STAR appeal: (From top) Govinda, Vinod Khanna, Jaya Bachchan, Hema Malini,M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa.

You can’t really blame Vinod Khanna. Shilpa Shetty had just morphed from a small-time actress into a big-time star, and everybody — from the media to the market — wanted something from her. So nobody was greatly surprised when the actor-Parliamentarian from Gurdaspur announced that the winner of Celebrity Big Brother, a UK television show, would soon join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In Delhi, a BJP leader looked a bit embarrassed at the thought of having the oomph girl in the party. Khanna’s enthusiastic stance came just after the BJP’s dream-girl — as actress Hema Malini has often been referred to — had put the party in an awkward position. The Rajya Sabha member urged northerners to go back home if they were not happy in Mumbai — a statement that she subsequently retracted.

There’s trouble brewing with stars in politics. Not just the BJP, the Congress has been in a bit of mess too. Its Member of Parliament from Mumbai North, actor Govinda, has not been seen either in his constituency or in Parliament for quite a while. The actor has his own take on the subject, convinced that the issue was played up by the media. “But it is difficult for an actor to move too much. One gets mobbed and gets dhakkas, owing to which people get injured,” he explains.

Elections are round the corner, with Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur going to the polls this year. The stars are expected to be drawn into the campaigns in Uttar Pradesh in particular. The Samajwadi Party (SP), for one, is drawing up a campaign centred on stars. Friend Amitabh Bachchan will not campaign for the party, but may speak on behalf of the state. His wife Jaya Bachchan — a member of the Rajya Sabha and of the party — is going to campaign. And there is a buzz in the SP that her son, hero Abhishek, may join her in a rally or two.

“Stars are crowd pullers,” says Margaret Alva, Congress general secretary in charge of Maharashtra. “But whether they can convert crowds into votes is another matter,” she says.

What’s true, though, is the fact that the relationship between political parties and celebrities is a marriage of convenience. Stars, as a senior BJP leader in Delhi points out, tend to win elections. “Only Govinda can defeat (former BJP minister) Ram Naik,” he says. “And we used Dharmendra’s Jat background to win his constituency (Bikaner in Rajasthan),” he says.

For stars, on the other hand, a stint in politics is often seen as a post-retirement plan. Most celebrities in north India, as Chennai-based social scientist M.S.S. Pandian puts it, have little interest in the “larger canvas” of politics. For some, it is a personal ambition and for a few others an acceptance of a political party’s need for glamour, he holds.

Clearly, the actors of the north vastly differ from their counterparts in the south when it comes to straddling the worlds of politics and cinema. “The southern actors have never relied solely on their film star status to spur their political careers,” says Pandian, pointing out that AIADMK founder and former Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.G. Ramachandran, was always a party person.

Tamil Nadu has its own story to tell (see box below). Karnataka has its share of actors who have made it to politics, but have never enjoyed the cult status of their counterparts in Tamil Nadu. Mukhyamantri Chandru, now with the BJP, is still remembered for his role in and as Mukhyamantri — a play that has been staged over 400 times. Actor Anant Nag stood against former chief minister S.M. Krishna from Chamrajpet in Bangalore in 2004 on a Janata Dal (Secular) ticket. Kannada actor Ambareesh is a minister in Manmohan Singh’s government.

Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh saw the rise of N.T. Rama Rao on a plank of regional pride. NTR, as the actor-chief minister was known, founded the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in March, 1982, and swept to power in December. Years later, his son-in-law, and inheritor of the TDP plank, N. Chandrababu Naidu, roped in film stars in a campaign to clean jails and streets. “Film actors have achieved landmark goals and ruled effectively with a human face by converting their fan following into political workers,” says actor Chiranjeevi.

Of course, there are stars-— and then there are stars. “There is a distinction between stars joining politics who lend their names and merely act as brand ambassadors and stars joining politics who have a political stance or ideology,” says Calcutta-based scholar Samik Bandyopadhyay.

So on the one hand you have Nargis Dutt, who created a furore in Parliament in the early Eighties by accusing director Satyajit Ray of exporting images of poverty to the West. On the other hand, you have an actor like her husband, Sunil Dutt, whose tireless work as an MP was widely applauded.

“Sunil Dutt was temperamentally a server. Apart from him, there is nothing to boast about any Bollywood star in politics,” says director Mahesh Bhatt. “The rest of them are like the icing on a cake. But the icing is also important. Somebody has to be the face or the glitter,” he says.

Politicians, however, are not so dismissive of stars. Samajwadi Party MP Shahid Siddiqui, for instance, believes that stars serve a serious purpose by erasing divisive electoral lines. “You want people to cut across regions, religions and caste. There was a time when we had leaders who did so. Now we have stars who have a pan-Indian appeal,” he says.

