Jayalalitha – The Iron Woman of Politics

[This was originally published in Bangalore Mirror on 6th Dec, written by AR Venkatachalapathy] In 1981, a Tamil film titled Aaniver was released. A lowercaste girl from a village clears the UPSC examination and becomes a collector. But her childhood sweetheart and husband is illiterate, creating considerable difficulties as the girl tries to perform her social and official roles. Unable the resolve this tension, in melodramatic fashion, she resigns from the civil services to play a dutiful role as the conventional wife. A nondescript film by any standards, I remember it for a review published in the now-defunct weekly Idhayam Pesigirathu. Feminism …

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