The Rise of Captain Tamil Nadu

The alliance between the AIADMK and DMDK has ended—in typical Jayalalithaaesque fashion. Amma, as the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister is called, announced its end last week after a heated verbal duel with Captain Vijayakanth in the Assembly. In doing so, however, she may have unwittingly helped the political ambitions of the captain.

Sixty-year-old Captain Vijayakanth, who founded the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam in 2005, has nurtured his political outfit so well that it’s now the main opposition party—leaving the beleaguered Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in third place.

Vijayakanth’s heated debate in the Assembly was preceded by his attack on the AIADMK over a steep bus fare and milk price hike. At that time, no one imagined that it would end in a loud argument with Jayalalithaa herself. In the ensuing drama, the speaker ousted all DMDK MLAs. Later, Jayalalithaa announced that she was ending her alliance with his party, calling Vijayakanth an “obnoxious man”.

But this seems more than a heat-of-the- moment decision. Jaya has been whipping her AIADMK family into shape. It started after she evicted her long-time confidante Sasikala Natarajan for her “corrupt and embarrassing” ways. Insiders also say Sasikala’s husband was planning some sort of coup, which led to a paranoid Jaya kicking out all members of the Natarajan family from her party.

In fact, Sasikala was partly responsible for the AIADMK-DMDK alliance. Of course, Jaya herself was ready to play ball due to Vijayakanth’s rising popularity in south Tamil Nadu. This suited her as she wanted to counter Union Minister MK Alagiri’s stranglehold on Madurai.

But things change. “What suited madam then does not suit her now. In any case, she never liked Vijayakanth, who is both arrogant and unstable. That is the honest reason why she did not wish to share power when she got a sweeping majority,” says a senior AIADMK leader.

However, this break-up could a blessing in disguise for Vijayakanth. Born Vijayaraj Prabhakar Alagarswami, he gained fame by his screen name Vijayakanth, and acquired the title of ‘captain’ after his 100th movie, Captain Prabhakaran, hit movie screens in 1991. His action flicks are characterised by extreme stunts and make quite an impact at the box office.

But it is politics that probably runs in his blood, as his father was a successful civic body politician in Madurai. Soon after he launched the DMDK in 2005, his party polled an impressive 10 per cent of the state’s total votes in the 2006 election. That was very impressive for a party with only one representative in the Assembly.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha election, his party didn’t win even one seat, but it increased its vote share and became a force to reckon with. By 2011, it was clear that the captain had the power to play spoilsport. Politically, he was anti-DMK, and allied himself with Jayalalithaa even though she offered him no more than 41 tickets.

Despite the rocky pre-poll alliance, in which neither Jaya nor the captain campaigned for each other, he showed that his party is no pushover. “It is quite an achievement, as Tamil Nadu has always been a two-party state with the AIADMK and DMK being [strong] regional outfits. Several caste-based parties such as the PMK and MDMK have been formed but never quite severely dented the two main regional parties,” says political commentator Cho Ramaswamy. Even after the 2011 Assembly polls, the DMDK rushed ahead and captured 17 per cent of all votes in the October local body polls.

Sources say the DMDK is highly organised, on the evidence of its cadre. “Vijayakanth has organised them into many wings—students, farmers, advocates, women, doctors and other wings, a reason for the popularity. But he is the supreme leader and all decisions are taken by him alone. He is as arrogant and high- handed as Jaya,” says a party insider.

To enhance his political appeal, Vijayakanth started Captain TV, a Tamil channel calculated to expand his popularity. The actor has a huge Facebook following too, where his fans call him ‘bulletproof’, perhaps because in many of his films, bullets fired at him ricochet harmlessly off his body. But the bulletproof moniker could have another meaning: none of Jaya’s bullets can harm him.

Not only is his popularity rising, some websites have already started calling him the next Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Interestingly, he hit the campaign trail in a van used by the late MGR. It was gifted to him by the legend’s wife Janaki Ramachandran—who briefly succeeded her late husband as the state’s Chief Minister.

Vijayakanth’s popularity in Tamil Nadu seems unaffected by the fact that he is Telugu—derisively called ‘Goltis’ in the state. “It’s his time under the stars,” say political analysts.