Vijay’s secular win eases BJP’s southern push

AS in his countless films, Vijay has emerged as the victorious hero, this time in his electoral debut, vanquishing his rivals. Vijay's party, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), has decisively trounced the ruling DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance and the AIADMK-led National Democratic Alliance.

The Vijay wave did not spare even Chief Minister MK Stalin. He lost in Kolathur, from where he was elected hands down in the previous three elections, to a former DMK worker who joined the TVK earlier this year after being sidelined by the DMK.

Powered by votes from the young, women, minorities and Dalits, and the strong anti-incumbency against the DMK government of Stalin, Vijay's historic victory has all the makings of the kind of political shift that Tamil Nadu has seen only twice before: in the defeat of the Congress by the DMK in 1967, and of the DMK by the breakaway MG Ramachandran-led AIADMK in 1977. Unlike the AIADMK that had a pre-election alliance with Left parties, the TVK went solo in this election.

The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, a two-year-old outfit, is poised to win about 107 seats, with 118 required for a majority. The DMK, which in 2021 won 133 seats on its own and 159 along with its SPA partners, was trailing far behind with some 70-plus seats, with the AIADMK at the third place. Other DMK bigwigs, including several ministers, were felled across the state.

The DMK wunderkid, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, has also lost. His constituency houses the famous Madurai Meenakshi temple and was being eyed for its potential for communal polarisation, particularly as it is next to Thiruparankundram, where an old land row between the managements of a temple and a dargah has created communal disturbances in recent months.

The saffron party fielded C Sundar, husband of actor Khushboo, the party's Tamil Nadu unit vice-president. But in an ironic twist, the winner is Madhar Badrudeen, a Muslim candidate and a newcomer to politics, put up by the TVK, a party whose secular credentials are a silver lining of this election in which people voted for "change" without knowing what Vijay intends to change and how.

Despite the mega shift away from the two Dravidian parties, the likelihood of a hung Assembly remains high. The TVK's tally is short of the majority mark despite coming tantalisingly close to the magic number of 118 in the 234-seat Tamil Nadu Assembly. The Congress could be a natural partner.

Vijay, whose full name is C Joseph Vijay, is a Christian. In recent times, he has visited churches, mosques and temples, seeking to consolidate various religious communities behind him. He has also broken away a significant chunk of Dalit votes from the traditional representatives of the community, such as the Viduthalai Chirthaikal Katchi.

The Congress had reached out to him before the election, but abandoned the effort mid-way. The Pattali Makkal Katchi, which is now led by Anbumani Ramadoss, son of the founder, Dr S Ramadoss, is also a candidate, as it has no big differences with the TVK. A hung Assembly has always been a happy hunting ground for the BJP; so no party should be counted out.

In a state where the ruling party gets voted out every five years, the DMK believed it would be able to repeat what Jayalalithaa had pulled off in 2016 by leading the AIADMK to a second successive win. The DMK thought it could achieve this by side-stepping anti-incumbency and framing this election as a battle to keep intact India's federalism against the BJP's centralising tendencies and as a battle against Hindutva.

It focussed on cultural issues, such as the imposition of the Hindi language and the archaeological significance of Keeladi, and on the Centre's alleged partisan treatment in the allocation of finances, all of which were set to the "south-vs-north" tune. In all this, the AIADMK's alliance with the BJP was good campaign meat for the DMK. But TVK was the X factor. Stalin believed he could outwit Vijay by just refusing to acknowledge him as a threat. Clearly, none of this resonated with the voters.

Vijay, on the other hand, kept his focus on the DMK, highlighting allegations of corruption against the party and its leaders and questioning Stalin on his government's law and order record.

Vijay's voters likely included a record number of women, many of them believing that he would do more to "protect" them. Stalin's flagship programme, the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam (Kalaignar Women's Rights Grant Scheme), which gave eligible women an assured sum of

Rs 1,000 per month, was all but forgotten as women gravitated to Vijay en masse.

However, something more was also at work in Vijay's favour. His voters appear to have connected with him not for any particular election promise, which also includes Rs 2,500 per month for women-headed households, eight grams of gold and a silk saree for marriages and six free LPG cylinders annually.

It is clear that beyond a point, populist promises no longer help parties win elections. The AIADMK too promised Rs 2,000 and a host of other schemes. Such schemes are now taken for granted by the Tamil Nadu voter.

The vote for Vijay seems to have been driven by emotion rather than by his politics or ideology, of which little is known, as he has never given any media interviews.

Take, for instance, the stampede in Karur during a rally held by Vijay last September. Had it occurred at a DMK or AIADMK rally, the political leader at the spot and the party leadership could not have escaped blame for the 40 deaths which occurred that night.

But the victims of the Karur rally were convinced their hero was blameless, and were easily convinced that it was a conspiracy by the DMK to show Vijay in a bad light. The big sign that the DMK feared Vijay's popularity, more than it dared to acknowledge, was the government's failure to register an FIR against the star after the stampede. The challenge for Vijay now is to build a party with real workers instead of fans and find people with experience and calibre to help run both party and the government. It will be chaotic.

With a likely hung Assembly and the formation of a TVK-led coalition government, or a TVK government with outside support, Tamil Nadu can kiss goodbye to the stability of the last few years.

The last time the state was led by a minority government was in 2006, when the DMK formed the government with outside support of the PMK. The PMK was, however, a pre-election partner. The DMK has always been a formidable opposition party. Stalin's son Udaynidhi, who is among the DMK winners, has to prove his chops.

The comparison with Vijay, who is a couple of years older, will be inevitable in the political arena as it was in the world of films. He will need to show he can keep the inexperienced TVK on its toes, in the Assembly and outside. The AIADMK will be out to prove that it is not finished.

After winning West Bengal, the Modi-Shah election-winning machine will turn its focus to a state that has thus far thwarted the saffron party but is a Dravidian bastion no more.