ONE MAN ARMY
IT IS RAJINIKANTH’S HOUR OF RECKONING. WILL 2.0 MAKE OR MAR HIS POLITICAL FUTURE?
FFirst, meet Rajinikanth the movie star. The superhero with lush hair and Elvis Presley sideburns, sporting a Batman-like costume in his latest release 2.0. He is a one-man army out to save the world with a robot clone of him equipped with multiple guns that can fire bullets in a 360-degree arc. He is invincible.
Then meet Rajinikanth the person. Unlike most film stars, he unabashedly exposes his balding pate with frazzled shrubs of hair on the sides. He doesn’t hide the wrinkles and freckles on his face with make-up. He wears a spartan white kurta and pyjama and prefers to travel the streets of Chennai in an innocuous Innova. Unlike his I-dare-you on-screen characters, he is self-effacing and remains circumspect about his political plans even a year after proclaiming his intent to join the fray.
The day of reckoning, though, is nigh for Rajinikanth, and he should, as one of the memes puts it, Mind It! Costing Rs 540 crore, Shanmugam Shankar’s 2.0, the sci–fi sequel to his 2010 film Enthiran (Robot), is the costliest film ever made in the history of Indian cinema. As 2.0 hit 10,000-odd screens in 14 languages around the world on November 29, there was a lot more riding on the film than just recovering the loads of money invested in it. For Rajinikanth, it will either magnify his superstar status and boost his electoral appeal or puncture his stardom and, with it, his ambitions of becoming a stellar actor on the Tamil Nadu political stage.
It is truly boom or bust time for the ageing film star. But Rajinikanth remains unworried and, in a rare interview with india today at his Poes Garden residence in the heart of Chennai, insists he would never bank on films to promote his political agenda unlike Tamil Nadu leaders, such as M.G. Ramachandran and M. Karunanidhi. Reason: “My films are different and my life is entirely different. Why should I merge the two? I am paid as an actor for films, whether I like the role or not. If I enter politics, I will be myself. I want to introduce a new
and different kind of politics. I am 67 years of age, my health too is in a checkup stage. It is not easy to enter politics at this age, it is not a path of flowers. But still you have to change things, change that will make a difference in politics.” (See accompanying interview.)
Yet those who interpret Rajinikanth’s prudence in politics as timidity or a lack of clarity may rue such hasty conclusions. Rajinikanth has seen hard times—he began his working life as a bus conductor—and has slogged to attain the pinnacle he currently occupies. As one of the highest-paid film stars in Asia, with over 150 films, many of them blockbusters, in his bag, Rajinikanth has demonstrated that he has the talent, the temperament and the toughness to endure any test. Asked why, unlike his films where he moves at superfast speed, his political thrust has been at a snail’s pace, he said, “Politics is a very big game and very dangerous too. So I have to play it cautiously. And timing is very important.”
Timing has always been key to Rajinikanth’s success, whether knowing when to flip a cigarette to his lips with panache or when to announce his intentions to join politics. In his superhit film Muthu, his best-known dialogue is “Naan eppo varuven, epdi varuvennu yarkum theriyathu. Aana vara vendiya nerathile vandidven (Nobody knows when or how I will come, but I will come when the time is right).” Rajinikanth had nurtured political ambitions for a long time, but it was only after the death of
chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in December 2016 that he sensed an opportunity to fill the leadership vacuum. M. Karunanidhi, the DMK stalwart and Jayalalithaa’s rival, was also seriously ill then. (He passed away in August this year.) Rajinikanth created a wave of excitement by announcing his intention to join politics.
Tamil Nadu politics has been dominated since 1967 by two Dravidian parties—the AIADMK, or the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and the DMK, or the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Both parties have enduring cadres and since 1984 alternated as the ruling party in Tamil Nadu till Jayalalithaa broke the rule by winning consecutive assembly elections in 2011 and 2016. In the 2011 and 2016 polls, the AIADMK and allies polled 51.93 per cent and 41 per cent of the votes, respectively, while the DMK and partners polled 39.53 and 40 per cent. In the 2016 election, the AIADMK and its allies won 134 of Tamil Nadu’s 234 assembly seats while the DMK combine won 98. In between, in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, the AIADMK and allies logged 43.3 per cent of the votes while the DMK along with its partners notched up a 26.8 per cent vote share.
