Who was Narendra Modi reaching out to in his Trichy rally?

What is the significance of Modi’s rabble rousing at Trichy in Tamil Nadu, a state where without aligning with one of the two Dravidian parties, BJP is electorally nothing?Was it a show of strength and another effort at polarising public opinion so that more BJP-minded people will start supporting them? Or was it aimed at impressing the AIADMK leader and chief minister J Jayalalithaa, who still maintains that she wants to go it alone in 2014? Or was it to impress the DMK?Or was it aimed at “Captain” Vijayakanth, who seems to have been wooed by everybody except the AIADMK? Or even superstar Rajinikanth, as some quarters have suggested?[caption id="attachment_1137811" align="alignleft" width="380"] Was Modi trying to reach out to Jayalalithaa, Vijaykanth or Rajinikanth? PTI[/caption]Unfortunately, this rally and show of strength won't matter much in terms of alliances or vote-share (in 2011, BJP polled a negligible two per cent) because the party leaders in the state, except a strategy-less Vijayakanth, are veterans of real-politick and last minute camp-changes.The Trichy rally was was indeed a big gathering - perhaps 100,000 people attended- but in a state as big as Tamil Nadu mobilising such a number is no big deal if each district committee sends some people. But, these don’t translate into votes as seen in  neighbouring Kerala.Kerala has the largest number of RSS units anywhere in India (some which have been in existence since as early as 2003), and BJP public meetings always manage to attract large numbers of people, but the party has not been able to send a single MLA to the assembly. For years, the party has been predicting victory in the Thiruvananthapuram parliamentary constituency, but have failed to even qualify as runner up.If Jayalalithaa decides to form an alliance with BJP, it won’t be because of such rallies, but because of the strength of the front that the DMK and Congress will be able to line up.At the moment, it looks like DMK, Congress, DMDK, VCK are on the one side with the AIADMK on the other. The BJP will not gain much even if it gets the DMDK on its side because it is highly unlikely that Vijayakanth will be acceptable to the AIADMK. And AIADMK is unlikely to gain much from the BJP except in some electoral pockets like Kanyakumari, Coimbatore and Tirupur.In his speech, Modi did a lot to impress the people of Tamil Nadu while lambasting the UPA for everything from a weak rupee to the incursions in Jammu and Kashmir. But comparing Gujarat and Tamil Nadu or Gujaratis and Tamils sounded strange. Have such emotions ever worked in national elections?As regards wooing Rajinikanth, the actor has always been close to the BJP national leaders, particularly Advani, but he has never thrown in his lot with the party because it was electorally non-existent. But media cameras once reportedly caught him voting for the BJP.He has taken explicit political stands only twice - once in 1996 when he asked people to vote against Jayalalithaa and the second time, against the PMK. In 1996, his fans had worked hard for the landslide victory of the DMK-TMC (Tamil Maanila Congress, a breakaway faction of the Congress which subsequently merged with its parent party). Since then, all that the actor has done is deliver some cryptic punch-lines in his films or in his rare interviews. He hasn’t been seen in a movie since 2010 and hence there have not been any politically-loaded punchlines. In addition, he has been ill as well.Rajinikanth is more reclusive than ever before now and is highly unlikely to campaign for anybody, but can still ask his fans to vote for a particular front. Will the BJP get him as a tump card that might be useful to the AIADMK as well? That will be certainly an interesting prospect.Modi has been able to create some ripples with his rally in Trichy, but at the national level. In the state, it’s still the Dravidian parties that will call the shots. This polarisation is almost genetically coded into the state’s politics. The only other parties that can add some value to the might of the Dravidian parties are the Congress, DMDK, PMK and to some limited extent, MDMK and VCK.