Opinion Why Congress can’t afford to leave DMK in Tamil Nadu

Over time, the Sixteenth Constitutional Amendment’s anti-secession turn pushed the DMK to press harder on the federal idiom. At the same time, the split in the Congress weakened the party in Tamil Nadu, as the DMK consolidated. It culminated in a pact between Indira Gandhi and DMK in 1971, where DMK would maintain its dominance in the state assemblies and Congress (I) would be prioritised in parliamentary elections.

Years later, the rise of MG Ramachandran and the AIADMK made it more difficult for Congress, as the party’s older social bases, especially in parts of western and southern Tamil Nadu, were steadily absorbed into the new Dravidian bipolar party system. Tamil Nadu continued to produce nationally prominent Congress leaders, but the state unit increasingly lacked a durable organisational structure. Splits and factional churn, including the 1996 Moopanar breakaway that gave birth to Tamil Maanila Congress, compounded the decline and left the party thinner on cadre depth and internal cohesion.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, a stable pattern had settled in despite the turbulence. In Assembly elections, Congress accepted a smaller footprint; in Lok Sabha elections, it bargained for a better share. The DMK, for its part, often found it useful to accommodate Congress in parliamentary contests as a marker of opposition unity, even while keeping state-level power concentrated within the Dravidian two-pole system. This is unlike regional parties elsewhere that, as their leverage grew, insisted on converting state strength into a larger Lok Sabha share.

This arithmetic has repeatedly rewarded Congress: In 2019, the DMK-led alliance swept the state, and Congress won nine of the 10 seats it contested, reflecting not a Congress resurgence but the coalition’s capacity to transfer winnability to partners. That is precisely what the present Chennai-Delhi quarrel is about. MPs and aspirants want a harder bargain, even ministerial berths; the state leadership warns that brinkmanship risks the only formula that works, especially when Congress contested just 25 Assembly seats in 2021 and won 18. In those conditions, the threat to walk away is less a bargaining chip than an admission of weakness. Rahul Gandhi’s emphatic positions on social justice and federalism, and his attempt to project an alternative vision at the Centre, further tighten the DMK-Congress fit, despite periodic factional noise.

There is also a political-culture constraint. Drawing from CN Annadurai, Dravidian parties have long preferred to keep control over the government at the state level. This convention limits Congress’s ability to convert alliance membership into visible executive power, which is precisely why the demand for ministerial berths and a “bigger say” returns. The party wants organisational regeneration, but Tamil Nadu’s coalition grammar does not readily accommodate shared governance.

Congress can, of course, try to rebuild independently. But that requires years of cadre work, local body organisation, and leadership cultivation. Until then, exiting the DMK alliance would be less a declaration of autonomy than an act of self-sabotage, weakening a broader opposition ecology in which anti-BJP consolidation rests on a recognisable secular platform anchored by the DMK. For Congress, the more realistic lesson is to learn to be led in key states, acting as a sutradhar that prioritises winnable and coherent coalitions rather than imposing a top-down template.

The writer is a postdoctoral research affiliate in Indian and Indonesian politics at KITLV-Leiden and author of The Dravidian Pathway