Chennai: Ahead of launching his Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) as a political outfit in 2005 in his home town of Madurai, Vijayakanth, whose original name was Vijayaraj Alagarswami, had unfurled its flag – as the official flag of his burgeoning fans’ club – in 2000 itself, which is a clear indicator that he was no accidental politician.
As an actor, he had cultivated a considerable fan base through his films with political messages. Apart from his patriotic roles in which he hounded people with Pakistani links and terrorism inclinations, he, the hero, vanquished evil at all costs even as he romanced his lead ladies with elan.
One of the popular roles that he donned was that of the police man who brought criminals of all sorts to book. He also came on screen as an angry young man setting right the wrongs in society, a champion of the underdog and an enduring do-gooder. In the 1991 film, Captain Prabhakaran that earned him the title ‘Captain’, he is a forest officer bringing a forest brigand to book.
So it was not surprising that he was even called as ‘Dark MGR’ as he came into politics by meticulously fashioning a movie profile on the lines of MGR, replete with his charitable disposition. So it was also natural that he stepped into the political arena from the film world and that he had developed that ambition in advance after he became successful as a film hero.
Though his popularity as a film hero cannot be compared with that of MGR, who during his time evoked much stronger passions, Vijaykanth nevertheless had a massive following that made him a mass hero when he decided to take the plunge into politics.
Like MGR, he too used his fans’ club as the base for his party and to the new generation of votes he promised to provide an alternative plank to the Dravidian platform though his party, too, had the term ‘Dravida’ in its name. So by not aligning with the DMK and AIADMK, his party made a mark in electoral politics, showing signs of growth.
But in 2011, he forged an alliance with the AIADMK, making his party a member of the 11-party rainbow coalition. Though the DMDK won 29 of the 41 seats that were allotted to it and became the number two party in the 14th legislative Assembly, thus its leader earning the status of the Leader of the Opposition, it only turned out to be a short sighted political adventurism.
Not only did many of the original supporters of the party lost faith – after all they backed it since 2005 because it was offering an alternative to the DMK and AIADMK – in it, even the coalition leader let them down by engineering a split in the DMDK legislative party, leading to the resignation of eight MLAs.
That marked the beginning of the party’s political downslide. Its subsequent alliance with the BJP in a Lok Sabha election and its becoming the leader of the People’s Welfare Front in the 2016 Assembly elections showed that Vijayakanth, as a politician, had not lived up to the expectations of the people of the State.
It was around that time, his health, too, declined, forcing him to spend time in hospitals and taking rest at home. Though his fan base remained intact and his admirers continued to adore him, he lost the image of a viable alternative political force that he earned by standing alone in the early elections and courageously taking on mighty political parties.
He, who was seen as a politician with a difference when he launched his party with fanfare in Madurai, where he was born in 1952, lost that charisma by aligning with various parties one after the other, making people say that he was just another politician looking for opportunities.
However, people who benefitted from his charitable disposition, be it in Kollywood or outside of it, still recall his revolutionary deeds that helped the downtrodden and underprivileged. As the president of the South Indian Artistes Association, popularly known as Nadigar Sangam, he ushered in many reforms in the film industry in Tamil Nadu and beneficiaries recall them with gratitude.
Right from the beginning, even before he launched his party formally, he was perceived as a man with a heart of gold by those who were associated with him. Many of them still stand by their belief even if his political journey had taken a rollercoaster ride, leaving his party in the wilderness to reinvent itself and find relevance in the emerging political scenario.
