Breaking The Myth: BJP's Southern Surge Challenges 'North-South Divide' Narrative

Since the emergence of Narendra Modi in national politics and the transformation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from one of the two poles in India’s polity into its dominant player, its opponents have attempted to foist a host of manufactured narratives in response.

These have ranged from the ‘suit boot ki sarkar’ to 'chowkidar chor hai’ to the never-ending ‘Ambani-Adani’ chants.

Among these has also been the accusation that the BJP is primarily a party restricted to ‘North India’ and ‘Hindi speakers’, with the ‘educated and sophisticated’ southern voters not falling ‘prey’ to Hindutva and its alleged mischiefs.

This theory recently gained more traction with the party’s loss in Karnataka and its sweep of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chattisgarh. That the Congress managed to be the victor in both Karnataka and Telangana only served to accentuate this point.

As an argument to convince the layperson, this is a fairly potent one. A glance across the map of India and the states that are under various political parties will make it fairly plain that none of the major south Indian states are being ruled by the BJP or its allies.

In addition to its potency, it is also a fairly simple point to make and communicate to the masses, which is why it has caught the imagination of most of the opposition — some, ironically, with even lesser footprint in the south than the allegedly ‘north Indian’ BJP.

For an opposition, this plank has an immediate play. Hence, we have seen the spectacle of leaders from multiple south Indian states upping the ante against the central government over the issues of ‘state’s rights’ and the allegedly unfair devolution of the taxes from the Centre.

In truth, this narrative is more a measure of the opposition's desperation rather than their confidence going into the 2024 general election. Let us remember that the south in its entirety contributes 130 seats to the Lok Sabha out of 543. Even sweeping the south will not guarantee the opposition any sort of victory against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

The actual reason for this hyperventilation may lie in the dynamics within the opposition itself. Despite the blasé front put on by Rahul Gandhi, Congress insiders will undoubtedly know that they are facing a rout in 2024. Their sights are set on elections post-2024. They expect some sort of anti-incumbency to set in then and somehow stumble to power with a hotch-potch alliance.

But for this to even be a possibility, it is critical that the party survives the next general election with its current structure and the Gandhi-centered leadership somewhat intact. A reduction of seats in the Lok Sabha for the party would be the death knell to any such possibility, and hence, holding its base in the south is key to its survival as a credible opposition force.

In 2014, the Congress managed to sweep Kerala with 19 seats out of 20 and also piggyback the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to eight out of nine seats contested in Tamil Nadu. That is a grand total of 27 out of the 52 seats it won, coming from two states.

Despite the high anti-incumbency against the Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala, the Congress tally is expected to go down in Kerala, at least marginally. And its growing irrelevance on the ground in Tamil Nadu leaves it at the mercy of the DMK in Tamil Nadu — with the Dravidian party expected to play hardball over seat splits this time around.

Even if the Congress wants to negotiate seats with the newly secularised All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the prospective alliance is not expected to dent the DMK to any great extent.

This puts the Congress in a fairly desperate situation to compensate for losses in the two southern states under its rule — Karnataka and Telangana. While gains may be realistic in the latter, the situation is expected to be dire for the party in the former post the Janata Dal (Secular) entering the NDA.

Bear in mind the even greater danger the Congress sees on the horizon — a BJP sweep in Karnataka and a hold in Telangana have the potential to put the Congress governments in both states under severe pressure.

The situation is just as dire for the left — its only government in the country is facing incredible anti-incumbency with the image of its once-popular Chief Minister at an all-time low in Kerala. Which is why the Kerala Chief Minister has embarked on a trip to Delhi, which almost seems like a carbon copy of the ones his Congress counterparts are undertaking.

It is this threat of possible political irrelevance beyond May 2024 that has led the opposition to amp up the rhetoric of a north-south divide.

Not that this can ever be considered an excuse for what the opposition is doing. The idea of a north-south divide, as most readers would know, is a dangerous one — deriving its intellectual heft from an imaginary theory created by missionaries as an intellectual fountainhead to harvest souls in the south.

During the cusp of independence from the Raj, it morphed into one which sought another partition of India in the south and then, post-independence, morphed once more into one of the most prominent attempts to Balkanise the modern Indian nation. 

As far as political concepts go, it is as dangerous as the two-nation theory, and one that should be nipped in the bud.

