Actor-turned-politician and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam President Vijay
Credit: PTI Photo
The party flag has been unfurled, and the pledge taken. Pious pronouncements have been made, but yet no one knows what Tamil movie star Vijay stands for in his quest for political relevance in Tamil Nadu.
That his political party, the Tamizhaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) plans to contest the 2026 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu is all that we know at this point. We also know that he has promised to reveal the party’s ideology and programmes soon, very likely, at their first state conference in a few weeks.
Vijay is one of the biggest stars of Tamil cinema with his fans, mostly youth, exhibiting the craze for him that characterises cinema in the South. He also has a fan following in other southern states but is largely a star of Kollywood, and is rumoured to command a fee of more than Rs 100 crore per film. He has been acting for well over two decades and though his fans are largely in the under 35 age group, few older fans grew up around the same time as he did. Vijay is now 50 years of age, and while that makes him an ageing hero in the movie world, in Indian politics he is still quite young.
When exactly Vijay was bitten by the political bug is not known, but the talk of him entering politics has been around for almost a decade. His father, noted director and producer, S A Chandrasekhar and his mother Shoba Chandrasekhar were traditionally close to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and its then leader M Karunanidhi. It was the DMK leader who wrote the screenplay for Chandraselhar’s debut movie as a director.
Vijay too in his younger days was believed to be close to the DMK leadership, but at some point, his relationship appears to have soured. In the last few years that relationship has almost been strained. The talk in movie circles was that, a couple of years ago, Vijay was arm-twisted to give the distribution rights of one of his movies to Red Giant Movies, a company rumoured to be indirectly linked to the DMK’s first family.
While Vijay will make some impact with his political debut, the question is how big it will be. Going alone is hardly an option for him as even if he gets a respectable 10-15 per cent vote share, the TVK will not win any seats. Is he open to alliances and if so with whom? He has not spoken on this topic as yet. The pledge that he took recently had the usual promises that all political parties make: to uphold secular values, to work for the integrity of the nation and the state, to strive for the protection and growth of the Tamil language, to stay committed to social justice, and so on. In short, there was little that stood out. The pledge could have been taken by any Dravidian party, thus raising the question of whether Vijay was one more claimant to the legacy of the Dravidian movement.
Vijay is yet to address a press conference about his political journey. He has an active social media following, and the fans amplify whatever he posts; and post he does on issues, once in a while. The TVK, thanks to the fans’ association, has a base across Tamil Nadu that they can count on for booth agents and for campaigning at the village level. However, the fact that he has not as yet started speaking to the people regularly has not helped his cause.
An alliance of the TVK with a party like the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) can give the star an entry into the Tamil Nadu Assembly. For the Dravidian party that is seeking to make a comeback, an alliance with Vijay may give it the appeal to the youth that it sorely misses after the demise of Jayalalithaa. But Vijay has several options. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has welcomed his entry hoping he will split some of the DMK vote. The Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK), a regional Tamil nationalist party with an 8 per cent vote share, has openly called for an alliance. For Vijay, the choice will be difficult to make.
For the moment, a wait until our state conference seems to be the message from Vijay. Whether that event will clarify at least some of the questions that political observers are seeking answers to remains to be seen. The TVK is as yet a riddle and Vijay is as of now an enigma. Hopefully, we will soon know if he is going to be a real political force or whether he will go the way of several stars in the recent past who tried their luck without much success.
(Sumanth Raman is a Chennai-based television anchor and political analyst.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.