When lotus dreams of striking roots under two leaves

One of the most repeated lies in Tamil Nadu politics is that AIADMK and BJP are “natural allies”. The two parties were in alliance for three Lok Sabha elections (1998, 2004 and 2019) and one assembly election (2021) – and they lost three – but to call themselves natural allies is an insult to both. One is a party desperate to find takers for its ideology, the other struggling to find its lost ideology. At best, it’s a marriage of compulsion.

With Edappadi K Palaniswami succumbing to pressure from BJP’s national leadership to rejoin NDA, the lie has been resurrected to run the treacherous road to the 2026 assembly polls. The false impression that AIADMK and BJP make political partners has its genesis in J Jayalalithaa being the first chief minister to greet Narendra Modi when he became Gujarat chief minister in 2001. Jayalalithaa’s temple visits and public display of Hindu rituals when DMK was still carrying the vestiges of Periyar’s atheism added to the notion that BJP may find it cozy in AIADMK’s company.

 Image caption – Edappadi Palaniswami with Amit Shah in Chennai

But Jayalalithaa was smarter than those who misread her: She never allowed BJP to be part of her alliance in any assembly election. She led NDA to victory in the state in 1998 but withdrew support to the Vajpayee govt a year later. The only other Lok Sabha election AIADMK under her leadership joined hands with BJP was in 2004 – and they lost all the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the one in Puducherry. AIADMK registered handsome victories in 2001, 2011 and 2016 without BJP. In 2021, the two parties joined hands, and their alliance got just 75 seats as DMK stormed to power.

Since Jayalalithaa’s passing on Dec 5, 2016, AIADMK has been a pale shadow of its past, though EPS did well in retaining the party leadership amidst internal turmoil and continuing as chief minister till the term ended in 2021. Arithmetically, an AIADMK-BJP combine will be marginally better than the two parties contesting as part of separate alliances as they did in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections that the DMK-led alliance swept in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

And having Nainar Nagenthiran, a former AIADMK man at the helm of BJP in place of K Annamalai could be a balm on the frayed nerves of the two parties that have been at each other’s throats since their separation in Sept 2023. The positives end there. As the election campaign begins, the cadres of the two parties will find it difficult to work together at the grassroots because of the leftover bitterness and distrust.

NDA chairman Amit Shah was understandably desperate to cobble up this alliance, especially since DMK has been a thorn in BJP’s flesh, trying to rally opposition parties against the Union govt over delimitation and National Education Policy. For BJP, letting DMK return to power in 2026 would mean a bigger headache nationally and a growing impediment to the party’s efforts at broadening its weak base in Tamil Nadu.

BJP is trying in Tamil Nadu what it did successfully in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh – riding pillion with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP. The difference here, however, is that AIADMK, unlike JD(U) and TDP, has been coerced to coexist with BJP. And that could make all the difference. Analyzing its defeat in the 2021 assembly election, AIADMK leadership had arrived at a near consensus that being seen as BJP’s ‘B’ team harmed its prospects, though the party won 66 seats (BJP won four).

The reunion may marginally benefit BJP, which anyway has not much to lose, but if the lotus is serious about striking roots in the Dravidian land in the distant future, it cannot be under the shadow of two leaves.