Vijaykant: Confused

Chennai, Oct. 2: He sports the trademark fur cap and dark glasses and his supporters call him the “Karuppu (dark-complexioned) MGR”.

So, will Vijaykant, Tamil Nadu’s latest film star-turned-politician, be the dark horse at the Assembly elections six months from now? Can he wrest part of the legacy of the late chief minister M.G. Ramachandran that current chief minister Jayalalithaa wears like a badge?

The 54-year-old Vijaykant ? who launched his party recently amid speculation of support from the BJP ? may, however, have put a wrong foot forward by trying to be everything to everybody.

It showed in the name he chose for his party: Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam. The attempt to claim affinity with both streams of state politics ? desiyam (nationalism), symbolised by the Congress and the Left, and the Dravidian movement of the DMK and ADMK ? seems to have confused many.

“I have included the word ‘desiya’ in my party name to signify that the Dravidian ethos is part of the nationalist ethos,” said the actor, all of whose 146 films have been in Tamil, at the launch of his party in Madurai.

He threw a crumb at women voters: the name had come to him “by the grace of goddess Meenakshi”.

The English abbreviation, “DMDK”, seemed to be a clever pun on the DMK and the Vaiko-led MDMK, both Opposition parties.

His Madurai rally provided a study in symbolism. He arrived at the venue in a large van, fitted with huge cutouts of MGR and his late wife Janaki Ramachandran (who was chief minister for about a month after MGR’s death). Vijaykant claimed she had gifted him the van.

If this was an attempt to put pressure on the chief minister, he quickly neutralised it by thanking her for the tight security arrangement made for his rally.

These conflicting signals have baffled the Opposition. None of the major Opposition parties ? the DMK, Congress and the Left ? has reacted to the formation of the DMDK. Even the BJP, which has decided to go it alone in the next Assembly polls, quickly lost its enthusiasm for Vijaykant.

On the other hand, PMK leader S. Ramadoss has said openly that actors turning politicians is an “unhealthy trend”.

The trend, however, has persisted in the state over the past five decades, with MGR and Jayalalithaa being the most prominent of the “star-politicians”.

But MGR, unlike Vijaykant, had plunged into politics right from the beginning of his acting career as a theatre artiste ? something the new claimant to his legacy has never been.

MGR began with the desiyam of the Congress but soon joined the Dravidian movement ? leaving no one in any confusion about his ideological moorings at any stage of his political career.

He formed the ADMK after being expelled from the DMK and later brought Jayalalithaa into the party and coached her.

The greenhorn Vijaykant, who is banking heavily on his hundreds of fan clubs that can be turned into party units in no time, perhaps cannot take a clear ideological stand because the fans belong to many social and political groupings. This is a problem that, many believe, persuaded Tamil film star Rajnikant to keep out of active politics.