Why Tamil Nadu is a tough playbook for BJP| LME 92 | Pooja Prasanna

In India today, it's easier to find a state ruled by the bjp than one that isn't. 

But there's one state that has stayed stubbornly out of the BJP's reach. 

Massive rallies, star campaigners, big promises, the BJP throws everything at it. 

But their winning formula just doesn't work here. 

Which state is this? 

The answer lies not just in politics, but in history, in identity, in culture, colliding in ways the BJP has never fully been able to grasp. 

That state is Tamil Nadu - where rules of politics are written very differently.

In Tamil Nadu, BJP's usual playbook just doesn't land, 

They have draped Tiruvalluvar in saffron 

Staged Murugan Yatras 

Used deaths and land conflicts to polarise 

Sure, some of it has shown small dividends 

But never enough. 

So let's look at the story of Tamil Nadu and why it remains the BJP's toughest battleground, 

and what's the party's game plan to finally break through? 

Let Me Explain. 

Tamil Nadu votes next year. In the run-up, you’ll see endless stories about alliances, seat math, and sound bites. But that rarely explains why things happen.  

At TNM, we go deeper — connecting the dots, tracing context, and making sense of the political landscape.

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Tamil Nadu has always been a different political universe. 

The state has been shaped by Dravidian movements, rationalist politics, and anti-caste struggles.

Leaders like Periyar, who thundered against Brahminical orthodoxy and unequal social orders

CN Annadurai, who built a political movement around Tamil identity, rationalism, and social justice.

And thinkers like Ayyothee Thass Pandithar, who challenged caste oppression  

That legacy left its mark.

Religion is important for Tamils, but it was rarely treated as the central axis of politics. 

Caste, language, and social justice mattered far more.

Politically, the arithmetic is simple. No party can come close to power while the DMK and AIADMK dominate.

Many have tried. Vijayakanth, Ramadoss, Seeman… and now Vijay is in the fray.

At some point, if let’s say a weak AIADMK weakens further, can the BJP move into that space?

This is the question that political thinkers in the state are looking at

And the BJP is making every effort to enter the Tamil psyche 

Tamil Nadu has resisted BJP but that doesn’t mean they were absent. 

Back in 1990, LK Advani’s Ram Rath Yatra had tried to bring the Ayodhya movement here. 

There was communal tension followed by the Coimbatore blasts masterminded by extremist Muslim organisations but the polarization did not work.

The BJP’s only breakthroughs came through alliances — with both the AIADMK and DMK in the late ’90s. 

But those votes weren’t really the BJP’s. They belonged to the Dravidian parties. And when the alliances broke, the BJP was left without a base of its own.

Let’s now break down the anatomy of Tamil Nadu’s resistance to the BJP  

The line between “Tamil identity” and “Dravidian ideology” has blurred so much over the decades that many people see them as the same. 

And that blurring has kept Dravidian parties dominant 

The BJP has been trying to redraw that boundary

But their method has been less about language or rights

It’s been more about religion, specifically Tamil religiosity.  

Take their push to appropriate Hindu god Murugan. In 2020, BJP launched the Vel Yatra, carrying the spear of Murugan across districts and over the years has done many campaigns around Murugan

The thing is, Murugan isn’t just another deity in Tamil culture. 

He is deeply tied to Tamil identity — celebrated in Sangam literature, worshipped across castes, and framed by Dravidian leaders as a distinctly Tamil god.

That’s why, for the BJP and Hindu Munnani, Murugan has become the perfect point to bridge the gap between Tamil pride and their national ideology.

But attempts to fold Murugan into a pan-Hindu framework have been viewed as outside interference.

It isn’t just Murugan.

The 2021 Kashi–Tamil Sangamam was to link Tamil culture with the Hindu heartland in Banaras.

Subramania Bharathi, seen as a voice of Tamil nationalism and social reform, has been reframed as a proto-Hindutva figure.

