It began as a trickle, and soon became a flood. The roads leading up to the venue were jammed in a matter of hours. About a million people jostled for space with each other, their heads riveted to the stage where their matinee idol was to appear anytime now. And when he did arrive, it was a stampede-like situation. The hero walked up to the stage and promised milk and honey.
He laid out his politics—a few lines on how everyone else was looting his state; how he will bring about an egalitarian society; and why the poor, the marginalised and the downtrodden should vote for him. He unfurled a new flag, and lo and behold, a new political party was born. Well, this was 16 years ago. The year was 2008 and the place, the temple town of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. The star was Chiranjeevi, the icon of Telugu cinema.
But Chiru, as he is affectionately called, couldn’t make any major impact with his Praja Rajyam Party. The almost-million who turned up for the launch didn’t really carry his flag when the time came to vote. His fans who wouldn’t hesitate to spill blood—or, rather donate blood—at his command let him down when it mattered the most. The floundering Praja Rajyam merged into Congress a few years later.
It was deja vu all over again late October. This time, in a smaller township: Vikravandi in Villupuram, Tamil Nadu. And, of course, a new actor. C Joseph Vijay aka ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay—probably the second biggest star in Tamil cinema, after Rajinikanth—took to the stage to launch the red-and-yellow flag of his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK).
The people who pooled in to see the star were thrilled to hear him mouth a few lines on how everyone else was looting his state; how he will bring about an egalitarian society; and why the poor, the marginalised and the downtrodden should vote for him. But the crowd was much smaller than at Chiranjeevi’s: a couple of lakhs compared to almost-amillion in Tirupati. So, what gives Vijay the confidence that he would succeed where Chiranjeevi failed?
Well, the question should probably be reframed: What makes Vijay think his fans would transition their unadulterated adulation into hard work and win him votes when Chiru’s and many others couldn’t?
Can fans make a wave?
P Saravanan is the president of the Chennai suburban district unit of the All India Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (AITVMI), the precursor to TVK.
Sitting in the Neelangarai office in Chennai, he says Thalapathy fans are ecstatic that the star has finally taken the political plunge. Saravanan’s hope is pinned on the fact that rasigar mandrams (fan clubs) in Tamil Nadu are by their very nature political unlike those in neighbouring states where they are mostly about blind adulation and little else.
His aim is to get people like Murali Kumar (name changed), a 40-yearold bank manager in Coimbatore, to take the plunge. Kumar was among the first few in the region to join the Kovai Vijay Rasigar Mandram which, he claims, has about 2,000 members. Saravanan says there are 85,000 Vijay fan clubs across the state, with 25 members at least in each —a ready cadre for the TVK .
The district president of the fan club will automatically become the president of that district for TVK, while other members would become office bearers, he says. Saravanan claims that when they opened the online registration for party membership in March, the TVK website received about one crore requests.
“We had to close the process because of the web traffic,” he says.
The loyal flock
Madabhushi Rangadorai, popularly known by his pen name Randor Guy, says when rasigar mandrams started coming up in the 1960s, they were part of the political scenery—a classic example being the mandram of MG Ramachandran or MGR, the iconic film star-chief minister who dominated the political scene of Tamil Nadu for many decades.
While MGR deployed his fans to mobilise political support, the next-generation superstars like Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan were content with their fans organisations playing the role of NGOs.
“Kamal and Rajini introduced a few elements into fan club culture which involved social commitment,” says political analyst N Sathiya Moorthy. “This was very much there even in the case of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan, but it was of a different kind. It was individualistic where fans would go out and help families they knew. But when it came to Kamal and Rajinikanth, it was more community-oriented.”
Moorthy points out that in the 1980s and 1990s and even later, when hospitals, especially in rural areas, needed blood for emergency surgeries, all they had to do was contact a Kamal or Rajinikanth fan association.
“Vijay doesn’t seem to have that kind of approach to fan clubs,” says Moorthy. Interestingly, he points to the generation gap between the fans of the MGR-Sivaji era, the Rajini-Kamal age and the current one. “Fans of this generation do not always have that kind of time at their disposal to do such things,” he notes. TVK’s Saravanan begs to differ. Vijay’s fan clubs have been extremely active when it comes to social causes, he says.
These include blood donation, organ donation, flood relief, food supply during Covid and welfare measures for manual scavengers, he says. Vijay can take lessons from the experience of another Tamil star, Vijayakanth. Captain, as he was known, managed to convert the All India Vijayakanth Fans Welfare Association overnight into a huge captive base when he launched a political party in 2005. The association’s general secretary S Ramu Vasanthan became the general secretary of the party, reconfirming the kind of influence that fan clubs have when an actor transitions to be a political figure.
That Vijayakanth’s politics floundered later on was purely a function of indiscipline and his ailing health. He died last year. It is important to note that Vijay is not exactly a greenhorn in politics. His bombastic movie dialogue dripping with politics aside, he has had some real experience in grassroots-level politics.
In 2021, he silently tested the waters when members from his fan club won 129 of 169 seats in the rural local body elections. His AITVMI managed to outdo Kamal Haasan’s party, Makkal Needhi Maiam, and actorfilmmaker Seeman’s Naam Thamizhar Katchi (which emerged as the third largest party in the recent assembly elections).
The X factor
Political analyst Tharasu Shyam warns that no one should take the voters of Tamil Nadu for granted. “Popular opinion is that actors shine in Tamil Nadu politics, but that is not exactly true. MGR was in Congress for about 20 years, then in DMK for 20 years. He was an MLC, MLA and treasurer of DMK. His fan clubs were an extension of DMK. Hence the overnight metamorphosis of fan clubs into political branch offices was smooth,” he says. As things stand, this is the advantage that is missing for someone like Vijay, says Shyam, adding that political victory in Tamil Nadu is decided by workable alliances only. “After all, TVK is no different from other Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu,” he points out. “Be it on NEET (the medical entrance examination) or the two-language formula, the objectives are the same. Only the leader is different. If Vijay wants to succeed, he should form strong alliances.”
Moorthy agrees with Shyam. He says Vijay has not said anything new thus far. “The actor will have to come up with something that is contemporary to appeal to the people,” he says. Maybe he would also need a new punchline to keep the fan clubs hooked for the tall task ahead. Another key factor is gender. While actors like Vijay have fans cutting across genders, the rasigar mandrams are mostly boys’ clubs.
In the DMK-AIADMK duopoly that dominated Tamil politics for decades, female voters have traditionally allied with AIADMK, thanks to the Jayalalithaa factor. With the party drifting in political winds after the death of Jayalalithaa, that’s a constituency that Vijay can tap. But for that the mandrams may need to reinvent themselves.
“Fans are certainly useful, but you need more than an adoring base to build a political organisation,” says Gilles Verniers, visiting assistant professor of political science at Amherst College, Massachusetts, US. “You need to rely on volunteers and cadres who connect deeply with other civil society organisations, volunteers and cadres who can build a permanent presence on the ground that is relevant for local communities.
This takes a lot of time, especially when major parties like the DMK are exceptionally wellorganised and grounded,” he adds.
None of these concerns deters die-hard fans like Kumar of the Kovai Rasigar Mandram. The time is just right, the state needs a change from two-party politics, and what we need is a young leader like Vijay, he says.
The point to note is that Kumar has yet to join TVK although he swears he plans to do so in the near future. For Vijay, a lot depends on how soon fans like Kumar take the plunge.
