The BJP is widely seen as pro-Hindutva and right-wing. The AIADMK, on the other hand, claims to follow the legacy of Periyar and Anna – an ideology fundamentally opposed to the BJP’s.
Published Jul 26, 2025 | 12:56 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 26, 2025 | 12:56 PM
The AIADMK was never a Dravidian party. It only appeared to be one because it splintered from the DMK.
Synopsis: AIADMK was not built on the ideals of Anna or Periyar. It was built on faith – unquestioning, uncritical devotion to the leader. As analysts put it, a faith that was also cultivated with the DMK’s blessing, before MGR used it against the party to great effect after their public split.
Loganathan M, 45, runs a shop in one of Chennai’s major market areas. His family has backed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) since his father’s time.
But Loganathan has taken it further: he’s shed blood for the party. In 2022, during a violent clash between supporters of O Panneerselvam and Edappadi K Palaniswami, Loganathan – an EPS loyalist – suffered a head injury that needed 16 stitches.
Asked what the AIADMK means to him, he said: “It’s in my blood. It’s the party built and nurtured by the ‘Puratchi Thalaivar’ MGR, the ‘Puratchi Thalaivi’ Amma (J Jayalalithaa), and Edappadi Ayya (Palaniswami).”
KPS Anbarasu, 54, is a lifelong Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) supporter from Puzhal in Chennai. Like Loganathan, his political loyalties run in the family.
“It’s about rights for Tamil Nadu – state autonomy, federalism at the Centre,” he told South First. “We should govern ourselves. The central government shouldn’t rob us of our rights. Whenever Tamil Nadu faces an issue, DMK is the first to raise its voice.”
When asked, “If your leaders weren’t around, would you still be with the party?” Loganathan replied: “It’s not like that. This party was built by those leaders. That’s why we remain. It’s also a party that gives responsibility and space to the grassroots.”
Anbarasu, when asked if he valued a particular leader or Tamil Nadu more, didn’t pause: “Tamil Nadu.”
Both men inherited their politics. But their loyalty is rooted differently – Loganathan sees the party through its leaders; Anbarasu, through the state.
This leader-centric loyalty is what Dravidian scholar MSS Pandian called “unquestioned devotion” or “faith in the leader” – a distinctive mode of political belonging.
Now, with AIADMK reviving its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a familiar question has resurfaced: does the party still carry a Dravidian identity?
The BJP is widely seen as pro-Hindutva and right-wing. The AIADMK, on the other hand, claims to follow the legacy of Periyar and Anna – an ideology fundamentally opposed to the BJP’s.
So what is the AIADMK’s Dravidian identity today? Can it still be called a Dravidian party?
To answer that, it’s worth going back to how the party was born – and how its Dravidian image was crafted in the first place.
Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran (MGR), then a popular actor and the DMK’s then Treasurer and most recognisable face, was expelled from the party on 14 October 1972 by Chief Minister and DMK President M Karunanidhi for allegedly violating party discipline.
Though several reasons were cited, it is widely believed that MGR’s public accusations against party functionaries and senior ministers triggered his expulsion.
Thousands of his followers quit the DMK with him. The very next day, MGR revived a dormant registered party called Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, originally founded by Anakaputhur Ramalingam.
He pitched the move as a symbolic gesture – aligning himself with an “ordinary party worker.” Just three days later, on 17 October, he renamed the outfit the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
Five years on, in the 1977 Assembly elections, MGR led the AIADMK to victory and became Chief Minister – a post he held until his death ten years later.
After his passing on 24 December 1987, the party split into two factions – one led by his wife, Janaki Ramachandran, and the other by MGR’s close aide, the actor-turned politician J Jayalalithaa.
Though the AIADMK lost the following election, Jayalalithaa’s faction secured more seats than Janaki’s. Janaki eventually withdrew from politics, and Jayalalithaa took full control, becoming the party’s permanent General Secretary.
