BJP, TN’s Enduring Political Bugbear

 Chennai: ‘A Secret Pact with the BJP.’ This is the precise charge that both the leading political parties in the State, the DMK and AIADMK, trade against each other in a bid to win over the peoples’ goodwill in the context of the approaching Lok Sabha, thus making the BJP the common political bogeyman in the State and portraying it as an ‘undesirable.’

While the AIADMK is leaving no stone unturned to prove to the people of the State that its long association with the BJP, which began with the passing away of former party supremo and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, has indeed come to an end as all ties have been severed forever, the DMK has been saying it was not true.

Be it Chief Minister M K Stalin or DMK youth wing secretary and Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin or any other DMK leader, it is the ‘BJP link’ that comes handy to put down the AIADMK in the eyes of the people, while the AIADMK too is now making the same pointed charge against the DMK going one step over the earlier practice of reminding the people that the DMK was part of the Union Government headed by A B Vajpayee.

Former Minister and AIADMK MP C Ve Shanmugam openly stated in a recent meeting that the DMK has entered into a secret pact with the BJP and all its expression of opposition to the national party were farcical and aimed at hoodwinking the people. He categorically said that every vote cast in favour of the DMK would only go to benefit the BJP.

Stalin, speaking at Madurai after inaugurating the Jallikattu stadium on Wednesday, said that the BJP had told the Supreme Court that it did not recognize sporting events like Jallikattu and bullock cart race and that it had no plans of promoting those games and cited as proof the non-inclusion of those games in the Khelo Games that were started to encourage rural sportspersons.

In that bid to portray the BJP as anti-Tamiil, Stalin also reminded the people that the AIADMK government let loose the police on the protestors who took part in the Marina Uprising, thus painting the AIADMK, too, with the same brush.

Stating that Jallikattu was revived only because the Dravidian Model government waged a legal battle at the Supreme Court by averring that it was not just a sporting entertainment but was intertwined with the lives and culture of the farmers, he was trying to create a perception that the BJP and the AIADMK were one and the same when it came to Tamil identity issues.

Speaking at an event to honour Tamil language martyrs on Thursday, Stalin accused the AIADMK of standing by the BJP when it brought in a series of laws like the one to impose NEET in Tamil Nadu, GST that deprived the States of their tax revenue, the CAA and the one degrading Jammu and Kashmir into an Union Territory that were against Muslims and three agricultural Bills that Punjab farmers fought vehemently,.

So, even as the BJP is trying to form a separate political front in the State with some small and ramshackle parties and its State unit is making a bid to increase it presence, the leading Dravidian parties, heading their own coalitions, portray the BJP as a political bugbear by projecting their respective rival as a secret ally of the party ruling the nation.

In fact, a whispering campaign was launched ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections by Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) acolytes that voting for either of the two major fronts was the same as the AIADMK was in the BJP alliance already and that the DMK will support the party after winning the elections. The message was: to steer clear of the BJP, vote for NTK. Now both the DMK and AIADMK are telling the people to vote for them to keep the BJP at bay.