Many Chiefs, No Chorus

Tamil Nadu’s opposition must find a common voice if it hopes to dislodge a tired but still-preponderant DMK.

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu’s Opposition has begun campaigning for the crucial Assembly election this year by contradicting itself. When Amit Shah declared recently at a rally in Pudukottai that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would form the next government in the State, Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS), leader of the AIADMK and the BJP’s principal ally, responded within hours by insisting that his party alone would return to power.

Shah’s assertion was delivered at the conclusion of the BJP’s Tamilagam Thalai Nimira Tamilanin Payanam yatra, a carefully staged effort to signal that the party has finally shaken off its outsider status in the Dravidian heartland. His pitch was expansive as he invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and promised a “revolutionary journey” for Tamil Nadu, while vowing to uproot M.K. Stalin’s DMK. He argued that a combined BJP-AIADMK vote share in recent elections would have yielded sweeping parliamentary victories.

However, his ally EPS, speaking the same day in Salem, was unimpressed. EPS said that Tamil Nadu did not elect coalitions but governments and that the new government in 2026 would be the AIADMK’s alone. The contretemps has exposed a divided Opposition with barely four months left for the polls.

This lack of coherence automatically gives the advantage to the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which, for all its vulnerabilities, still enjoys a position of preponderance. Five years in office have dulled the DMK’s reformist edge while several promises from employment generation to urban governance remain under-delivered. Yet the DMK continues to benefit from a fractured opposition and from its deep-rooted command over the state’s political narrative.

That narrative, however, is beginning to fray. The DMK has retreated into an increasingly insular interpretation of Dravidianism, treating it less as a broad project of social justice and linguistic pride and more as a closed ideological preserve. What began as a radical movement to dismantle caste hierarchies and entrenched privilege now functions as a gatekeeping creed, invoked to delegitimise critics rather than broaden participation. Power within the party is tightly concentrated, and in the grooming of Udhayanidhi Stalin as future Chief Minister, the DMK has come to resemble the very dynastic politics it once claimed to oppose.

The party’s confrontational posture on religion has further narrowed its appeal. Provocative rhetoric on Sanatana Dharma and repeated administrative curbs on Hindu rituals have energised its loyal base while alienating a wider electorate that distinguishes between rationalism and ritual denigration. The Dravidian movement’s original challenge to orthodoxy was aimed at emancipation from social exclusion; its present incarnation increasingly reads as cultural belligerence.

Against this backdrop, the BJP’s renewed push into Tamil Nadu deserves context. For decades, it has tried and failed to crack the Dravidian fortress. From contesting alone in the 1990s, to aligning with the AIADMK at various points, to mounting cultural and symbolic overtures under Modi, the party has steadily increased its vote share but not its footprint. Its recent emphasis on Tamil language recognition in form of civil-service exams, railway announcements, a Subramania Bharati chair in Varanasi, translations of the Thirukkural is a conscious attempt to blunt the charge of cultural alienness.

But the BJP still lacks the organisational depth and local leadership needed to challenge Dravidian parties on their own turf. That makes alliance politics unavoidable. An NDA that speaks in multiple voices only reinforces the DMK’s claim that it alone offers stability.

If Tamil Nadu’s politics is to be renewed, the DMK’s long-standing dominance needs to be challenged by a credible alternative. And the Opposition must get its own house in order. That means agreeing on leadership and purpose rather than fighting parallel campaigns against each other.

Tamil voters have, in the past, shown a willingness to punish arrogance and reward coherence. Whether they do so again in 2026 will depend on whether the opposition can present itself as a single, serious challenger to the DMK’s insular order that increasingly mistakes longevity for legitimacy.