Tamil youth and their participation in politics became a talking point during the 2026 Assembly elections, so much so that their faith, clubbed with the loyalty of first-time voters, is believed to have played a significant role in electing a two-year-old political party to power — toppling two Dravidian heavyweights.
Amid this generational shift, one teenager, Sanjay Senthilnathan, appears to have charted an unconventional course by developing an interest in one of the legacy Dravidian parties — the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). He immersed himself in research and self-published a book titled The Dravidian Phoenix: The Inside Story of Tamil Nadu’s Longest-Ruling Party (Notion Press, D399).
The 19-year-old law student shares that the idea to write the book stemmed from looking for small and concise books about the Dravidian parties to suggest to his friends in college. “The books that I came across were all very heavy, 500 or 600 pages, and I know for a fact that my friends won’t have time to read. That prompted me to write a concise book.” He also reasons as to why he chose to write about the AIADMK in particular. “The party was started 23 or 24 years later than the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and yet, it is the longest ruling party. The AIADMK also broke the anti-incumbency trend… These made it very interesting for me to look into the party, research, and write.”
The book begins with late Chief Minister MG Ramachandran’s stint at the DMK before delving into the birth of the two leaves. It touches upon the success stories of MGR, followed by J Jayalalithaa, briefly outlines the tiff between Edappadi K Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam, and quickly concludes with the achievements from Edappadi’s last regime that ended in 2021.
The book reads more like a celebratory account than a critical history, largely dwelling on the party’s achievements while either entirely leaving out or mentioning in passing its shortcomings in governance. It also fails to discuss at length the disproportionate assets case; leaves out prominent characters who held positions of power both formally and informally, such as VK Sasikala; and fails to explore the AIADMK’s on-and-off alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the recent past, among other significant parts of the party’s history.
Sanjay defends, “Firstly, the book that I initially wrote was close to 450 pages; 800 pages with bibliography. I had written about the Amma Canteen, the Vachathi case, the NDA alliance, and so on. It was an editorial decision to cut the book short because I intend for this book to be a starting point for people to take interest in.”
He adds, “This book is a mere testamentary tribute to the late leaders of the AIADMK. That’s why I haven’t hit out at the AIADMK, nor the DMK, or any other political party in any part of the book.”
The 114 pages were born out of “expansive secondary research” and interviews with party functionaries that the author managed to set up by finding functionaries’ contact details in the documents that they submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI) for contesting elections. He also claims to have fact-checked the information shared by party members during interviews. “I cold called different people and I got in touch with Dr VPB Paramasivam, the youth wing secretary, who then helped me connect with Edappadi Palaniswami,” Sanjay says. The former Chief Minister took interest in the book and eventually penned the foreword.
The book was published and released five months after the AIADMK, along with its allies, failed to make opposition in the state. Sanjay pins a part of the blame onto the party’s lacking “digital speed” in the last chapter of The Dravidian Phoenix. “EPS agrees with this, he said so himself when I had a conversation with him,” Sanjay says.
However, the youngster holds out hope. He believes that if the party finds solutions to “modern anxieties” through Annaism and manages to execute the solutions with the grit it has shown in the past, AIADMK could seize power in the future.