In the 1991 Assembly elections, under Jayalalithaa’s leadership, the AIADMK won 164 seats and she became Chief Minister for the first time. Over the next two decades, both she and the party saw their share of setbacks and comebacks – facing electoral defeats in 1996 and 2006, and returning to power in 2001, 2011, and 2016.
Until her death in 2016, Jayalalithaa remained the party’s undisputed leader and Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister. She was succeeded by Edappadi K Palaniswami, who held the post for the next four years.
The party then plunged into a bruising leadership tussle between O Panneerselvam and Palaniswami. As of now, Palaniswami has largely consolidated his control over the AIADMK.
In his seminal book The Image Trap: MG Ramachandran in Film and Politics, MSS Pandian notes that before 1967, Tamil Nadu had not truly experienced a democratic political structure.
The DMK built one by mobilising backward and marginalised classes, ushering in a political transformation that, to a significant extent, mirrored their aspirations.
And within a decade, MGR rose to power. Pandian argues that, paradoxically, it was the very groups empowered by the Dravidian movement who suffered most under MGR’s regime. Yet they did not abandon him in large numbers. Why?
In The Image Trap, Pandian offers a data-driven analysis of how charisma cultivated through cinema reshaped Tamil Nadu’s politics – paving the way for a distinctly populist model within Indian democracy.
One excerpt, cited by Pandian from the many biographies of MGR, reads: “If he produces four or five films, he can earn crores. He knows that very well. Then why is he not acting? No law prevents him from doing so. Do you know the reason he gave up acting? It’s because he wants to serve the people of Tamil Nadu. He wants to wipe away their problems.”
If the passage sounds familiar, it is because such statements are hardly new in Tamil Nadu, where the transition of film stars into politics is a well-worn path.
Jayalalithaa, Vijayakanth and most recently Vijay, with his newly founded Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, have all followed versions of this script – with varying degrees of success. MGR had carefully constructed such an image long before them, as Pandian notes.
In The Image Trap, Pandian cites Tamil scholar K Sivathamby, who distilled MGR’s cinematic political appeal even before his split from the DMK:
“Whereas Annadurai and Karunanidhi provided the arguments for the whys of social oppression, MGR provided the how for a breakthrough. Thus, the latter had more traces of wish fulfilment, which explain a high percentage of fans identifying him as one who acts than as one who reflects, as one of deeds and not necessarily of mere words.”
Pandian observes that MGR was strategic in his choice of roles. On screen, he dispensed justice, enabled education, and protected women – always from a position that resonated with the subaltern.
His food, costume, dialogue, and character were all calibrated to reflect the everyday life and struggles of the marginalised. Over time, people began to see themselves in him.
Pandian cites a 1986 public opinion survey by the Department of Statistics at Madras Christian College:
“Forty percent of respondents strongly supported MGR, while another 30 percent had a positive opinion of him. Only about 20 percent opposed him. His strongest support came from landless agricultural labourers in villages. Among illiterates, 60 percent were strong supporters of MGR, whereas only 20 percent of college-educated respondents expressed strong support.”
In essence, MGR commanded the backing of the poorest of the poor.
His film roles – rooted in the ethos of the Dravidian movement, which shared elements of leftist thought— resonated deeply with subaltern communities. They were not accidental. MGR played the peasant, fisherman, rickshaw puller, gardener, carter, taxi driver, quarry worker, circus performer, shoe-shine boy, cowherd – figures from working-class life.
Many of these professions even made it to film titles: Thozhilali (The Worker, 1964), Vivasayee (The Farmer, 1967), Padagotti (The Boatman, 1964), Mattukara Velan (Cowherd Velan, 1970), Rickshawkaran (Rickshaw Puller, 1971), and Meenava Nanban (Friend of Fisherfolk, 1977).
There were also overtly political films like Manthiri Kumari (1950), Sorga Vasal (1954), and Nadodi Mannan (1958), aligned with the Dravidar Kazhagam and DMK’s ideology.
