade, took off for the US even when the Anna Hazare movement was shaking the roots of her government in mid-2011, no one knew what the medical problem was.

Congress leaders, most of them equally clueless, fell back on the desire-for-privacy argument. The statement revealed next to nothing when it said that Sonia had been diagnosed with a medical condition that required surgery and that on medical advice she had travelled abroad for two to three weeks.

Similarly, Manmohan Singh's angioplasty was revealed just a day before he entered the operation theatre in 2009. The tendency to treat it like a state secret stems perhaps from the very real fear of rivals within the party sharpening knives or the real ailment peppered liberally with exaggeration to make the leader look more sick than he or she really is. With high stakes, if the leader in a position of power takes ill, it is considered politically prudent to keep it under wraps.

What if Everybody Knew Jinnah Had Tuberculosis?

Perhaps that is why Mohammed Ali Jinnah strategically never let the world know that, suffering from tuberculosis in 1946, he did not have time on his side. Perhaps the history of the subcontinent may have been remarkably different if Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and the rest knew about it and decided not to rush with freedom with a partitioned India. Jinnah died in September 1948, just 13 months after Pakistan came into existence.

When Trump Took a Dig at Clinton’s Health

But while fellow Indian politicians and even the media to a large extent choose not to speculate over health issues of their leaders, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has decided to focus on his rival Hillary Clinton's ailments, questioning her “mental and physical stamina” all through the campaign.

Trump may be a maverick but he has asked a very pertinent question. After all, politicians wielding enormous power — in this case, the most powerful person in the world — have to be medically fit to take the right decisions, so that unknown to the rest of the world some aide does not indulge in backseat driving.

Realising that lack of fitness could be a serious impediment to Clinton's path to the White House, her managers released her medical records that revealed that she underwent surgery and brain scans earlier this year.

Tamil Nadu, however, proved an exception to the rule when MGR won the 1984 election from the hospital bed in the US. It did not matter to voters that he was not in the best of health, as the sympathy for the movie star-turned-politician worked like magic at the ballot box.

Health Used as an Excuse to Escape Prison

It is ironical that the only time Indian politicians are liberal with releasing information about their ailments is when they are sentenced to a spell in prison. It is then that all sorts of illnesses tumble out of the closet, to push for bail or admission to hospital.

(The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at @Iamtssudhir. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)