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Among the six southern states, Tamil Nadu (TN) has lately been conspicuous on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) radar, along with Telangana. Three events gave the BJP the traction it wanted.
In November 2022, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi inaugurated a month-long Kashi Tamil Sangamam in Varanasi, his Lok Sabha (LS) constituency. He called attention to the integral association of Kashi (Varanasi) and TN with Lord Shiva and said the confluence of the two strands was as “sacred” as the mingling of Ganga and Yamuna at Sangam.
Modi regretted that the Tamil language was not “fully honoured”, a statement meant to assuage the anti-Hindi sentiments that periodically rose to the fore in TN during the BJP’s nine-year rule at the Centre.
The second was the installation of the Sengol (the gold-plated sceptre) — a legacy of the Chola era signifying power transfer from one monarch to another — in the new Parliament inaugurated by Modi.
The third development was Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to Chennai and Vellore on June 11, which was significant for boosting the morale of the BJP cadres and talking up Modi’s appeal as a “unifier”, “transcending caste and linguistic identities”.
At a closed-door meeting of the South Chennai BJP executive committee, reports quoted Shah as saying TN should get a PM in the future, having missed the opportunity to send two of its leaders, Kumaraswami Kamaraj and Govindaswamy Karuppiah Moopanar, to the country’s top post in the past because of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK’s) “machinations”.
The reports triggered speculation that Modi might contest the 2024 election from TN. The state BJP President K Annamalai clarified, “That was purely addressed to our party workers”, adding, however, “it is all a rumour. But people are commenting… They want Modi to contest”.
A TN BJP source said the net effect of the developments showed that “it is the BJP’s first serious foray into a territory that didn’t receive much attention. In the past few decades, we almost forgot TN existed, so there’s no harm in trying to grow”.
According to Vanathi Srinivasan, Coimbatore South Member of Legislative Assembly and national head of the BJP’s women’s wing, the TN party was “gearing for the LS polls, concentrating on seats that the BJP lost (in 2019) by narrow margins and where the organisational strength was considerable, as well as expanding in new areas”.
Vanathi singled out the “place of highest honour” accorded to the Sengol as the “strongest message from the PM, reinforcing his respect for Tamil culture and sentiments”.
The Sengol’s symbolism and import were underlined by Shah in a public meeting at Vellore, where he appealed to people to elect 25 (of 38) National Democratic Alliance Members of Parliament from TN as an “expression of gratitude to Modi” for installing the sceptre.
While Narayanan Thirupathy, state BJP vice-president and media in-charge, claimed that the party was “filling the vacuum caused by the deaths of J Jayalalithaa and Muthuvel Karunanidhi”, the All India Anna DMK (AIADMK) matriarch and the DMK patriarch served a reality check.
“Telangana is a different kettle of fish because there is bound to be backlash against the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi after two terms. The BJP could as well step into the breach because our organisation is robust and we have state leaders. In TN, the organisation has to be built from scratch. We need state leaders to enthuse cadres. The old guard is gone, and the new guard needs to find its way,” he said.
The first issue the BJP needed to sort out was its alliance with the AIADMK, headed by Edappadi Karuppa Palaniswami, the Opposition leader in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. The on-off partnership ran into rough weather last week after Annamalai tangentially alleged that Jayalalithaa was among the most corrupt chief ministers.
The AIADMK passed a resolution against the BJP chief for “intentionally” defaming their late leader, to which Annamalai’s riposte was that the AIADMK need not impart lessons in coalition dharma to him.
“Annamalai’s remarks were uncalled for because Jayalalithaa stands supreme in TN,” said a BJP insider.
The second was whether the sanctified Sengol, with its religious connotation, was enough to elevate the BJP’s prospects.
Arun Kumar G, a political science professor at Bengaluru’s Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management and a keen follower of Dravida politics, believed religion was not the defining issue of Tamil politics.
“The defining issue is language, and caste is used as a factor to mobilise votes. The BJP wants to make religion a defining issue because it knows it cannot compete on language with the Dravida parties. But even the AIADMK is secular. It cannot assume the Hindutva mantle and complement the BJP,” he said.
K Veeramani, an associate of Periyar E V Ramasamy, the father of the Dravidian movement and president of the Dravida Kazhagam founded by Periyar, said, “In the land of social justice and rationalism, people don’t relate religion with politics. The BJP has money, muscle, and media; we have Tamil mind power.”
