The BJP needs a new Southern strategy, and Annamalai could be the starting point

The rise of the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), a political party set up by actor Joseph Vijay in Tamil Nadu, implies the slow uprooting of Dravidianism in the state. With a 35 percent vote share, TVK is still lower than the combined share of the DMK and AIADMK, with 45 percent, but a far cry from the above 70+ percent combined share that the latter held in 2021.

The Dravidian identity, artificially created during colonial rule, is about racially dividing Indians between the Aryan north and the Dravidian south. It also has a caste component of virulent anti-Brahminism. Tamil politicians raise the idea of the Dravidian identity to ridiculous levels of differentiation, where the Hindi north is pitted against the south, where even the supposed Hindu religious connections between north and south, as evidenced by the existence of thousands of temples in southern India, is deemed to be different from the the north. It is less so outside Tamil Nadu, but the undercurrent is there. There are cultural differences, but to treat the south as another planet is the handiwork of bigoted politicians.

This racism, which had its origins in Tamil Nadu’s Periyarist politics, has been given a rude jolt by the rise of Vijay’s TVK, but it will not entirely go away, for the two Dravidian parties will try to fan it whenever they see an opportunity. Even Vijay, who is a Christian by faith, sees the BJP as an ideological opponent, and, if his party starts losing traction politically at some point, he may also find Dravidianism a useful political tool to deploy.

This makes the BJP’s rise in the south a difficult one. If the party really wants to grow deep roots in the four main southern states, it needs to have a different strategy from what works for it in the north, west and even east now after the victory in West Bengal.

In one line, it must use K Annamalai - currently sidelined as the BJP’s leader after the national party cosied up to the AIADMK in the run-up to the Tamil Nadu assembly elections - far more sensibly efficiently. Like BS Yediyurappa in Karnataka, Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam, and Suvendu Adhikari in West Bengal, the BJP needs leaders in the south who are not necessarily rooted to the RSS - though they may have no problems with it. Annamalai is one conduit to this future.

Before we get back to Annamalai, it is worth understanding how southern politics may be different from that of the north, west or east. To emphasise, each state is different, but the south has had a different history than the north, west and east, and this matters.

In the north, which saw the worst destruction of temples during various phases of Islamic rule, the primary religious divide is Muslim-Hindu due to this iconoclastic history. In the east, especially Assam and West Bengal, too, this divide is clear, and it is additionally threatened by the proximity of Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which is a source of both Hindu refugees and Muslim livelihood seekers. In both Assam and West Bengal, elections have taken on a direct anti-Muslim tonality due to this growing demographic threat. In West Bengal, the Muslim population is upwards of 27 percent, and in Assam well above 34 percent. The demographic threat is real, not imagined. And Hindu-Muslim polarisation works up to a point, as long as other factors - tribal and caste identities and livelihood issues - are also given high priority.

In the south, the primary religious demographic threat to Hindu identity comes not from the mosque, but the church, which is not just globally connected, but well-funded and far more subtle in its anti-Hindu rhetoric and conversion tactics than the ulema of the north. The church runs massive educational and health institutions which most Hindus prefer to state institutions, and additionally, Hindu religious institutions are under the thumb of the state. The basic Hindu attitude in the south is not anti-Christian, though this has begun changing in many parts of the south which have seen massive religious conversions.

The Hindu demography has shrunk steadily in Kerala (less than 55 percent now), and has deteriorated substantially in Andhra Pradesh during the rule of the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy and his son, the YSR Congress’s Jagan Mohan, both of whom were Christian and had strong evangelical links. 

While the official Christian numbers will have to be updated after the ongoing census, there is little doubt that the final numbers will continue to be understated as new converts tend to formally retain their Hindu identities in order to get quota benefits. While the 2011 census (adjusted for the carve-up of Telangana, puts the number of Christians in bifurcated Andhra at just 6.8 lakh, Surendranath C, an independent researcher, puts the numbers at anywhere between 50-60 lakh based on the claimed numbers of various Christian denominations (Catholic, Protestant and independent ministries) themselves, which would make it 10-12 percent of the total population as in 2011. A former YSR Congress MP, Raghu Ramakrishna Raju, stated on TV that the actual numbers could be as high as 25 percent. 

In Tamil Nadu, where the Christian church is very powerful in terms of cinematic and political clout, actual Christian numbers may be higher than what the census figures state, again because many new converts report themselves as Hindu in order to avail themselves of quota benefits.

The clout of the church should be obvious from the fact that in Andhra Pradesh, we have already had two Christian Chief Ministers, YSR and his son, while Tamil Nadu has just got its first one in Joseph Vijay. Kerala will see an actual Hindu as Chief Minister after many decades this month, assuming we ignore the outgoing CM, Pinarayi Vijayan (a Communist atheist), and Oomen Chandy (a Christian) before him. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK leadership is nominally Hindu but atheist. So, the Hindu leadership footprint in the south is pretty tenuous despite their still overwhelming demographic presence.

But here’s the crucial difference with the north. The demographic threat is not in-your-face, and the church is far more subtle in the way it tries to influence politics. Even more important, as the country’s economic engine, the four southern states are far more conscious of their economic aspirations than the north, and any crude anti-minorityism will backfire badly on the BJP. 

The ideal way for the BJP to play the long game in the south is to, first, build its own leadership with solid local roots. This is what K Annamalai represents. 

One way to make it happen is to not just restore Annamalai to the leadership position in Tamil Nadu, but also give him a pan-south jurisdiction with the brief to find promising new leaders who can help grow the party in the south. The top BJP leadership must also defer to him when choosing local allies for short-term electoral gains, and not do its own thing, as it did before the recent Tamil Nadu assembly elections.

The BJP cannot grow in the south without creating its new Yediyurappas and Annamalais. The former is out of active politics, but Annamalai, at 41, is not just young, but has the rootedness and charisma needed to build the party not only in Tamil Nadu, but elsewhere in the south too. He can be the BJP’s Himanta Biswa Sarma, who helped the BJP expand its footprint in the north east, in the south.