New star on Tamil political ground

The first state-level conference of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), the party announced by Tamil filmstar, Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar, was a blockbuster show with an estimated three lakh people attending the event at Vikravandi, a nondescript town to the south of Chennai. Like in his films, the show was all about the star, and much of the crowd may have turned up to watch Vijay, reportedly the highest-paid star in Tamil cinema. With assembly elections due in Tamil Nadu in 2026, Vijay does not have much time to build the TVK though his fan base, organised around rasikar manrams (fan clubs) is massive. What is to be seen is if he can sustain public interest in his party and attract young, curious and unaligned Tamil voters.

Two aspects of Vijay’s political entry are significant. One, he is a relatively young leader. Only Udhayanidhi Stalin, the heir apparent in the DMK, and K Annamalai, the BJP chief, are younger than Vijay who turned 50 in June. Seeman, an advocate of Tamil nationalist politics with a major appeal among the youth, is 57. Udhayanidhi’s stature is because of his father, chief minister MK Stalin, while Annamalai, 40, is yet to find acceptance even within the state BJP unit. In contrast, Vijay is a successful star with shades of a political rebel — remember the controversy over Mersal over its criticism of GST — and a standing of his own. Two, unlike many stars who ventured into politics before him (Vijayakanth, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan among them), Vijay is at the peak of his career — his latest film, GOAT (the greatest of all time), is also a super hit. His youthful image may attract the young voter who is disillusioned with the traditional Dravidian parties.

At Vikravandi, the star targeted both the DMK and BJP and emphasised that he was against corruption and communalism. Periyar EV Ramaswami, the founding father of Dravidian Movement, loomed large on the stage, but Vijay was careful to state his disagreement with atheism. So, he has got the political idiom right, but electoral politics is more than polemics; the hotch-potch of Tamil nationalism and Dravidian political rhetoric will have to be supplemented by smart tactics and a fleet-footed organisation for the TVK to crack the Dravidian citadel. But his cause can only be helped by the AIADMK’s decline.

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