The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is deploying religious symbolism in its quest for a political foothold in Tamil Nadu, with the recent controversy surrounding the Karthigai Deepam festival in Thiruparankundram serving as the latest flashpoint. The party is attempting to recast itself as a champion of Tamil devotional heritage, specifically through the veneration of Lord Murugan, in a bid to shed its image as a party of the Hindi heartland.
Court Order Fuels Political Opportunity
This strategy gained fresh momentum in early January 2026. The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court endorsed a single judge's order permitting devotees to light the traditional Karthigai Deepam lamp atop a contentious stone pillar. The BJP swiftly seized this judicial development to position itself as the protector of Tamil religious customs. This move mirrors the party's successful national campaign centered on the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, but with a crucial regional twist.
Interestingly, the party has shown a marked reluctance to invoke Lord Ram's legacy directly in Tamil Nadu, despite the state's deep literary connection to the epic. The Kamba Ramayanam, a 12th-century Tamil classic by poet Kambar, enjoys immense popularity as a literary and scholarly text. Institutions like the Kamban Kazhagam, founded in 1939, actively promote its study globally. However, as sociologists note, the Ramayana in Tamil Nadu has largely been compartmentalized into the realm of literature and philosophy, its religious potential for mass political mobilization diluted by decades of Dravidian rationalist thought.
The Murugan Gambit and Past Failures
Faced with this complex landscape, the BJP has turned to Lord Murugan (also known as Subramanian Swamy or Kartikeya), a deity intrinsically linked to Tamil identity. This is not the party's first attempt at faith-based outreach in the state. Earlier efforts to promote Vinayaka (Ganesh) Chaturthi processions met with limited success, as the festival's pan-Indian character failed to resonate with Tamil linguistic pride.
The focus on Murugan has been more sustained. In 2020, the state BJP president launched the 'Vel Yatra', aiming to connect the six holy abodes of the god. After this yielded modest results, Hindutva groups organized a conference of Murugan devotees in Madurai in June 2025. The ongoing Karthigai Deepam issue, therefore, is part of a concerted pre-election push to present the BJP as the authentic custodian of Tamil Nadu's native deity.
Navigating the Dravidian Political Ethos
Analysts argue that the BJP's challenge is ideological as much as electoral. The Dravidian political legacy, shaped profoundly by the Self-Respect Movement and E.V. Ramasamy 'Periyar', established a firm distinction between private faith and public life. It also fostered a cultural skepticism towards monolithic historical narratives. This has created a polity where the operational logic is rooted in modern, secular ethics, making it difficult for overt religious mobilization to find uniform traction.
The party's efforts to "Tamilise" itself by invoking folk deities like Murugan may, therefore, face inherent limitations. While the BJP aims to replicate a Hindi-belt formula, Tamil Nadu's socio-cultural fabric—where a text like the Ramayana is celebrated for its literary merit while its potential for religious polarization is neutralized—presents a formidable and nuanced obstacle. The outcome of this strategy will be a key test in the upcoming state assembly elections.
