Anybody who has been to a Royal Challengers Bengaluru-Chennai Super Kings match—or even watched it on TV; whether at a high-end pub or a crowded street-side showroom—will attest to the fevered fervour of their fan armies. “Ee sala cup namdu” and “whistle podu” are practically religious incantations, operating at dizzying levels that “korbo, lorbo, jeetbo” or “duniya hila denge hum” can only dream of emulating. It would be a mild exaggeration, if at all, to say they rival the intensity of chants like “jai shri Ram” or “mandir vahin banayenge”.
So, what’s the secret sauce the south Indians are serving? Why is fan commitment so intense—win or lose? Sure, both these teams do a lot of outreach and good work, but so do Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders. Is it simply because RCB can boast of Virat Kohli, and CSK of M.S. Dhoni? But MI started off with Sachin Tendulkar, and today is powered by Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya.
And yet, delirious heights of fandom continues to evade them. Essentially, the fandom these teams enjoy borrows from the fandom that matinee stars command in south India. Stars like M.G. Ramachandran, Rajkumar and N.T. Rama Rao were seen not just as stars but as protectors of language and culture. Supporting them became a way of asserting regional identity, often against a perceived Hindi-centric mainstream.
A TVK worker holding a shirt with Vijay’s photograph | AP
In contrast, Bollywood stars—like the Khans—draw a vast, diffuse, pan-Indian audience, and hence their fandom lacks an intensely personal, tribal edge. In trying to belong to everyone, they often end up belonging to no one.
What is especially striking is that southern fan bases seem unconcerned about origins. M.S. Dhoni being from Jharkhand, or Virat Kohli being from Delhi hardly matters. Just like nobody in Tamil Nadu seems to be losing any sleep over the fact that they had just voted in a Christian chief minister. This would be absolutely inconceivable in the north, or, at the very least, it would have been a dominant issue in the campaign. Vijay’s faith is barely a footnote to his fairytale ascent. But is it really a fairy tale? Because that implies magic. And there has been no ‘magic’ involved in Vijay’s ‘instant’ rise. There has been genius timing—filling the political vacuum created by the death of hero-politicians and the withdrawal of Rajinikanth. There has been a savvy choice of electoral symbol—the CSK’s irreverent “whistle podu” energy. They have been the films themselves. And, most important, there has been a meticulous, decade-long mobilisation. Through the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VMI), Vijay systematically shifted the focus of his 85,000 fan clubs from cinema to social service, establishing free tuition centres, blood banks and food kitchens in almost every district of Tamil Nadu. So when the TVK was formally launched in 2024, it simply activated a battle-hardened army that had already spent 10 years acting as “local heroes” in their hoods.
Basically, in north India, God is the hero, but in south India, the hero becomes God. Thanks to Periyar’s rejection of caste and religion and emphasis on self-respect and rationalism, most people from these states in south India satisfy their need to worship by identifying and appointing—through their vote-worthy mortals from any background whatsoever to serve as gods/players/rulers.
They go all out for these mortal-gods. They build temples. Perform aartis. Give milk baths. However, if the deities prove to have feet of clay, they are replaced.
A model so much better than the north Indian model where a certain political party remains unchallengeable and unchangeable.