A Vijay blockbuster: Man who walked into people’s hearts, came out with stupendous mandate

Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief Vijay.

Yet, Vijay also breaks that tradition. While his astonishing electoral success within two years of his political launch has invited the inevitable comparison with MGR, the other superstar who went on to be Chief Minister, there are crucial differences.

While MGR came from inside the Dravidian movement before founding the AIADMK, Vijay’s politics did not grow out of party apprenticeship or public agitation. It grew from fandom first, then welfare activity, then carefully rationed political speech. That makes him both less prepared than MGR and, in another sense, more mysterious.

So when his TVK ended up as the single biggest party in the Tamil Nadu elections, Vijay left almost everyone stunned, except perhaps those in whose homes he had existed since much before, as a poster, as a song, as dialogues or as dance moves.

Romantic hero to Thalapathy

To understand Vijay’s politics, one must first understand Vijay the screen figure.

He was not always the swaggering “Thalapathy” or commander, the honorary title bestowed on him by his fans. The early Vijay was softer, leaner, more boyish. In the 1990s, he became a romantic hero with a particular middle-class accessibility. In films such as Poove Unakkaga, Kadhalukku Mariyadhai, Love Today and Thulladha Manamum Thullum, he was the young man who suffered politely, loved earnestly and waited long enough for the audience to bless him.

Tamil cinema has produced many macho heroes. But here was a hero who was not merely beating villains; he was convincing mothers, sisters and college girls that he could be trusted.

Then came the transformation. The lover slowly became the mass hero. Ghilli gave him speed, comic timing, physical assurance and the velocity of a star who had learned how to move a crowd. Thirupaachi, Sivakasi, Pokkiri and later Thuppakki, Kaththi, Mersal, Sarkar, Master, Beast, Varisu and Leo built different versions of the same promise: here was a man who could dance, joke, love, suffer insult, explode into violence and then return to the centre of the frame.

So when his TVK ended up as the single biggest party in the Tamil Nadu elections, Vijay left almost everyone stunned, except perhaps those in whose homes he had existed since much before, as a poster, as a song, as dialogues or as dance moves.

But it was his dance moves — fast and uninhibited — that travelled before his speeches did. In Tamil Nadu, dance is more than just an accessory to stardom. If Rajinikanth had style and Kamal had craft, Vijay had a certain rhythm that young men could imitate and children could attempt at school functions.

In his movies, Vijay is often wronged but not broken. He may mock power, but he does not look powerless. He carries on his shoulders a certain Tamil commercial-film ethic: protect the weak, punish the corrupt, respect mothers, distrust arrogant elites, and deliver justice with enough style to make morality entertaining. In Tamil Nadu, this can almost read like a political manifesto.

Quietly, Vijay

Off-screen, Vijay was almost the opposite of the man who exploded out of screens. He was shy, private, sparing with words and visibly uncomfortable with public life. For years, even when rumours of political ambition followed him, it was his father, director S A Chandrasekhar, who often did the talking.

That father-son relationship is central to Vijay’s evolution. In 2009, Chandrasekhar helped shape the All India Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyakkam, the fan organisation that would later become the basis for Vijay’s social and political activity. For long, Vijay seemed like the hesitant son of an ambitious father, a star with political potential but without the appetite to fully claim it.

The rupture came slowly. In 2020, when Chandrasekhar attempted to form a political outfit using Vijay’s name without his approval, he publicly distanced himself and later moved legally against several people, including his parents. The son who had long been described as shy had drawn a hard boundary. If politics was to happen, it would happen on his terms.

That decision explains much of Vijay’s later political style: controlled access, few public improvisations and a tight inner circle. “He is not a man who enjoys being handled. He may tolerate advisers, but he does not enjoy being owned by them,” said a source who has worked closely with Vijay before and after the launch of TVK.

Actor-politician Vijay with his family. (Credit: X/@PrakazVijay_Of)

Vijay has long kept his personal life tightly private. His mother, Shoba Chandrasekhar, is a playback singer and has also worked as a writer and director in Tamil cinema. His wife, Sangeetha Sornalingam, and their two children have largely stayed away from the public glare. The couple’s divorce petition is currently being heard by a court in Chennai.

