From its inception, the AIADMK-BJP alliance in Tamil Nadu was a result of the support needed by factions of the Dravidian party to take control of the government and the party after the death of former Prime Minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa in 2016.
The support of the BJP and the central government was perhaps the main reason why former Prime Minister Edappadi Palaniswamy (EPS) managed to take over and hold on to power.
Today, he is the party’s undisputed General Secretary, but he first had to fight former Prime Minister O. Paneerselvam and then Jayalalithaa’s former aide Sasikala Natrajan, who, ironically, helped appoint EPS as Prime Minister.
However, while the BJP’s support was useful in retaining power, it was a useless alliance when it came to electoral realities. The alliance won only one of the state’s 39 seats in 2019 and lost power in the 2021 assembly elections. Historically, none of the Dravidian parties have been able to exert any electoral influence in an alliance with the BJP after 1999 in Tamilnadu.
Jayalalithaa forged an alliance for the 2004 Assembly elections, but it was rejected 39-0 by the DMK-Congress combine. Thereafter, while publicly showing her closeness to the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she avoided entering into a formal alliance.
It was a lesson that in the electoral mathematics of Tamil Nadu, an alliance with the BJP, which is ideologically incompatible with the Dravidian political vision, alienated a core section of the Tamil polity and was thus a futile proposition.
The DMK learned this lesson in 2001, when it lost the Tamil Nadu elections as an ally of the NDA. While the party remained in power in the NDA till 2004, it switched to an alliance with the Congress before the Assembly elections, and that alliance has endured till now despite serious differences and a brief lull during the 2G scam years.
This history is a repetition of the fact that the AIADMK has no compelling electoral reason to remain in an alliance with the BJP. It had stayed there to enjoy the Centre’s influence and also because EPS is close to the top central leadership of the BJP.
Against this backdrop, the state BJP unit led by K. Annamalai has been aggressively reiterating its identity. The former IPS officer belongs to the same OBC caste as that of E Palaniswamy. Although Annamalai lost the 2021 Assembly elections, he was at the forefront of the battle against the DMK and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin.
His yatra across the state – he is still on tour to visit all 234 assembly segments that the AIADMK leadership has not joined – is an attempt to both build the party, which still has only a meager electoral presence, as if to establish himself as a personality. to keep in mind. A strong personality and cult following are an essential feature in Dravidian politics and EPS is not seen as a powerful orator or a charismatic leader.
There is genuine fear among the AIADMK that the BJP will eventually build itself up in the state by taking over the AIADMK’s caste vote. Given that the DMK is firmly in power under Stalin and is a staunch ally of the Congress, it is clear that the rise in the BJP’s vote share will have to come from the AIADMK.
To summarize, firstly, there is no compelling electoral reason for the AIADMK to remain in the alliance and secondly, there is a perceived threat to its voting rights from its own ally. Even these two reasons were not strong enough for the AIADMK to break the alliance. The final straw was a blow to its very ideological and emotional foundation.
In recent years, sections of the state BJP leadership have aggressively asserted their ideological beliefs. Dravidian politics is built on the foundations of linguistic identity born of anti-Hindi agitation, rationalism and social justice. There is a significant minority population in the state and the Dravidian parties have made co-opting them a cornerstone of their identity. All this makes an aggressive, ideological iteration of Hindutva unacceptable in the state.
While all this was simmering, Annamalai’s comments reported that DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) founder CN Annadurai, popularly called Anna, had “made fun of Hinduism in 1956” and his alleged comments on Jayalalithaa were a flashpoint. (The AIADMK split from the DMK after Anna’s death and still sees him as its guiding light)
In fact, the first paragraph of the AIADMK’s resolution released on Monday to quit the alliance states that “over the past year there has been a planned, deliberate and premeditated attempt to misrepresent those considered gods of our movement ”.
All this is set against the backdrop of the Sanatana Dharma showdown between the BJP and DMK scion Udayanidhi Stalin. In Tamil Nadu, the ideological positions of the AIADMK are the same as those of the DMK. While the DMK is more aggressive in asserting it, the AIADMK cannot distance itself from it.
A week ago, when the AIADMK leaders started making statements about breaking the alliance, it seemed like the party was flexing its muscles at a time when seat-sharing negotiations with the BJP were going on. There were reports that the BJP had demanded up to 15 seats – it was allocated only five seats in 2019 – and that had caused division in the alliance. But the AIADMK’s statement clearly indicates that this decision is not merely a threat to advance negotiations.
The strongly worded resolution makes it clear that the party leadership feared a loss of image among its executives and had to make a show of storming out. Especially with the DMK talking about the BJP, the AIADMK could not be seen as capitulating. Not only the image of the party was at stake, but, more importantly, the image of its leader: EPS.
It seems very difficult for the AIADMK to walk back to the BJP after such a strong statement, but in politics, nothing is impossible. However, the only wiggle room would be if the BJP bows to it, and does so publicly. Ultimately, without the AIADMK, the BJP may find it difficult to even begin writing a Dravidian election narrative in Tamil Nadu’s 39 parliamentary seats and 1 in Puducherry.
(TM Veeraraghav is Editor-in-Chief, DailyExpertNews)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.
