What do Vijay’s films say about his politics?

Actors from the Tamil film industry entry politics is quite common. The first to do so was M G Ramachandran. Bollywood actors have generally not been as successful as their southern counterparts.

What do Vijay’s films say about his politics?

One could say that for film stars, a readily available local constituency is a prerequisite. MGR had this — since he had already been used by the DMK as its political icon. Jayalalithaa continued his legacy. Most other film stars entering politics — NTR, Chiranjeevi, Vijayakanth — relied on their local caste associations and not only on their charisma as stars. Kamal Haasan and Rajanikanth do not belong to dominant jatis — like the others. Although this has not been fully theorised, block voting in India is arguably caste-based and film stars are icons primarily to the jati groups they are known to come from. Vijayakanth came from a minority Kamma (Telugu) group in Tamil territory but the group was large enough to win his party (DMDK) enough seats to bargain with, whenever a government was being formed. 

Tamil actor Vijay, wo large fan base refer to him as ‘Thalapathy (‘commander’), is the latest from the industry to join politics, with his new political party Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. It is unlikely that he has thought this through. There is evidence that he has nurtured political ambitions over a period of time. The 2018 film 'Sarkar' revolves around an NRI who attempts to cleanse Indian politics by standing up to a corrupt party in power. The ‘corruption’ is made known when Sundar Ramaswamy (Vijay) comes to cast his vote but finds that it has already been cast in his name. There is no political image created for Vijay. His prowess is demonstrated mainly in dance sequences and fist fights with bad guys.

'Leo' (2023) is his latest film and an action thriller with no apparent political content. The film is an unacknowledged adaptation of David Cronenberg’s 'A History of Violence' (2005). A peace-loving café owner in a small town is driven to brutal violence when he has to defend a woman employee from two serial killers. He becomes a local hero but we learn that he has a violent past. He has tried to mend his ways and taken another identity. Vijay is an action hero. Now, after joining politics, the adversaries he has to deal with have multiplied several fold.

Vijay (Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar) is Christian by birth and in two of his recent films ('Master', 'Bigil') he played Christian roles. This does not mean that Christian values are upheld in the film but only that the identity assumed by him is Christian. In 'Leo' too, the protagonist is Christian and the father and uncle that he has walked away from wear conspicuous silver crosses around their necks though they are ruthless drug lords with bizarre un-Christian beliefs (for instance, in empowerment through human sacrifices). One does not know why Leo should be a Christian in the film except that it is signaling Vijay’s own religious affiliations.

Tamil Nadu has a significant Christian population (over 6 per cent) but Christians belong to different jatis and one cannot be sure that block voting happens by religion; where the voters reside – in terms of the community they live with — might give us an inkling of how voting might be decided. Block voting happens through agents, which means the people must live in closely-knit communities.

A feature I noticed in the films is the antagonism created against uniformed representatives of the law. Vijay thrashes policemen in both 'Sarkar' and 'Leo'. This would be unthinkable in a Kannada film where policemen are unloved too, but there is no gleeful portrayal of them being roughed up. The police are emblems of the nation-state — and not of local authority — and Tamil Nadu has kept a much greater distance from the nation than the region addressed by Kannada popular cinema. In 'Leo', the protagonist grabs an insolent Hindi-speaking police officer by the throat. He gets a mild-looking Tamil-speaking policeman to protect him but it appears that it is the policeman who needs protection. We could interpret this turn as Vijay affirming his place in Tamil Nadu rather than India. That is perhaps the first clarification that a new political entrant in Tamil Nadu needs to give — his loyalty to region and language.

Although the following bit of speculation is not relevant to Vijay’s future as a politician — which may not be secure — this leads us to ask about the future of national issues in Tamil Nadu politics. Can K Annamalai of the BJP make a difference? I would argue that if Annamalai seeks to make a difference in local politics, he should downplay his Hindu nationalist rhetoric and focus on local issues. He is a former police officer — and has been riding that wave — but judging from 'Leo' such an association may not quite amount to political capital in the atmosphere created by state-level politics in Tamil Nadu. It may not be in the hands of an earnest politician to fully integrate the Tamil state with India in spirit.