When Nadodi Mannan, starring MGR, completed a 100-day run, the DMK held a grand procession in Madurai. The event culminated in a public meeting addressed by CN Annadurai himself, where MGR declared:
“Nadodi Mannan was made to show that the DMK is the party that serves the people of this country.”
While MGR’s popularity drew crowds – and likely votes – for the DMK, the party’s public celebration of his stardom ultimately left its ideological base exposed, according to Pandian.
Instead of embracing the rationalist, policy-oriented politics of Periyar, Annadurai and Karunanidhi, subaltern groups began to gravitate toward the mythic resolutions MGR offered on screen. In this shift, Pandian argues, the DMK inadvertently lost control of its ideological narrative.
After the formation of the AIADMK, DMK leaders, including M Karunanidhi, began referring to it dismissively as the Nadigar Katchi – the “party of the actor.”
At the time, DMK propaganda even mocked cinema as a deceptive, misleading influence. But as Pandian notes, the warning came too late. Throughout the 1960s, the DMK itself had used cinema to its advantage, fusing political ideology with cinematic charisma. That weapon had now turned against them.
MGR’s screen persona – consistently portraying him as a saviour – combined with party-led projection, earned him the subaltern’s unquestioning devotion, Pandian writes.
“This devotion bordered on the religious. At the All-World MGR Fans Conference held in Madurai in 1986, a fan infamously pulled a thaer (temple chariot) carrying a cut-out of MGR – as he appeared in the film Arasa Kattalai – for nine kilometres, with iron hooks pierced into his back.”
“When MGR fell critically ill in 1984, the outpouring bordered on mass hysteria: 20 rickshaw-pullers cycled all the way from Bangalore to Chennai to see him. At least 21 people set themselves on fire, amputated fingers, or engaged in other acts of extreme self-sacrifice in the hope that the ailing leader would recover.”
Pandian points out that this moment laid bare how fragile the Dravidian movement’s decades-long campaign against religion truly was. The surge of devotional fervour that followed MGR’s illness was evidence that symbolic and emotional politics had overtaken rationalist discourse.
In the end, Pandian argues, the AIADMK was not built on the ideals of Anna or Periyar. It was built on faith – unquestioning, uncritical devotion to the leader. A faith that was also cultivated with the DMK’s blessing, before MGR used it against the party to great effect after their public split.
Though the AIADMK includes “Dravidian” in its name, what qualifies it as a Dravidian party? What defines one in the first place?
There’s no fixed grammar or checklist, says Tamil Kamarajan, a scholar, editor, and researcher known for his work on religion, philosophy, and political thought in Tamil intellectual history.
The Dravidian movement was built on non-Brahminical ideology and sought to empower all oppressed communities, including Dalits.
“Periyar never believed in Indian nationalism. Even during the time of India’s formation, he maintained the same stance. He saw Indian nationalism as a structure that oppressed him – one that didn’t permit the annihilation of caste. That’s why he demanded a separate Dravidian nation,” Kamarajan told South First.
“While Annadurai shared some of these views, he believed political power could be harnessed through governance. He had a distinctive vision about what could and could not be compromised in that pursuit. He was a unique political thinker.”
He continues: “Anna prioritised uplifting non-Brahmin communities by eliminating caste-based hierarchies. He viewed opposition to Hindi not just as a linguistic stance, but as resistance to Brahminical power protecting its own interests. This was the ideological core of a Dravidian party. Even when the DMK made certain compromises, it remained rooted in these principles.”
So, has the AIADMK ever championed these ideals?
While the party has occasionally invoked them, Kamarajan argues these were never foundational to its politics.
“The formation core of the AIADMK is populism,” he asserts.
In his view, the AIADMK was never a Dravidian party. It only appeared to be one because it splintered from the DMK. At its heart, it has always been a populist formation.