There is also the fact that this is not a narrative that has any sort of major traction in the south. Karnataka and both Telugu states have never subscribed to separatist tendencies.

The case is slightly different in the case of Tamil Nadu. And despite being the modern fountainhead of the north-south narrative, the situation is not as clear cut as the opposition would have you believe. Even though most Tamilian parties have the term ‘Dravidian’ in their names, neither the AIADMK (under MGR and Jayalalithaa) nor the DMDK ever played up the ‘divide’.

Even among the supporters of the DMK — by far the most vocal proponent of anti-north-Indian sentiments — the level of support for ‘secessionist’ ideologies is rather limited.

Core voting groups of the DMK also comprise a host of landowning castes (some with Telugu origins) who, while buying into the social justice narratives of the party, are primarily driven by caste and business considerations, and remain welded to the concept of the modern Indian nation while also being deeply pious.

Nevertheless, the DMK did achieve a measure of success at the state level in driving the north-south divide from the days of the Jallikattu agitation and, in the absence of any other credible narrative, continues to see it as the goose that lays the golden egg.

Additionally, the spirit of the Dravidian movement has remained ingrained in the minds of party ideologues, its top leadership, its cadre, and its media lackeys — perhaps, a numerical minority in the larger scheme of things but a group that wields immense power in the political structure of the state. 

It is the electoral success of the DMK over the past five years that the opposition has been using as a template against the BJP because it represents the one narrative that has achieved some measure of success against the BJP juggernaut, albeit temporarily and within a limited geographic sphere.

This also brings us to what could be the possible answer to this narrative. The past few weeks have seen numerous spokespersons from the government side reel off statistics and present evidence on tax devolution, the constitutional framework of Centre-state relations, and so on.

But the truth is that the 'north-south divide' narrative can only be countered by the BJP achieving unarguable success in the south. And while the modern political map might not look too conducive to the objective today, the truth on the ground is quite different.

Politics has to be viewed in terms of both present-day realities and also in terms of trends and contexts. Let us apply the same lens to this particular argument.

In terms of the present situation, there is little doubt that the BJP has much to do in the south to reach close to the level of dominance it has in other parts of India. But it is when you take a deeper look at the potential for the party in the region that the whole truth reveals itself. 

Leaving aside the cases of Andhra Pradesh, where even the most steadfast BJP supporter would agree that there is a lot of work to be done,  and Puducherry, where the BJP is part of the ruling coalition, every other state is one where the BJP’s graph has undoubted potential to trend upwards.

Despite the reverse of 2023, the party’s strength in Karnataka is well-known, and the electoral dominance it has shown in national polls is only expected to continue into 2024 and set it up to launch a strong bid to return to power in the state. 

In both Telangana and Tamil Nadu, the BJP is a growing party. The recently concluded assembly polls in Telangana saw the party double its vote share and be primed with the potential to usurp the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) as the main opposition party in the state. 

In Tamil Nadu, the party under K Annamalai has emerged as a formidable opposition force, with most pollsters expecting a huge jump in the party’s vote share in 2024. His ongoing yatra across the state has drawn substantial crowds, prompting even anti-BJP political analysts to acknowledge the party's ascendance in the state.

Meanwhile, in Kerala, the BJP faces distinct challenges on both demographic and narrative fronts, which played out to great effect in the 2021 elections. However, subsequent local body election results indicate that the dip in 2021 is not a lasting trend, and the BJP maintains its foundational support in the state despite incessant attacks from the local media, terror groups, and the left government.

This is also consistent with how the BJP leadership looks at the south — not as an area of weakness but as one with the potential for expansion.

The Prime Minister’s references to Telangana during his victory speech in December (despite the loss in the election), his constant visits to both Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and his efforts to go the extra mile to ensure that the south was adequately represented in the Prana Pratishtha at Ayodhya indicate the conscious decision to effect a leap for the party in the region.

This is a daunting prospect for the opposition. The BJP has recently worked to consolidate its position in its regions of strength — retaining Uttar Pradesh, taking back Maharashtra, effecting a generational change in a host of states, and expanding the NDA.

A post-2024 focus on the southern states is imminent and very much in sync with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s philosophy of investing effort in regions with long-term objectives in mind.

And this time, chances are that these efforts will be led by a formidable BJP, fresh into its third term at the Centre, with an opposition that could very well be struggling for relevance.