And that is why Jaya Prada, a Hindi film actress from Andhra Pradesh, ended up defeating Noor Bano, a much-entrenched Congress MP from Rampur’s royal family. “Rampur in UP is a case in point — it’s predominantly Muslim and feudal. But Jaya Prada, who is neither a Muslim, nor from UP, and not from the royal family, ends up winning the Rampur seat,” he says.

But Siddiqui holds that the work of a star-politician doesn’t begin or end with an election. “After that they have to work like anybody else.” Adds Alva, “The election is just the entry point. You have to then prove yourself as a worker to sustain yourself.”

And that, many say, is the problem. Dharmendra, for one, was seldom seen in Bikaner after his win. Rajesh Khanna, who fought and lost from New Delhi, did little for his constituency. And Genevieve Morenas, an HR professional who lives in Virar, which is a part of Govinda’s constituency, is scathing in her criticism of her MP. “Govinda is known only for being absent. He is neither to be seen, nor heard since his last election campaign,” she says.

Or take Shatrughan Sinha — who describes himself as the “Old, bold, gold and beautiful of Indian politics.” Sinha’s stint as a minister at the Centre was so dull that the government had to drop him. “Being a minister is hard work,” admits the BJP leader. “You have to read a lot, take decisions on important matters. You have to be under constant scrutiny,” he says.

Clearly, politics is not every star’s cup of tea. Not surprisingly, many of the stars who joined politics with suitable fanfare are no longer around. The late Eighties and early Nineties saw a spurt of such activity, with stars from popular television series, Ramayana and Mahabharata, joining politics in general and the BJP in particular. Few of them, however, remain in public memory today.

“Except for Sunil Dutt, all the Bollywood stars in politics have been a big zero,” says outspoken Congressman Sanjay Nirupam. “Bollywood stars in politics lack vision. They have to be trained in the nuances of politics. But they think they are God because they have 50,000 people following them.”

But they play a role —which is why political parties always make a beeline for them before an election. They don’t just win elections but are also used effectively in campaigns. Alva points out that actress Nagma — who has been greatly successful in Bhojpuri films — is a big draw in Hindi-speaking areas. Or, as the BJP general secretary in Mumbai, Atul Bhatkalkar, adds, television actress Smriti Irani has addressed some 50 political meetings. And Rupa Ganguly and Sabyasachi Chakraborty of the Calcutta film industry admit that they have often been approached by political parties to join them.

“Politics is not just about manipulation and power,” stresses Tapas Paul, a Bengali actor and Trinamul Congress legislator in West Bengal. “It is also about connecting with people. I always wanted to do something for people.”

They also help when political parties don’t have enough issues to take up as electoral planks. “The relationship between Bollywood and politics is a selfish one. Politicians take film stars lightly. The idea is ‘free ka chandan hai, ghis lo’ (this sandalwood is for free, let’s just rub it for its essence),” says Shatrughan Sinha.

And that would explain Vinod Khanna’s enthusiasm for Shilpa. A whiff of a new aroma, after all, can spice up any old election.

Additional reporting by Seetha in New Delhi, G.S. Radhakrishna in Hyderabad, Dola Mitra in Calutta, Varuna Verma in Bangalore and Reena Martins in Mumbai

Southern spice

She may be out of power in Tamil Nadu now — but just the sight of ‘Rosu Amma’ — a reference to the rosy complexion of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa — is still an ecstatic moment for thousands of fans of the AIADMK leader. “Hey, move away! I have come all the way only to see ‘Amma’,” shrieked an elderly lady at the AIADMK party office in Chennai some days ago, on the 90th birth anniversary of Jayalalithaa’s political mentor and late actor M.G. Ramachandran.

‘Amma’, attired in her favourite green saree, had to only gently glide into the first floor portico facing an open quadrangle teeming with her party cadres and admirers, and there was an instant chorus of ‘Puratchi Thalaivi’ (the revolutionary leader) going up in the air, a high-pitched affirmation of a reverential salute to a Hindu Goddess.

Such is the strange alchemy of charisma and awe of Jayalalithaa, a reflection of the fact that actors and others in the cinema industry are not crowd pullers, like their counterparts in the North, but torch-bearers of “people’s power” and dispenser of entitlements.

The cinema-politics nexus has been flourishing for long. In fact, all five non-Congress chief ministers in the state have had their links with cinema. C.N. Annadurai, who led the DMK to an incredible first win, routing the Congress, and his successor, M. Karunanidhi, were both script writers. MGR, Jayalalithaa, and MGR’s wife, Janaki Ramachandran, who was at the helm of the government for a short while, were actors. The latest to join the race for political leadership is actor Vijayakant, leader of the fledgling DMDK.

“Tamil cinema has grown to become the most domineering influence in the cultural and political life of Tamil Nadu,” says social critique Theodre S. Bhaskaran. And the roots of the ‘twin banyan tree’ — cinema and politics — continue to grow.

M.R. Venkatesh