‘Captain’ Vijayakanth, born Vijayaraj Alagarswami, had such a fulfilling career as a film star doing robust roles in invariably heroic service of the people that Tamil Nadu’s readymade environment famous for shaping the political careers of matinee idols helped him start a career in Tamil Nadu politics on a promising note in 2006.
By a quirk of circumstance, he became Opposition leader when his party was part of the AIADMK alliance that swept back to power in 2011. Being under imposing J. Jayalalithaa’s tutelage was never an unalloyed blessing and Vijayakanth’s popularity dipped rather than rose after that performance of winning 29 seats when his party had beaten the formidable DMK (23 seats) into third position.
If Vijayakanth’s political career did not quite take off after that, it may have been because he was cut out more as a film star. He basked in the charisma of having captured the hearts of the people with his derring-do and his portrayal of the triumph of the underdog, so much in the MGR style that he was given the moniker “Black MGR”, colour and a fair complexion being pet obsessions for the sun-baked people of tropical Tamil Nadu.
Without a novel ideology in the crowded world of Dravidian politics and following the weakness of politicians allowing family to control the party reins, Vijayakanth sank steadily into political oblivion after assiduously working in Tamil Nadu for the Narendra Modi-led surge to power in 2014 after tasting most success in 2011 in alliance with the party MGR founded.
Failing health, a transplant, and a botched surgery to see him sink into an indistinct talking style, meant he was hardly a political force for nearly a decade before the end came, from Covid-induced pneumonia.
People will have reason to remember him more for the powerful roles he played as a champion of their causes, as much an action man as a romantic hero, and boasting commendable versatility that saw him once do 18 films in a calendar year at the apogee of his career. After a stirring role as a forest officer who helped hunt down the sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, he became “Captain”.
In real life he was, perhaps, a bigger do-gooder than the roles of the champion of public causes he donned in the reels. His compassion for needy fellow film people was legendary, his helping hand for any colleague in distress and his staunch promotion of the actors’ guild furthering his reputation as a team man who did a great deal for the whole film fraternity.
