Congress dodges a bullet after dilly-dallying on alliance with DMK in Tamil Nadu

The Tamil Nadu Assembly election is barely weeks away, and the seat-sharing deal between the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Congress is set to be sealed, with the national party’s high command authorising senior leader P. Chidambaram to finalise the pact. This puts to rest what had been a dangerous temptation within sections of the Grand Old Party — the idea that an alliance with actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) could be a viable alternative to the party’s long-standing ties with the DMK. This was cultivated by some second-rung leaders in the Congress for vituperative personal reasons and used by those frustrated over seat-sharing issues as a bargaining chip, bringing the talks between the parties to a precipice. The alliance held, but the episode deserves examination, not just as a tactical question but as one which is core to the meaning of progressive politics in Tamil Nadu and what is at stake to preserve it.

It is imperative to understand the nature of the fledgling force that the TVK is and what it stands for, while evaluating the Congress’s near-dalliance with it. On September 27, 2025, 41 people, many from poor and marginalised backgrounds, were killed in a crowd crush at a TVK rally in Karur. The facts of the TVK’s failure in organising the rally are not in dispute. The party’s rallies had for months been designed primarily to showcase frenzied crowds rather than communicate any substantive political message. Vijay’s arrival at Karur was deliberately delayed by nearly seven hours to maximise crowd size. Organisers grossly underestimated attendance, expecting 10,000 but drawing over 25,000, and the crowd waited for hours without basic provisions before the actor spoke briefly and fled the venue as did other lieutenants of his party.

Rather than accepting responsibility, the TVK flooded social media with conspiracy theories suggesting sabotage, despite no evidence. Vijay himself made these claims. When the Madras High Court constituted a Special Investigation Team and made pointed observations about the TVK’s conduct, the party successfully obtained a Supreme Court order transferring the probe to the CBI. During questioning in January 2026, Vijay claimed he was “not responsible” for the stampede.

The party relies on whipping up mass hysteria as a means of mobilisation and a personality cult instead of ideology. There is the token presence of visages of leaders such as Periyar, Ambedkar, and Kamaraj on rally backdrops, but the party merely pays lip service to them. Its political project has been built almost entirely like a fan club rather than a democratic party. This is not a party any force committed to constitutional values can meaningfully align with.

Key election

As I have argued in these pages, Tamil Nadu stands at a pivotal economic moment. It is India’s second largest economy and is pursuing the transition from a middle-income economy to a high-value, innovation-driven model, a shift that requires sustained investment in research and development and diversified exports, possible only by good governance capacity and fiscal autonomy.

The State’s economic success has been built on the base of a distinct political culture. Tamil Nadu’s bipolar Dravidian system, for all its flaws of patronage and competitive populism, produced a governance model that combined industrialisation with welfare, and the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance, with its internal structure of mutual accountability between the Congress, the Left, the VCK, and the DMK, is well placed to deepen that model. The 2024 sweep of all 39 Lok Sabha seats was a consequence of the ideological coherence made possible by each party in the alliance shedding old antipathies toward the others.

The Congress, by staying the course, has ensured that this coherence holds, at least for now. But the episode exposed how fragile the structure can be when one of its essential pillars even entertained the thought that the alliance was dispensable. The DMK-led alliance is not merely a State-level arrangement; it is a critical link in the national opposition to the BJP’s centralising, majoritarian project. It is about demonstrating that an alternative to the BJP’s politics of social engineering and minority-bashing can be not just morally necessary but electorally viable. Had the Congress walked away, it would have broken the chain symbolising the INDIA bloc in Tamil Nadu at one of its strongest links.

What makes this alliance and Tamil Nadu’s political culture more broadly worth fighting for is also the nature of voter choice in the State. Yes, a substantial number of Tamil Nadu’s voters remain beholden to patronage and clientelism. But there exists a significant and politically aware section of the electorate shaped by decades of Dravidian mobilisation, rationalist movements, and a vibrant civil society spanning literature, cinema, and popular culture. It stands with parties committed to social justice and decentralised power (federalism), and is willing to judge governments by governance and performance rather than mere pandering to identities of religion and caste.

This is in stark contrast to what is thriving in States across the north and west, where social engineering and the generation of hate against minorities have proven sufficient for parties to win elections, regardless of their record on jobs, public services, or institutional integrity. Tamil Nadu has, thus far, resisted this straightjacketing of voter choices into narrow communal binaries. That resistance is among the State’s most valuable political assets.

Battle of ideologies

The promise of Tamil Nadu’s relatively progressive politics is seen in the linking of welfare policies, even direct benefit transfers, with accountability for governance practices and government responsiveness. This is possible only when the political contest is predominantly one of principles and clear-cut ideologies, alongside being a referendum on governance. This is why governments have alternated between the two Dravidian parties and their respective alliances over the decades, a competitive dynamic in which constitutional values such as secularism and social justice have never come under fundamental threat or question.

Yet even as this case for ideological coherence is made, there are worrying signs within the DMK-led alliance itself. The recent entries of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam, and of O. Panneerselvam and his supporters, into the alliance raise legitimate questions. The DMDK, with a residual vote base from the late Vijayakanth’s appeal, and Mr Panneerselvam, a three-time Chief Minister from the AIADMK whose political career has been defined by the politics of patronage and a near-obsequious dependence on the BJP rather than ideological commitment, do not naturally belong in an alliance whose core constituents share a framework of social justice, secularism, and democratic accountability.

The logic behind these inductions is to do with realism and the additive accretion of support from sections backing these parties and individuals. In the short term, especially in a potentially four-cornered contest with the TVK and Seeman’s Naam Tamilar Katchi drawing votes, this arithmetic makes sense. But in the medium term, alliances that dilute ideology for marginal electoral gains risk affecting the distinctiveness of the progressive formation. The DMK, for its part, must recognise that keeping the alliance’s ideological core intact requires more than accommodating new entrants. This demands a new compact with its existing partners, one that shares not merely seats but governance responsibilities, especially in local bodies.

The Congress has, in the end, could make the right choice. Its future in Tamil Nadu and its national relevance as a force for progressive politics lies in strengthening its partnership with the DMK and the alliance’s ideological core, not in chasing the mirage of a personality cult. The 41 who died in Karur remain a reminder of what personality cult politics costs. Tamil Nadu deserves a contest in which constitutional values are not subordinated to star power, unlike in a national polity increasingly defined by communal mobilisation.

srinivasan.vr@thehindu.co.in

Published – March 04, 2026 01:00 pm IST