A collage centred on an illustrated Vijay in a red shirt, smiling and raising his hand in greeting, framed by a circular halo of his party logo. Around him are yellow-tinted portraits of prominent Tamil Nadu political figures. In the background, there's a large seated crowd and a faint cinema hall. The title “Jana Nayagan” appears near the top. In the foreground, there's a silhouetted scaffolding.
The Tamil superstar-turned-politician Vijay commands a rare emotional loyalty, but converting fans into cadres while bringing together a diverse electorate remains his central test in the 2026 Tamil Nadu assembly election.Illustration by Aishwarya Iyer
Politics

Vijay and the limits of cinema stardom in Tamil Nadu politics

The superstar is aiming for a grand entrance into politics in Tamil Nadu’s 2026 assembly election, but history tells us stardom alone will not be enough to challenge the state’s duopoly of Dravidian parties
Vignesh Karthik K R

Vignesh Karthik K R is a postdoctoral research affiliate in Indian and Indonesian politics at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden, and a research affiliate at King’s India Institute, King’s College London. He is the author of ‘The Dravidian Pathway’ and the associate editor of ‘Caste and the Crisis of Dignity’.

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TAMIL NADU has seen film stars enter politics before. It has seen adulation mistaken for organisation, spectacle mistaken for strategy and charisma mistaken for ideology. It has also seen the rare figure who could turn cinematic fame into a durable political machine. 

That history matters now because Vijay – the Tamil actor known to his millions of followers as “Thalapathy”, or leader – is staking his political ambitions on the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly election taking place on 23 April, at a moment when his much-touted final film, Jana Nayagan, remains unreleased and mired in controversy over certification. The southern Indian state’s ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), is odds-on for re-election, even as its traditional challenger, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), looks set to recover ground after years of internal strife and other struggles. The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which Vijay launched in 2024, is aiming to make its mark – and perhaps emerge with enough assembly seats to play kingmaker – at a moment when Tamil Nadu’s established AIADMK-DMK duopoly might be due for a shake-up.

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India
Tamil Nadu
Assembly election
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