OPINION PIECE: Vijay and his Political Conundrum

There has been much discussion and debate about the recent tragedy at Karur when 41 people – including 10 children – lost their lives during a stampede that occurred at a political rally organised by Vijay’s political party Thamilagam Vettri Kazhagam (TVK).

It was the perfect storm of bad decisions for Vijay and his team that worsened the situation. A rally scheduled for 12h00 only began when Vijay arrived almost seven hours later. There was inadequate means of crowd control from Vijay’s party helpers and an equally inadequate response from the local police.

The situation was further exacerbated by allegations that the party had applied for a gathering of 10 000 people and that number was a huge under-estimation of the crowd that eventually formed. Nobody knows the exact number of people that were there when Vijay arrived, but current estimates put the number between 75 000 and 100 000 people.

The biggest political blunder was when Vijay chose to leave the site that night. He took to X a few hours after the tragedy to express his shock and sorrow over the loss of life, but it was only three days later that he responded with an official statement. The reason he gave for his silence was that he feared that if he remained in Karur, it would have made matters worse – for whom, he did not say, but he did imply that the decision was taken in the best interests of his supporters.

To the objective viewer, it was a disturbingly calm Vijay that appeared on the video despite the obvious and visible anger he felt about the incident. There was a veiled allegation of the ruling party having deliberately sabotaged the event by not having adequate measures to handle the crowd, but the ruling party countered this allegation by saying that Vijay and TVK needed to take full responsibility for how the event was managed.

The incident has once again unveiled the ugly faces of Tamil Nadu politics and sparked widespread debates about Vijay’s readiness for politics. If nothing else, the Karur incident has fanned observations about the unhealthy level of fan worship that has characterised the ever blurred line between films and politics.

It seems that the people of Tamil Nadu have confused their love for Vijay as an actor with his current suitability for active politics.

The problem is that Vijay did not take the normal route of serving the people first in structures before venturing into party politics. This raises the question of how much Vijay and the members of his party know about running a state and whether the party has a reasonable chance of changing the decades-long pattern of voting in Tamil Nadu – a period that has basically reduced the political power mainly to two parties. With many aspirant movements having failed to change that, it is very ambitious for a fledgling party to achieve what older and bigger movements failed to do.

The bigger challenge is how the inexperienced party helpers are expected to provide the structures and measures that Vijay desperately needs for his campaign.

The biggest challenge is the political positioning of the TVK policies which embraces the same political left taken by the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and their biggest opponent, the ALL India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Like these two parties, Vijay’s TVK has built its political foundation on the teachings of Periyar and the embracing of Marxism.

This begs the question: Does the TVK provide a real alternative to the two parties that have ruled Tamil Nadu for decades? Is real change possible when the political roots of these parties are all the same?

Vijay and many of his supporters are making the mistake of assuming that his popularity as an actor can be equated with faith in him as a politician. There is no doubt that Vijay is loved and adored by millions of people in Tamil Nadu, but that love for his screen image cannot and should not be seen as an indication of his ability to head the massive political machinery that is required to lead Tamil Nadu to a better position.