Over time, the AIADMK has openly distanced itself from Dravidian ideals. Kamarajan points out that it has absorbed elements from nationalist and right-wing ideologies.
He cites examples from both MGR’s and Jayalalithaa’s eras to illustrate how right-wing tendencies became embedded in the party’s politics.
“It’s about co-opting the political aspirations of the oppressed – not to bring systemic change, but to sustain populist appeal,” he says.
One of the clearest examples is the rise of Hindu majoritarian symbolism. Kamarajan notes that it was during MGR’s tenure that the first Vinayaka Chaturthi processions were introduced in Tamil Nadu – a cultural pivot with lasting political impact.
In his paper The Vinayaka Chaturthi Festival and Hindutva in Tamil Nadu, CJ Fuller of the London School of Economics details how the festival took root:
“In Chennai in 1983, a small group of Hindu activists from the Hindu Munnani, RSS, and BJP installed a Vinayaka idol in public in West Mambalam. A few days later, they took it in a procession to a temple tank for immersion. By the next year, more idols appeared in several neighbourhoods. By 1990, a major procession of tall idols in Triplicane led to violent riots with Muslims near the Ice House mosque. From these small beginnings, Vinayaka Chaturthi rapidly expanded across urban and rural Tamil Nadu.”
This is further backed by Pandian’s research: “Of the 79,000 roadside temples in Tamil Nadu, an estimated 27,000 were erected during MGR’s illness.”
However, it’s undeniable that the AIADMK also carried strands of leftist politics within it — largely because it split from the DMK in the first place. The DMK and Dravidian ideology have long echoed leftist ideals—with Periyar himself endorsing socialist principles.
The DMK can also be described as a left populist Dravidian party. However, elements of right-leaning thought — particularly on issues like capitalism — do exist within the party as well. That said, the DMK is by no means a party that stands wholly against the interests of the oppressed.
According to Chantal Mouffe, a Belgian political theorist known for her work on radical democracy and populism, left populism presents a democratic alternative to neoliberalism and the rising tide of right-wing populism.
It seeks to construct a broad, inclusive identity of “the people” against a common elite by linking diverse struggles—those of workers, feminists, migrants, and others—into a unified political front. Mouffe stresses that emotion—affect—and strong leadership are essential to mobilise public support, challenging the traditional Left’s overdependence on pure reason.
In that context, it is natural for a party that split from such a political tradition to carry some traces of leftist thinking. At the same time, the AIADMK has pragmatically navigated between left and right ideologies, using them flexibly based on the needs of the moment.
Political analyst Gladston Xavier offers another lens for assessing whether a party is truly Dravidian: leadership. In the century-long Self-Respect Movement and the DMK’s 75-year history, not once has a Brahmin held the top post.
So where does that place Jayalalithaa?
“Even if she came from a forward caste, she claimed to follow the ideological path of Periyar, Anna, and MGR,” says Gladston. “She never publicly identified herself as a member of a forward community.”
But Kamarajan counters this with a sharp reminder: Jayalalithaa once openly described herself as a “Pappathi” (a colloquial term for a Brahmin woman) on the floor of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.
He also points out that it was Jayalalithaa who introduced laws such as the anti-conversion bill and bans on animal sacrifices – policies traditionally associated with right-wing Hindu conservatism.
Ultimately, Kamarajan argues, the AIADMK’s image as a Dravidian party persists only because it emerged from the DMK and adopted its outward frame. But from MGR to Jayalalithaa, none of its leaders genuinely upheld the ideological foundations of Periyar or Anna.
In Tamil Nadu, language, state rights, and welfare are not just policies – they are emotional triggers. Any one of them can spark instant mass mobilisation.
This brings us back to the core question posed by MSS Pandian in The Image Trap: M G Ramachandran in Film and Politics. Using data, Pandian shows that under MGR’s rule, tax benefits largely favoured the middle and upper classes, while the tax burden on subaltern groups actually increased.