Tiruvalluvar too has been “saffronised” — his Thirukkural, a classic of Tamil ethics, reinterpreted through Hindu nationalist readings.

BJP leaders quote the Thirukkural, pose with Tiruvalluvar statues, and try to show familiarity with Tamil-Dravidian heritage. 

Tamil Nadu celebrates Rajendra Chola as Tamil pride. The BJP projects him as pan-Indian Hindu glory.

In July 2025, Modi went to Gangaikonda Cholapuram, unveiled a coin, and promised giant Chola statues.

In Madurai, the contest is sharper. Thirupparankundram hill is sacred to Murugan, but it also houses a centuries-old Sufi shrine. That layered sacredness is what the BJP and Hindu Munnani are challenging — pitching it as the ‘Ayodhya of the South’.

But all these cultural strategies haven’t paid off much. Their limits become clearer when we look at issue-based mobilization. 

In Tamil Nadu- the BJP almost never sets the agenda.

For that matter, neither does the Congress. 

Unlike in northern states where they dominate the narrative, here they have only responded to debates. Like NEET, fiscal federalism, Hindi imposition, and state autonomy.  

Language offers one of the clearest examples of this gap. The BJP cannot abandon Hindi, since it is central to their national project. 

At best, they can say “all languages are important,” but that rings hollow in a state deeply invested in linguistic pride.  

The BJP’s usual strategy of religious polarization- or Muslim alienation has also fallen flat.

Tamil Nadu never experienced the trauma of Partition. 

The region has historically had a more syncretic Hindu-Muslim coexistence, 

But that has not stopped the BJP from trying. 

Here again, what works elsewhere for them does not translate because of Tamil Nadu’s unique social fabric.

The obstacles are not only cultural but also political. 

AIADMK under Jayalalithaa made things even trickier for the BJP. She blended Dravidian identity with elements of soft Hindutva. 

Jayalalithaa backed the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya 

She pushed through an anti-conversion act in 2002. 

These moves accommodated Hindu sentiment but kept the BJP out of the central frame. 

There is also a deeper ideological mismatch that has kept BJP at the margins. 

The Dravidian movement was born in resistance to “Aryan” cultural domination. Hindutva, on the other hand, is steeped in a sense of Aryan pride and nationalism. That clash is not just political, it is ideological. 

But there have been places where the BJP has made inroads

At the southern tip of Tamil Nadu, in Kanniyakumari, the party has pockets of real influence. 

A region with a near 50–50 Hindu-Christian population, layered with caste dynamics and anxieties around religious conversions.

Here, groups like the Kanniyakumari Hindu Senai, with hundreds of ex-military veterans, have mobilised local communities. 

The RSS built temple committees and youth shakhas. 

Seva Bharati, offered education, medical camps, even disaster relief  

This became a model. What the RSS called the “Seven Sisters Plan” — a strategy modelled on their work in the north east, meant to expand systematically across the southern and western districts of Tamil Nadu.

The BJP also is growing in the Kongu belt. Many of its leaders are from this region

They have also focused on winning over specific communities like the Gounders for example

 The BJP has visibility like never before. The Madurai conference showed they can marshal crowds and project momentum.

But electoral reality is different. 

For many Tamils, the BJP’s project continues to feel imposed, even when dressed in local symbols. 

The Murugan conference, then, isn’t proof that Tamil Nadu has flipped.

It’s proof that the BJP is willing to fight a long game here — shifting from temples to shrines, from poetry to welfare schemes, from cultural symbolism to street power.

One thing is clear. Tamil Nadu, once seen as immune to Hindutva, is now one of its most important battlegrounds.

Now before you leave, one thought. 

Consider the spaces where you feel most private — a theatre seat in the dark, a doctor’s clinic, even your own home. 

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Producer: Megha Mukundan

Script: Lakshmi Priya, Pooja Prasanna

Camera: Ajay R

Editor: Nikhil Sekhar ET, Dharini Prabharan