Southern Solidarity in the Time of Operation Sindoor

On the morning of May 5, 2025, A Revanth Reddy, the Chief Minister of Telangana, marched shoulder to shoulder with his cabinet down Hyderabad’s Tank Bund Road. Flags were distributed. Slogans rehearsed. Speakers trembled with the thump of “Operation Sindoor Zindabad”. There was nothing half-hearted about the performance. “India is a peace-loving country,” Revanth declared, “but if someone mistakes our peace for weakness, we can wipe Pakistan off the world map.” The sentence hung in the air like the last word in a poem one did not expect from this particular pen.

Days later in Chennai, MK Stalin led a four-kilometre human chain from the Director General of Police’s office to the War Memorial on Marina Beach. Uniformed students, stoic ministers, and DMK cadres linked arms in a deliberate show of unity. “This rally reflects the sentiments of every Tamil — our deep respect, gratitude, and solidarity with the Indian Army, which continues to protect the nation’s sovereignty with unmatched courage,” Chief Minister Stalin said.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan—never a fan of noise for noise’s sake—issued a characteristically terse but emphatic statement: “We fully support the actions being taken by the Union Government and our defence forces against terrorism. There should also be diplomatic efforts from the government’s side to ensure that there are no terrorist camps operating in Pakistan. As Indian citizens, we must all stand united to protect the unity and integrity of our nation.”

At an interfaith meeting in Andhra Pradesh, freshly re-elected chief minister, N Chandrababu Naidu said, “Nation first. We have to protect our country. Let any problem come to the country, every person living in Bharat should not only say that we all will be together but it is also the responsibility of all of us to walk forward together.”

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah initially stirred controversy with remarks suggesting that India should avoid war with Pakistan, emphasising the importance of peace and increased security measures in the Kashmir region. These comments, made in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, drew criticism from political opponents who perceived them as a sign of weakness. However, following the Indian Army’s Operation Sindoor targeting terror bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Siddaramaiah adopted a more assertive stance. He lauded the armed forces for their precision and declared the operation a “warning bell” for Pakistan, saying that India would not hesitate to wage war if provoked. The era of passive responses was over, he said, asserting, “This is not the Gandhian and Basavanna era to tolerate enemies. Should we keep quiet if Pakistan provokes us?”

This shift in rhetoric highlights the importance of demonstrating national solidarity in times of crisis. And it assumes even more importance when the states in question have spent the better part of the last two years accusing the Centre of treating federalism as a minor inconvenience. Tamil Nadu passed a resolution against the 16th Finance Commission’s formula for revenue distribution. Kerala sued the Union government in the Supreme Court over debt ceilings for states. Telangana accused the Centre of withholding ?4,000 crore in GST dues. And yet here they all are, backing the national war machine without hesitation, equivocation, or even a grumble.

This is not inconsistency. It is a stance steeped in a regional political grammar that has always known how to say yes and no in the same breath. Southern regionalism, unlike the more centrifugal idioms of the North and the Northeast, has never truly threatened to exit the Indian project. It pushes, it resists, it rewrites the terms of engagement—but it rarely absconds. The idea of India is not rejected. It is negotiated. It is contested in terms of fairness, not finality. Even the DMK’s foundational split from the Dravidar Kazhagam in the late 1940s involved a distancing from Periyar’s call for a separate Dravida Nadu, in favour of electoral pragmatism within the Union. What we are seeing this May is a continuation of that strategic grammar: a willingness to support the national interest even while rejecting the moral authority of the Union in matters of domestic governance.

It is useful to note that the South has shown up—again and again—in India’s moments of reckoning. In 2019, after the Pulwama-Balakot sequence, southern governments condemned terrorism, and supported the strikes. Despite their deep-rooted regional ideologies—some founded, quite literally, on opposition to northern domination—southern parties like the DMK and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), and the Kerala CPI(M) have, in moments of national crisis, repeatedly chosen national consensus over ideological rigidity. The DMK, which emerged from the cauldron of anti-Hindi agitations, backed the BJP-led NDA government in the late 1990s not just out of political expediency, but with a deliberate eye toward institutional stability. When India conducted its second round of nuclear tests at Pokhran in May 1998—earning global censure and US-led sanctions—the DMK stood by Prime Minister Vajpayee. Likewise, the TDP under Chandrababu Naidu—whose party had shaped itself as a bulwark against Congress centralism—offered outside support to Vajpayee’s coalition during Kargil. At a time when the war could have been spun into a partisan saga, Naidu ensured Parliament spoke in one voice, famously calling for “collective moral leadership” in wartime. He also resisted pressures to use the crisis for state-level brinkmanship, unlike some northern parties that sought to parlay it into sectarian gain.

These were not conversions. They were calibrations. In each case, regional identity politics bent—but did not break—under the weight of national responsibility. The rhetoric remained oppositional; the action, cooperative. In a country where crisis often collapses into opportunism, the South’s parties, at key junctures, chose the quieter route: of doing the right thing without demanding the last word.

When Stalin marches for the jawan, when Reddy wraps himself in the tricolour, they are not offering submission. They are claiming their place in the nation’s emotional architecture. And yet, this embrace of national solidarity is never blind. It is offered with eyes wide open, knowing full well that tomorrow the tax formula may tilt north again, that bureaucratic bias will rear its head in another panel or commission. But today, when missiles cross borders, the quarrel is paused.

The distinction—between the nation and the regime—is central. It allows the southern states to perform solidarity without surrender. They support the army, not the Prime Minister’s social media team. They stand by the jawan, but not the jingoism. And this restraint is precisely what makes the South’s support meaningful. It comes not from compulsion or choreography handed down by Delhi, but from a deeper instinct to preserve the idea of India in the face of its own contradictions. When Kerala opposes the Uniform Civil Code, it is not rejecting national coherence—it is insisting that coherence must be just. When Karnataka demands drought relief on time, it is not asking for favours—it is reminding the Union of its contractual obligations. This is civic maturity. What emerges, then, is a more adult idea of nationalism—one that can endure disagreement without fracture.

A Revanth ReddyMK StalinN Chandrababu NaiduNews BriefpoliticsTamil NaduTelanganaWeb Exclusive