Chennai: At the height of their flourishing innings in Kollywood, the heroes and heroines have often tried using that stardom as a launch pad to test the political waters. While many perished by the wayside, some scored big — the biggest of them all, M G Ramachandran first helped the DMK to defeat the Congress and capture power at the Fort St George and thereafter launched his own AIADMK to trounce the DMK.
His heroine and political successor J Jayalalithaa has proved to be even larger on the political canvas, not just within Tamil Nadu but even nationally; and her gutsy battle to wrench the control of post-MGR AIADMK proved she was made of real hard steel and was not just a celluloid glitter.
It is not out of place here to recall that MGR had inspired Telugu superstar N T Rama Rao, his Kodambakkam comrade, to launch into politics in Andhra next door and hit back at the Congress humiliation; Annan had also taught Anna about the nuance of politics.
Looking at the past, one would be tempted to expect the present-day superstar to go the same way, right up to the chief ministerial throne at the Fort St. George; but Rajinikanth was not made of that kind of ‘tough stuff’. There was a lot of gas but not much of substance; huge applause from the audience for all those punch dialogues — oru thadavai sonnal nooru thadavai sonnamaathiri — but as the events unfolded over the period, the celluloid’s superman just about managed to create an aura around him only to make his fans believe he was a CM material, a thalaivar.
“He created the maayai and that succeeded in selling his films”, said noted lawyer-activist Ms Arulmozhi. That is to say, his fans were made to believe through his films and his dialogues therein, that he was a tough campaigner for positive change in the society stung by high corruption, lawlessness and bad administration. And he kept all that to within the movie halls reverberating on Dolby all that punchy stuff, admirably marked via clever previews on the media; the social media is a big boon.
But then, in all fairness to Rajinikanth, he has never stated openly he wanted to play a political role; the closest he came to playing active politics was when he gave his ‘voice’ in support of the DMK-TMC alliance to defeat the AIADMK in the 1996 state polls. That was after all the huge hype that his all-time hit Baasha released just the previous year had created as if to prepare the ground for his grand political launch and the fans even got the ‘party flag’ ready.
While the fan clubs kept the ‘political’ excitement high, the thalaivar himself had other plans —for the next film. “He used politics to further his cinema career. It was just the opposite of what the DMK had done in using cinema for its political growth”, says S. R. Balasubramanian, AIADMK Rajya Sabha MP.
SRB should know; for, he was part of the inner-circle of TMC chief G K Moopanar during the ’96 poll when intense discussions had gone on for enlisting Rajinikanth’s active participation—even if not any full-fledged launch of political party — in the campaign against the ruling AIADMK.
Cinema is a billion-rupee business and Rajinikanth should not be blamed for not wanting to endanger the huge investments that the producers sink into a project and also the lives of so many artistes and technicians working in his movies by mixing up with politics.
Particularly so since Vijayakanth did not make such a great ‘Captain’ in his bid to create an alternative to both the Dravidian majors. And the other minor aspirants are not on the horizon at the moment. While father S A Chandrasekar at one time was reportedly convinced he was Fort St George material, Vijay is happy moving from one fairly successful flick to another fairly successful one. And Sarath Kumar couldn’t go far, despite his handsome looks and smart head.