Significantly, over the past decade, alliances without either the AIADMK or the DMK leading them have vanished, exposing their non–existing voter base. To emerge as a force, Rajinikanth will have to capture a substantial amount of the vote share both parties enjoy. With Karunanidhi anointing his son Stalin as the leader of the DMK before his death, that void is slowly being filled. Though the AIADMK continues to be in government following Jayalalithaa’s death, it has lost cohesion and the ferment among those jockeying for power continues. The party has no clear leader with the kind of charisma and stature that Jayalalithaa enjoyed.
Some analysts argue that Rajinikanth is targeting the AIADMK’s vote bank because the party is without a leader and he is a leader without a party. In his interview with india today, Rajinikanth made it a point to praise MGR and even Jayalalithaa despite their differences and the fact that he had campaigned against her in 1996. He had nice things to say about Narendra Modi too. Though the BJP drew only two per cent of the votes in the state, Rajinikanth doesn’t want to antagonise the prime minister. But it is the AIADMK cadres that Rajinikanth is targeting to win the election. With the various factions hanging on together to prevent a collapse of government before the end of its term in 2021, Rajinikanth calculates that he still has time on his hands. He seems to be waiting for people’s disillusionment with the AIADMK govern-
RAJINIKANTH IS BELIEVED TO BE TARGETING THE AIADMK VOTE BANK: THE PARTY IS WITHOUT A LEADER AND HE IS A LEADER WITHOUT A PARTY
ment to peak before stepping in.
The star, meanwhile, has focused on quietly revitalising the Rajini Makkal Mandram (RMM)—his statewide network of fans—and building a cadre of political workers and leaders at the grassroots level. The RMM is so far the bulwark of his political foray. Some of these diehard supporters had joined him in his campaigning to encourage blood and cornea donations since the 1980s, organising camps on the occasion of his birthday, December 12, every year. They can be leveraged to help him take the plunge at an appropriate time. Rajinikanth does not want to lose any steam with an early build-up. He is conscious of the fact that regaling cine-goers and rallying voters are two distinct talents.
RMM members scrupulously observe the 36-page blue book released by Rajinikanth that outlines how they should conduct themselves in politics. The book, which has on its cover a reflective Rajinikanth and the symbol of a hand, popularised by his film Baba, spells out ideals and values for RMM activists. Rajinikanth has directed the RMM to go all-out to draw the younger generation and first-time voters by engaging them on social media. His website, rajinimandram.org, got a million hits and 300,000 registrations in the first 24 hours. He wants his fans to be part of his campaign for a ‘total revolution’ along with RMM members who hail from all age groups. Yet, so far, analysts estimate, this will account for only around 15 per cent of the electorate. It is a good beginning, but he needs at least 35 per cent of the vote share to rule the state should there be a three-way split among parties. Therefore, he needs to win over not only those drifting away from the AIADMK but also to capture the imagination of a large percentage of the DMK supporters as well as the uncommitted voters.
When Rajinikanth announced his decision to enter politics on December 31 last year, he defined his vision of “spiritual politics” as one without shades of caste or religion. Hard work, transparency, public service, honesty and casteless politics would be the cornerstone of his party, he
said. His optimistic supporters reckon that the charisma of Rajinikanth and the determination of RMM cadres together will free Tamil Nadu from the stranglehold of Dravidian rule. Chennai-based RSS ideologue S. Gurumurthy has welcomed the entry of Rajinikanth and endorsed the superstar’s brand of ‘spiritual politics’ as a potential game-changer, liberating the state ‘from the anti–god politics, concealing within it the Dravidian anti-Hindu sentiments, which has become outdated and counterproductive in Tamil Nadu’s increasingly pervasive religiosity’.
