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Starshine Powerplay
G.C. Shekhar
The plot takes a new turn on 1 October. That is the day Tamil Nadu’s political history could get rewritten. It is on that day — the 80th birth anniversary of thespian Sivaji Ganesan — that his actor-son Prabhu will announce his plunge into politics.
Tamil Nadu’s history has been rewritten many times, each time more bizarre than the worst movie script. Filmstars in the state seem obsessed with plunging into politics, hoping to do a MGR or striking gold like his heroine Jayalalithaa who succeeded him to the leadership of his AIADMK party. Sivaji Ganesan, Bhagyaraj, S.S. Rajendran and T. Rajender have all attempted political experiments in the past with disastrous consequences. More recently the likes of Vijayakanth, Sharathkumar and Karthik have started new political parties. Only Vijayakanth has made a slight bit of difference to the state’s polity.
A star of over 100 films, of which just about a dozen can be counted as hits, the rotund and chubby Prabhu, after starring as hero and romancing fellow star Khushboo on the way, has now been reduced to playing a sidekick to Rajnikanth in Chandramukhi and Kamal Haasan in Vasul Raja MBBS. And yet, Sivaji’s son is hoping to pull off what the father could not, in the hope that his Thevar community, politically powerful in the southern districts, will back him.
A majority of Thevars are with Jayalalithaa because of her closeness to Sasikala Natarajan, a Thevar. It seems futile for Prabhu, a fading star, to hope for the Thevar vote unless Sasikala gave the green signal — and threw open the money chests. Her nephew is married to Prabhu’s niece — remember that mother of all marriages in which Jayalalithaa and Sasikala walked down the city roads to the marriage hall decked in kilos of gold?
But Prabhu is putting up a brave face, declaring just the other day that his fans were arriving at his Chennai bungalow in droves by chartered vans from all over Tamil Nadu, screaming, "Thalaiva (leader), what are you waiting for? Come, take your space that is waiting for you."
And he went on to add, "Whenever I meet people, I can see the expectations on their faces." Producer-brother Ramkumar — even more rotund and chubby — is busy doing the groundwork for the grand political debut. The two were witness to papa Sivaji, known to be tight-fisted otherwise, burning fingers black in trying to run a party of his own after quitting the Congress when Indira Gandhi would not "acknowledge his importance the way the DMK did with MGR". Sivaji’s party came a cropper in the 1989 state elections and he himself lost the deposit — never mind he was still a great actor and his films continued to make money.
Sivaji’s political journey had started in the DMK before he anchored himself strongly with the Congress (he even became Rajya Sabha MP) followed by his TMK misadventure in 1988 before moving over to Janata Party as state president and finally returning to the Congress. When the Rajiv Gandhi government wanted to give him the Dada Saheb Phalke award, a Tamil Nadu Congress leader politely reminded the leadership that Sivaji was then with the Janata party. Sivaji got the award in 1996 after he returned to the Congress.
Some said Prabhu could be the next state leader of the Forward Bloc, which derives its support only from the Thevar community. The FB’s earlier experiment to gain popularity by nominating another fading star Karthik as its state head ended in unmitigated disaster. It is possible that the Prabhus and Sarathkumars are hoping to win a seat here and a seat there, so that in the present coalition politics, they too could taste a bit of power.
This political flirting by filmstars seems most rampant among the Tamils, who could be easily judged guilty of elevating their celluloid heroes to glorious heights. Every actor of some standing has a grand title added to his/her name — from Superstar Rajnikanth down to Ilaya Dalapathi (commander of the youth) Vijay. No wonder then the Tamil stars want to shine in politics as well, while greater actors in other languages have remained content wearing the grease paint — the best example is Kerala’s Prem Nazir, who set a world record acting as hero in more than 600 films, yet kept away from the cinema studio.