And yet, he asks: why did those very communities worship MGR as a divine saviour?
Political economists A Kalaiarasan and M Vijayabaskar, authors of The Dravidian Model, offer a response. Their research shows that while the DMK politically empowered socially excluded communities by integrating them into governance and giving them access to institutional power, the AIADMK positioned itself as a poverty-relief mechanism – casting MGR as the singular protector of the poor.
Tamil Kamarajan notes that this distinction was also underscored by S Narayanan in The Dravidian Years.
This, he says, is why the DMK speaks of emancipation – of social justice, equality, and freedom from caste hierarchies – whereas the AIADMK frames its politics primarily around poverty eradication.
MGR never engaged in the ideological labour of dismantling caste hierarchy, as the Dravidian movement sought to do, says Kamarajan. Instead, he operated within the framework that the movement had already created – or responded to pressure from opposition parties.
MGR’s politics, Kamarajan explains, shifted the discourse from caste oppression to a simplified rich-versus-poor binary. It was MGR who first introduced income-based criteria for reservations in Tamil Nadu.
But after a major electoral defeat in 1981, he reversed course and returned to strengthening caste-based reservations.
Kamarajan recalls another instance – after Periyar’s death, at a memorial event, then Chief Minister MGR remarked:
“Periyar was a non-believer – why would he say that people from all castes should become priests?” The statement drew immediate and sharp condemnation from Maniammai, Karunanidhi, and others.
In Kamarajan’s analysis, “the AIADMK reflects many features of a right-wing populist party. Though it may appear ideologically ambiguous, its political orientation has always tilted rightward – from MGR’s tenure onward.”
“Through a kind of leader worship, much like religious devotion, MGR nurtured the image of himself as a heroic protector. This helped him capture the votes of people who were oppressed and yet unable to challenge elite power through institutional politics,” says Kamarajan.
This strategy helped MGR hold on to power for nearly a decade. During that period, the party suffered defeat in only one parliamentary election – and even then, it swiftly reversed course, repositioned itself, and returned to power. Kamarajan notes that Jayalalithaa later adopted the same approach.
Both Tamil Kamarajan and political analyst Gladston Xavier note that the nature of the alliance between the AIADMK and the BJP has shifted significantly over time.
During Jayalalithaa’s era, the BJP was hardly the dominant power that it is today and needed a strong, credible state party like the AIADMK to gain a foothold in Tamil Nadu. Today, Gladston observes, the alliance seems less like a strategic partnership and more like a compulsion.
Kamarajan adds that in recent campaign speeches, Edappadi K Palaniswami’s messaging does not appear to resonate with either party cadres or the wider public. There is a growing perception that the BJP alliance is being maintained reluctantly – possibly under pressure.
Whether this alliance will even hold until the 2026 Assembly elections remains unclear.
“This is a crucial election,” says Kamarajan. “Unlike MGR or Jayalalithaa, Edappadi Palaniswami doesn’t have mass popularity. On the other hand, actor Vijay is emerging as a charismatic figure, but he lacks a strong party organisation. When MGR launched his party, his fan clubs seamlessly became political branches. They were grassroots-ready, capable of campaigning door-to-door. Vijay has no such structure in place.”
How Edappadi’s leadership holds up will largely be revealed by this election. What happens to the AIADMK without a central, charismatic figure, Kamarajan says, remains to be seen.
According to Gladston, both the DMK and the AIADMK retain strong, long-standing voter bases. “There are people who will vote for AIADMK just by seeing the ‘Two Leaves’ symbol,” he says.
However, over the past four years, the DMK has expanded its base through various welfare schemes – reaching new voter segments. This widened reach could prove decisive in the next election.
“In the end,” Gladston adds, “the real swing will come down to how each party campaigns in the final two weeks before the polls – and how deeply their messages connect with people.”
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