Rajinikanth, though, is careful not to be branded as being backed by the BJP and risk losing the minority vote. Barely a month after announcing his political entry, he modified the original RMM logo to exclude the lotus and the snake to doubly ensure that his brand of spirituality does not alienate non– Hindus from his politics. Both the Ramakrishna Mission and Swami Vivekananda have been influences in his early life and contributed to those elements in the RMM logo. “He is simple, honest and straight-forward,” gushes Raju Mahalingam, one of those who bankrolled 2.0 before he quit Lyca Productions to be the first to join Rajinikanth’s political campaign. “He is the need of the hour for Tamil Nadu.”
In his interview to india today, Rajinikanth did elaborate on
UNLIKE HIS LIGHTNING SPEED ON SCREEN, RAJINIKANTH IS GOING SLOW IN POLITICS. HE DOESN’T WANT TO LOSE STEAM WITH AN EARLY BUILD-UP
what he thought were the key issues facing Tamil Nadu. He believes there is a leadership vacuum in the state that is preventing the people from realising their full potential. He is clear that the “first priority should be to eradicate poverty, create employment, take care of youth and ensure economic growth for the upliftment of the state. Everyone is suffering...farmers, youngsters...we should resolve all these things”. Rajinikanth seemed to indicate that he was staying away from Dravidian politics and focusing instead on presenting himself as the messiah of the poor and needy on the lines of AIADMK founder MGR, a strategy that proved highly successful with the electorate.
Experts are sceptical about Rajinikanth’s gameplan to inherit MGR’s political legacy. “In election campaigns, he can try to create the MGR aura, and also come up with a poll manifesto of the MGR ‘populist’ kind. But the gap between the two is huge. What’s more, MGR was known and seen as doing in real life what he promised on reel life long before he became chief minister. Rajinikanth slips badly on that score,” says political analyst N. Sathiya Moorthy. The star gained much of his early popularity playing the roles of villain’s characters who smoked and drank, paying no heed to building any future political image.
Other analysts point out that there was a contextual evolution of MGR the actor as a politician. “Who does not want to be an MGR in Tamil Nadu cinema and politics? Only a few can understand that MGR’s image, including myths and realities, evolved with the DMK’s rise and the Dravidian movement between 1955 and 1967. Rajinikanth is far removed from the masses and cannot even be a copy of MGR in his outreach and the ideological force of Dravidian identity and power politics,” says Professor Ramu Manivannan, head of the department of political science and public administration at the University of Madras. “In cinema,” he goes on to add, “he entered as a villain (anti-hero) and emerged as a hero. But, in politics, he is an unknown hero who will be dismissed as a villain.”
Yet, Rajinikanth is in demand. Much of what the RMM is doing in organisation-building, particularly forming polling booth committees, has a ring of what the BJP has done successfully in recent years in capturing power in several states. Rajinikanth’s political strategy team seems to be working on several imponderables, starting with the purported uncertainties in the AIADMK ranks, the perceived dwindling of the DMK cadre strength and possible churn in the equally strong ranks of non-committed voters, who play a decisive factor in Tamil Nadu elections. Whether they will vote for him because of that is another question.
Rajinikanth will also face other challenges, both before and after contesting his first election. Apart from policy predicaments, he cannot induct corrupt and selfdefeating politicians from other parties and go and tell voters that he is here to cleanse the system. Rajinikanth holds the promise of a bold experiment of bringing a new kind of politics and politicians—a Tamil Nadu 2.0. But right now he is a one-man army and it will be a tall order for Rajinikanth to emerge as a superhero in real life for the people of Tamil Nadu.
SO FAR, HIS FANS AND THE RMM WILL ACCOUNT FOR ONLY 15 PER CENT OF THE VOTE. RAJINIKANTH NEEDS TO HIT AT LEAST 35 PER CENT