Vijay's success makes more actors eye role in Tamil political theatre

Chennai: Tamil Nadu is no stranger to actors-turned-politicians. The state has a long history of placing its trust in scriptwriters and actors who rule the silver screen, and nothing exemplifies that more than the current chief minister, C Joseph Vijay.

The TVK chief's success has also led to others wanting to flirt with politics - the latest being national award-winning actor Dhanush, whose former father-in-law Rajinikanth too had famously left everyone guessing for a long time about whether he would take the political plunge.

It all started when Dhanush renamed his fan club on October 14 to Dhanush Welfare Movement (Dhanush Narpani Iyakkam), a move that was being viewed as him going the Vijay way and adding structure and purpose to his fan club in order to mobilise it more effectively.


Earlier, during an event in Tiruvallur district on July 27, Dhanush encouraged his fans to do more than just attend his film premieres and audio launches. "You have come in huge numbers. If we unite, we can do something amazing," he said at the time.

Vijay had also worked on using his network of fan clubs to do community work before formally launching his political party.

"Vijay is not the first actor to enter politics in Tamil Nadu, and he certainly is not going to be the last," Gilles Verniers, political scientist and researcher at CERI, Sciences Po Paris, told ET. "Vijay's success will inspire his peers to look at politics because cinema has always been closely intertwined with Dravidian politics. Dravidianism is an egalitarian movement, but it has always produced charismatic political personalities, many of whom have been from the film industry."

He explained that actors who fought against injustices on screen were often viewed as being that way in their personal lives, too. Their larger-than-life persona was what helped them in their political careers as well.

"People saw continuity between the characters they played on screen and the core politics of Dravidianism," Verniers said. "It is not clear if Dhanush will enter politics yet but if he does, it will be interesting to see if he deviates from Dravidian ideology as every major political party in Tamil Nadu has emerged from that tradition. No one, barring BJP, is staunchly against it."

Speculation intensified when the actor organised a meeting of his female fans at a private college on the outskirts of Chennai on October 25. He gifted hundreds of his female fans silver lamps engraved with a lotus.

As the lotus is BJP's symbol, this gesture, along with his reported meeting with an RSS functionary, prompted some to interpret it as a possible indication of his support for BJP. The Dhanush Welfare Movement formally clarified that the lotus emblem on the silver lamps was merely a manufacturer's hallmark.

"Dhanush has spoken about being a very faithful follower of Shiva and so if one reads into this in conjunction with the lamp incident, it does look like soft Hindutva could be his ideology," said Vijayabaskar M, professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and co-author of the 'The Dravidian Model: Interpreting the Political Economy of Tamil Nadu'.

"His former father-in-law Rajinikanth too framed his political worldview around the term 'spiritual politics' rather than explicit Hindutva and also got into trouble over remarks that he made about Periyar. So, it feels like Dhanush too will go down this route if he gets into politics."

Vignesh Rajahmani, author of 'The Dravidian Pathway: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Politics of Transition in South India', said there had traditionally been two kinds of film industry people who entered politics in Tamil Nadu. The first is a charismatic leader who is politically astute, the likes of MGR, 'Kalaignar' Karunanidhi, or J Jayalalithaa. The other is an actor who only possesses charisma without political astuteness like Sivaji Ganesan or 'Captain' Vijayakanth, who did not succeed in politics.