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.
Vijay’s filmography, comprising almost 70 films, is a mixed bag. Most are family entertainers or romantic action features, and a striking proportion of them have drawn from or been remade into Telugu, Malayalam or Hindi cinema, demonstrating a cross-linguistic portability that speaks to the strong masala entertainment quotient in his work. The star’s political shading, such as it has been made out, comes from a narrower set of releases: Katthi, Theri, Mersal, Sarkar, Bigil, Master, Thuppakki, Thalaiva and the unreleased Jana Nayagan. The politics read into these films operates through recurring tropes: the righteous cop, the disillusioned youth who becomes an activist and the businessman who takes on the system.
In Mersal, a character played by the veteran actor Vadivelu takes a dig at India’s 2016 demonetisation – an abrupt withdrawal of high-value currency notes by the national government under Narendra Modi – when a pickpocket finds no cash in his wallet. Vijay’s character insists on building a hospital instead of a temple – a scene which drew flak from Hindu nationalist outfits – and the film’s climax includes a critique of the Goods and Services Tax, a nationwide indirect tax regime introduced by the Modi administration. In Tamil Nadu, where cinema has long functioned as an extension of public argument, such signals are read closely; and the fact that Tamil Nadu has largely opposed Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) means that these particular signals have been read closely.