India, May 10 -- 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 b...