Tamil Nadu’s new chief minister, C Joseph Vijay, has been in office for less than a day. His first words after taking the oath on Sunday morning were: “This is a new beginning. A new era of real, secular, social justice starts now.”
The word “secular” was not incidental, and was doing some heavy lifting.
It has been the load-bearing pillar of Vijay’s political ideology — whatever of it we know from his speeches — since he launched the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in February 2024.
It is now also the formal condition on which the Congress, the anchor party of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA bloc), has contributed its five seats to bring to reality the superstar actor’s political blockbuster.
‘Real, secular’: How the word travels
Vijay’s TVK unveiled its founding ideology at its first conference in Vikravandi in October 2024: “Secular social justice, egalitarianism, and democracy.”
In September 2024, the party formally announced ideological alignment as Centre-Left, following the philosophies of BR Ambedkar, Periyar, and K Kamaraj, while explicitly rejecting “any association with right-wing politics”. At his CM candidature declaration, Vijay said, “The BJP may sow seeds of poison elsewhere, but not in Tamil Nadu. You can’t oppose Anna and Periyar and expect to win here.”
Vijay’s references covered anti-caste, Dravidian ideology fountainheads such as EV Ramasamy or Periyar, and CN Annadurai; the constitutionalist and Dalit icon BR Ambedkar; plus Kamaraj, a Congress stalwart.
At a Madurai conference in August 2025, Vijay, who happens to be Christian by faith, had said: “Tamil Nadu is a secular land and the people will not allow any space for divisive hate politics based on religion and caste.”
He called the BJP a “fascist force” and his “ideological enemy”. As for the then incumbent DMK, he termed it a “political enemy”.
Vijay said the TVK would not ally with the BKP, “not publicly, not even behind closed doors”.
The BJP, along with senior partner AIADMK, stood third in the May results, with only one seat of its own.
The word “secular” had already been doing political work in Tamil Nadu before Vijay arrived on the political scene. The DMK-led alliance that governed the state and swept all 39 Lok Sabha seats in 2024 was formally named the Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA). It mainly comprised the DMK, Congress, CPI, CPI(M), VCK, and IUML — the same parties, minus the DMK itself, that now prop up Vijay’s government.
What Congress said, and Rahul-Vijay bonhomie
The Congress’s written support letter to TVK, as confirmed stated the alliance is “conditional upon the TVK keeping out from this alliance any communal forces that do not believe in the Constitution of India”.
Rahul Gandhi flew from Delhi to Chennai and attended the swearing-in. On X, he wrote: “Tamil Nadu has chosen a new generation, a new voice and a new imagination… My good wishes to Thiru Vijay — may he fulfil the hopes of the people of Tamil Nadu.”
Their bonhomie on stage was palpable. They took the main two chairs, and constantly chatted, with Rahul apparently saying something to Vijay at point in his ear that made him chuckle too. It was not audible.
They had a meeting in 2009, too, and Vijay wanted to join the Congress, HT has reported. But Rahul purportedly wanted him to work with the youth wing, and partner DMK also wasn’t enthused by the idea of a popular actor potentially stealing its thunder. That was then.
Lately, Rahul has been pitching the national battle as an ideological one, focusing on issues of social justice and caste census, among others. At an event in Gurugram on May 8, he said: “There are only two ideologies in this country. One is of (BJP and its parent body) RSS’s hatred and division, and the other represented by the Congress — of love and unity.” In a video clip from it he posted on X, he said: “Take it in writing from me: No other party can defeat the BJP. Only the Congress can defeat the BJP and Narendra Modi, and we will defeat them.”
The BJP and RSS have long said India being a “Hindu nation” is already secular by nature, and that the word is misused by the Congress to hide its “appeasement” of Muslims.
On Sunday, PM Narendra Modi termed the Congress “parisitic” for changing its allies in Tamil Nadu.
Where INDIA bloc now stands, what about TVK
After the May 4 results, when the Congress went with Vijay, senior DMK leader TKS Elangovan declared: “INDIA bloc is gone. We will reframe the alliance.” Incensed by the “betrayal”, the DMK wrote to the Lok Sabha speaker requesting that the party’s MPs be re-seated away from the Congress benches in Parliament.
The CPI and CPI(M) however, also justified their TVK support in secular terms, and “to prevent BJP from coming to power indirectly”. Others said they wanted to prevent President’s Rule anyhow, which would have meant indirect rule of the BJP-led Centre.
The INDIA bloc’s full name has the word “inclusive” serving as the secular-signaling term in the acronym. The founding membership showed how the secular-versus-communal frame has long served as the common language for Congress-aligned blocs across otherwise competing parties.
Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which ended up with the BJP again after multiple turns, chaired the first bloc meeting in Patna in June 2023. Kumar had at one point broken with the BJP in 2013 specifically because he wanted a leader with a “clean and secular” image that he said Narendra Modi did not have.
Others like the RJD of Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Samajwadi Party now led by Akhilesh Yadav have cited the secular-communal binary as a reason why they’re anti-BJP, and in that sense pro-Congress. Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP has had an on-off relationship with the Congress again based on this binary.
Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, which fought Bengal’s 2026 election independently, ran its state campaign asking voters to “defend secularism and welfare” against the BJP.
After the BJP swept Bengal regardless, and Mamata lost her own seat, she called herself a “free bird” who would now take on Modi at the national level. She has called for Opposition parties to unite, as has Rahul.
Akhilesh Yadav taunted the Congress for “abandoning” the DMK but is likely to fight the UP 2027 elections together after diminishing the BJP decisively in the state in the 2024 LS contest.
The INDIA bloc won 234 Lok Sabha seats in 2024 — Congress 99, SP 37, TMC 29, DMK 22, with smaller partners making up the rest.
The TVK, which did not exist as a political party during the 2024 elections, holds zero parliamentary seats. Its relevance to any bloc arithmetic is entirely a 2029 question.
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