Interestingly, if Sivaji was known as the nadigar thilagam (star among actors), archrival MGR was called the makkal thilagam (star of the people). Though Sivaji fancied being a political leader, he was more obsessed with acting — did not mind smoking, drinking, flirting and even dying on screen to bring out the best of histrionics. On the other hand, MGR would never do a scene showing him in bad light and defeated. He even supervised the lyrics and made sure they contained some social message that projected him among the people as a do-gooder, an ideal son, great brother and of course the most romantic hero. And so, says Thuglak editor Cho Ramaswamy, it would require years of astute planning for any film star to emulate MGR and score his kind of victory in a political role.
Yet several stars have chosen shortcuts latching on to the political bandwagon with the brazen calculation that their fan-following would easily multiply into votes.
"In the past everyone thought he could do an MGR. Even Sivaji, with such a huge fan following, failed to make a mark as people refused to see him as anything beyond an actor. Now Vijayakanth’s garnering eight per cent of the total votes has rekindled dreams among other stars like Karthik, Sharathkumar and Prabhu that they can win the odd assembly seat and share power in an alliance. Even Vijayakanth owes his votes to his film fans and a few unattached voters and I am doubtful if he can improve upon it," says Cho.
Actor S.Vee. Shekher, now an AIADMK legislator from south Chennai, differs from Cho and feels that Prabhu can make an impact if he is anointed the leader of the Forward Bloc. "On his own a star may be popular but you need a party machinery to bring those votes to the booth," Shekhar explains. He should know for in 1989 he had contested as an independent in the same Mylapore constituency. "In 2006 the good work of the Jayalalithaa government, the AIADMK’s cadre network and also my goodwill with the voters got me the victory," Shekher reasons, adding, "Karthik failed because he thought politics was another film-shooting and he was as unprofessional as he used to be on a movie set — arriving late and taking others for granted."
But it is impossible to keep the fictional effects of filmdom rubbing on to the star as illustrated by their improbable pronouncements even when they stray into real-life political scripts. Sharathkumar, with just a limited following among his Nadar community, declared that when his party comes to power he will not be the Chief Minister and would instead nominate a new CM every year.
Vijayakanth, faced with the DMK’s promise of free colour TV during the 2006 elections, announced that he would have all provisions home delivered from the ration shops. "MGR too made such blunders initially but listened to his political advisers and corrected them by the time he captured power," remembers a senior minister of his cabinet. But today’s stars, with huge egos and media hype around them, may not readily fine-tune themselves likewise. And unlike MGR, who had a long political apprenticeship in the DMK before emerging as its electoral mascot, the new heroes are in a great hurry to climb on to the gaddi.
Even when repeated political failures of successful filmstars stare them in the face, why do movie stars risk their future, image and money on such a risky venture? "I am sure they're still influenced by MGR’s success. Otherwise why should Vijayakanth project himself as the Karuppu MGR? True, Sharathkumar and Karthik are eyeing their community votes but back in their minds they still want to emulate MGR at least to a small degree," argues Cho.
Interestingly, the three biggest star-politicians that Tamil Nadu has seen so far do not belong to any powerful caste/community. MGR was a Malayalee (a fact that his rival Karunanidhi tried his best to exploit but failed), Jayalalithaa is a Brahmin (Karunanidhi tried and failed here too) and Vijayakanth is a Telugu Naidu. Superstar Rajnikanth is a Maharashtrian from Bengaluru and might well have made it to the chief minister’s chair if only he had entered politics when his millions of fans begged him during the 1996 state polls — the public rating of chief minister Jayalalithaa was at its lowest then.
Psychiatrist Vijay Nagaswami feels that the extent of sycophancy witnessed around Tamil stars could dull them into thinking that the switch from cinema to politics can be easily accomplished like a change of costume on a film set. "Since stars in Tamil Nadu are also viewed as role models, they think that their mass base would give them a natural extension to politics. Unless they pack the political savvy of MGR, who had cultivated his image through his films, these stars may end up as just another popular person and not a populist leader," he said.