The Tamils have spoken—this time to script a political first for C. Joseph Vijay. They ignored the fact that his Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) was scarcely a party in the conventional sense. It had little organisational depth, skipped byelections and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and carried the shadow of the Karur rally last year, where 41 people died.
Vijay’s personal life invited scrutiny, his candidates were largely unknown, and his campaign often felt uneven. Beyond a pledge to unseat the DMK, there was little in the way of a defined programme—Vijay relied instead on his screen-hero image and the novelty he brought to Tamil politics.
Most exit polls put the DMK-led alliance ahead, and the party seemed to trust them more than its own ground sense. It should have read the warning signs when it replaced 60 of 133 legislators, fearing defeat if they were re-nominated, but the move came too late. In a bid to offset a possible Congress exit, it hastily brought in the Desiya Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMDK). The Congress ultimately stayed, but both moves proved costly.
The DMDK’s entry unsettled what had been a stable five-year alliance. Strains surfaced when Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) leader Thol Thirumavalavan sought to contest an assembly seat, citing an impending “major change” in state politics—an unspoken acknowledgement of fears that Vijay would eat into his base. Though he withdrew under DMK pressure, the damage lingered.
Vijay called the DMK his “political enemy” and the BJP his “ideological enemy”. Other than this, it was not clear what he stood for. He rarely took a stand on issues that rocked the state and avoided the press like the plague. He initially held hall meetings with his TVK members. It took a while before he organised a major launch, followed by a few public rallies. His number two was the not-so-well-known Bussy Anand from neighbouring Puducherry. He belatedly began a weekend contact programme (he said he did not wish to trouble people at work on working days), but after a spirited start, Karur happened. It took three days for Vijay to react to the tragedy; until the end, he did not visit the victims’ families. Crowds besieged him, and he wished to avoid another tragedy, we were told. So the mountain came to Mohammed, and the families were brought to Vijay.
He had no allies, although he held out the bait of sharing power. A section of the state Congress was eager to ally with him, but Vijay himself did not want to discuss this. As he put himself forward as chief minister, the AIADMK was pushed to a tie-up with the BJP, more an albatross around its political neck. He proved blithely impervious to the happenings around him.
So Vijay went into battle single-handedly. His candidates were unknown quantities. TVK insiders said in private that the party had no funds to fight this election against the well-endowed DMK and the AIADMK-BJP alliance. Furthermore, Vijay ran an erratic campaign, failing to show up as announced in some places and neglecting many others, even as his septuagenarian opponents, Stalin and Edappadi K. Palaniswami, toured the entire state. The TVK campaign seemed to depend on Vijay, social media and word of mouth.
Yet none of this mattered. The undertow working for Vijay emerged in ubiquitous anecdotal accounts. While the two major alliances paid for a portion of the votes, reports indicate the TVK did so in only two constituencies, making this victory largely organic and untainted.
So what does the vote say? Voters wish to see a better Tamil Nadu, not take heart in the fact that they are better off than Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Cut up by the DMK’s haughtiness and supreme indifference to their aspirations, a whole young generation disliked established parties. A newcomer could not be any worse than they are. After all, how much worse could it get?
Vijay had prophesied that this election would be as seismic as Tamil Nadu’s 1967 and 1977 elections. In 1967, the DMK unseated the mighty Congress in a bipolar contest after 18 years of gruelling groundwork, films, MGR and support from seven smaller parties. In 1977, MGR brought down the entrenched DMK by joining two smaller parties, winning 30 per cent of the vote in a four-cornered contest.
Although the ultra-Tamil nationalist NTK (Naam Tamilar Katchi) was also in the race, it was mostly a three-way contest, and Vijay did not have the benefit of the four-way race that lowered MGR’s victory threshold.
Vijay was a one-man army. The Tamils have chosen him, making it clear that some can be bought but not all. Used to cult figures like Rajaji, Kamaraj, Anna, Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalalithaa, they faced a huge void since 2016 and had waited a decade for someone to show up. When Vijay floated the TVK and said he was quitting acting to serve them, their hearts leapt with joy. This was a charming 50-year-old man at the height of his career, willing to do what others would not—give up a lucrative career and a plush life for the rough and tumble of politics. They decided to embrace him.
The electoral battle has been decisively won. But the real work now begins for Vijay and his associates, as people expect a great deal of him. To begin with, how does one give a monthly dole of Rs 2,500 to women, provide six free LPG cylinders a year and run free buses for all women, as promised? How does one create jobs for job-hungry youth without endangering the environment or harming water bodies? How does one root out omnipotent, omnipresent corruption? How does one deal with rampant drinking and the drug menace? How does one elevate public life from the depths it has fallen into with the likes of Senthil Balaji?
Like in his movies, people expect Vijay to win in the end. Will he?
Kannan is a political commentator and author of biographies of former chief ministers C.N. Annadurai and M.G. Ramachandran and The DMK Years: Ascent, Descent, Survival.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.