(This is the sixth in a series of insightful reports from the ground, titled The Race From India to Bharat. The author travels all across India as 960 million voters get ready to celebrate the largest festival of democracy in the world: the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. What do ordinary Indians think and feel about the past, present, and future of India? Are they convinced that the old fault lines are healing?)
(Read part one here, part two here, part three here, part four here, and part five here.)
There is deep passion, a hint of steel, and a keen sense of anticipation as we discuss the new player in town. Raja M Shanmugham says it is for the first time in many decades as an entrepreneur and observer of Tamil society and politics, that he senses a small crack in the impregnable fortress that Dravidian parties have built, nurtured and sustained since 1967.
We are discussing K Annamalai, the president of the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a man with a seemingly impossible mission to make his party a force to reckon with in the state. A man from a very humble background, Annamalai is a former IPS (Indian Police Service) officer who took early retirement to join the BJP and spearhead a possible place under the political sun.
He has run such an aggressive campaign against the monopoly and alleged misrule of the two Dravidian parties that the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), a partner within the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) snapped off ties with the BJP, blaming Annamalai for the divide and rancour. Undeterred, the 39-year-old former police officer launched a five-month-long pan Tamil Nadu yatra. On 27 February, he will share the stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi who will be addressing a rally that day in the southern city of Coimbatore.