Indian politics is about personality and not policy. We are a people driven by blind emotion and some of us hope that our heroes can deliver in the real world what they perform in the reel world.
Nowhere is this hope more visible than in Tamil Nadu, where cinema and politics have long shared a revolving door.
The recent ascent of Joseph Vijay, whose party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which means ‘Tamil Nadu Victory Party’, vaulted from formation to power in just two years.
While it has surprised outsiders, Tamilians and observers of Dravidian politics are not. In Tamil Nadu, screen mythology easily slides into political reality.
Tamil Nadu political history reads like a filmography. C.N. Annadurai used theatre and cinema to disseminate Dravidian ideas. M. Karunanidhi wrote scripts that doubled as ideological manifestos.
Actor M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) played the righteous saviour on screen and then turned that image into political capital. His protégé actor J. Jayalalithaa inherited both the charisma and the political machinery to become the CM.
Even today, actors like Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan are testing the waters, while Vijay has crossed over to the political realm decisively.
What Tamil Nadu demonstrates is a broader Indian tendency, which is the substitution of policy with perception.
The voter is not merely choosing a governance model. He is choosing a protagonist and in our pursuit of a protagonist, we Indians often become sentimental fools. That is why we build temples for actors and politicians.
In such an environment, the leap from cinema to politics is not a leap at all. It is a lateral move.
This being the IQ levels and blind obsession with heroes, no wonder our actors have become politicians and politicians have become actors too.
Consider Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully curated imagery from meditative silences to the now-famous peacock interlude.
Consider Mamata Banerjee’s street-fighter persona, often dramatised to powerful effect.
Consider Rahul Gandhi’s bearded ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ and his clean-shaven international interviews. These are not accidents. They are scripts.
The insight, of course, is not new. Mahatma Gandhi understood the politics of perception better than most.
His choice of attire, his embrace of simplicity, even his diet, which famously included goat’s milk, were not mere personal quirks but deliberate signals. He sought not just to represent the poor, but to resemble them.
That lesson endures. Clothing itself becomes a costume. Cambridge-educated P. Chidambaram’s crisp ‘veshti’ and shawl, Shashi Tharoor’s transition from Savile Row to Khadi, Siddaramaiah’s shift from Safari Suits to traditional ‘Panche’ and Sonia Gandhi’s shift from dresses to sober sarees, all meant to signal ‘relatability.’
In politics, nothing is entirely incidental; it is all meant to create a perception. But if perception is the stage, organised fan clubs are the army and South India has lots of them.
It’s ‘Rasigar Mandrams’ in Tamil Nadu, ‘Abhimanigala Sanghas’ in Karnataka and ‘Abhimana Sanghams’ in Andhra Pradesh.
These fan clubs have quietly functioned as a parallel political infrastructure.
What begins as admiration evolves into mobilisation. These networks celebrate birthdays, organise welfare activities and crucially, can be activated during elections.
MGR recognised this early. When he split from the DMK in 1972 to form the AIADMK, his fan clubs became the backbone of his political machinery.
N.T. Rama Rao did the same in Andhra Pradesh, riding his cinematic persona into a historic electoral victory.
Vijay’s trajectory follows this blueprint with modern refinements. In fact, Vijay, since 2008, has planned his pivot to politics.
In 2008, the actor sat with his fans for an eight-hour hunger strike in solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamils.
Soon, his fan organisation, ‘Vijay Makkal Iyakkham’ engaged in social work. Under this club, they started ‘Vijay Payilagam’, which were free study centres. Then came ‘Vijay Vilaiyilla Unavagam’, a place where free food was served. Then came ‘Vijay Kuruthiyagam’, which was a blood donation camp.
So, Vijay’s success is no accident. It was built on the back of hero worship. It was Vijay this and Vijay that and Vijay here and Vijay there and Vijay everywhere. Vijay was ingrained in the minds of the people even before he announced the formation of his party.
In India, we are obsessed with our heroes. We are hero worshippers… literally. Temples have been built for Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth and even Kushboo.
In 2014, one Shankar Rao, a Minister from Andhra Pradesh, built a temple for Congress President Sonia Gandhi. He called her ‘Telangana Talli’ or the beloved Goddess of Telangana!
Hero worship, after all, has consequences. It discourages scrutiny. When admiration becomes absolute, fan criticism feels like betrayal.
This is as true for a film star as it is for a Prime Minister or a spiritual leader. Whether it is Modi, Rahul, Rajinikanth, Vijay or Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the pattern holds, which is that the followers of these people often defend first and think later.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar warned precisely against this. He distinguished between admiration rooted in respect for noble qualities and blind devotion that suspends independent thought.
He said, the former elevates while the latter degrades. He added, “A democracy can survive the first. But it is imperilled by the second.”
For now, let’s hope Vijay delivers to Tamilians in real life what he delivered in his reel life.
Meanwhile, we Indians would do well to remember that in a republic, citizens are not meant to be fans. We should be critics and that is also being patriotic.
e-mail: vikram@starofmysore.com
This post was published on May 23, 2026 5:05 pm