Vijay’s private circle is small, mostly from the film industry. He is known to take quiet cycling rides along Chennai’s East Coast Road, often masked and unrecognisable. He moves between his East Coast Road bungalow and a seafront residence near Marina Beach, a life both extraordinarily privileged and deliberately sealed.

That privacy has helped his aura. He was available on screen, unavailable in life.

‘A dangerous boy’ in politics

The political confrontation that first sharpened his public image came through cinema.

In 2017, his Mersal, an action-thriller directed by Atlee, triggered the BJP’s anger over dialogues criticising GST, Digital India and the absence of free medical care.

H Raja, a senior BJP leader, called it “Joseph Vijay’s hate campaign against Modi”, deliberately foregrounding Vijay’s Christian identity. BJP leaders accused the film of misinformation and attributed political motives. Vijay himself remained largely silent. His father defended him fiercely, asking why his son’s religion mattered.

The episode did two things. It made Vijay appear, even without speaking, like a star willing to stand inside an anti-establishment storm. And it gave him an early adversary in the BJP, whose attacks elevated his political profile far beyond the film’s box office. Mersal became more than a film controversy. It was a rehearsal for what was to come.

Vijay at his parents’ residence in Chennai. (PTI Photo)

In 2023, at the Thalapathy Vijay Education Award Ceremony in Chennai, Vijay addressed high-scoring students. He told them to read beyond textbooks, to learn about Ambedkar, Periyar and Kamaraj, to take the good and leave the rest. He spoke against cash for votes, asking students to tell their parents not to sell their votes.

Rs 1,000 per vote, he calculated, meant crores spent in a constituency, and if a candidate could spend that much to win, how much must he expect to make after winning? It was politics without announcing politics.

By February 2024, Vijay announced the TVK. By October that year, at Vikravandi in Villupuram, he marked his formal arrival with flags, songs, Dravidian icons, Tamil symbols, lakhs of supporters, and a line borrowed from Sangam memory — “Thalaiyalanganathu Seruvendra Nedunchezhian”, the young king dismissed as inexperienced who won a great battle.

“Romba ketta paiyan saar antha chinna paiyan,” Vijay thundered in filmy style — “that young boy was a dangerous boy”.

At the time, it sounded theatrical. Now, it reads like a warning the older parties heard but did not believe.

The night of the big win

His party, the TVK, had no inherited cadre, no decades-old ideology, no ready bench of seasoned politicians waiting to take positions. What he had instead was something more volatile and, in this election, more effective: a dispersed, emotionally charged, semi-organised network of fans who had been doing small acts of public work for years without calling it politics.

His fan organisation, the All India Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyakkam, conducted welfare activities, organised local events, mobilised crowds, and, crucially, gathered data — on voters and their grievances. It was not a party. But it was not merely a fan club either.

When TVK was finally launched, it did not need to build its presence from scratch. What Vijay did next surprised even those who had invested in him. He did very little.

In an election where rivals travelled relentlessly, spoke endlessly and spent massively, Vijay campaigned sparingly — barely a dozen or so major outings across districts. He did not attempt to visit every constituency, did not chase every vote physically, did not behave like a man desperate to prove himself.

To critics, this looked like indifference or inexperience. To supporters, it looked like confidence. Every appearance of his became an event. Every speech, a clip, and every movement, a rumour. He allowed others — especially the young, and their phones — to do the talking for him.

YouTube channels tracked his traction obsessively, influencers analysed his speeches frame by frame, and online betting communities began to treat his rise as a probability. For weeks, they were among the few spaces where a TVK surge was not mocked.

A peculiar narrative took hold: Vijay might not be everywhere physically, yet, he was everywhere. His supporters amplified a simple message: give him one chance. It was not a particularly new promise. But in a state where political choices had, for decades, been variations within the same system, Vijay stood out.

His speeches returned repeatedly to corruption, to dignity, to the idea that he did not need public money because he had already earned enough. It was a risky line, but it resonated with a section of voters.

He also positioned himself carefully in relation to other parties. He attacked both the BJP at the Centre and the DMK in the state, while largely avoiding a direct, sustained confrontation with the AIADMK. This had a tactical effect: it allowed him to absorb anti-DMK sentiment without immediately alienating anti-BJP voters, while also drawing from spaces where the AIADMK had historically thrived.

The result, when it came, surprised even him. Senior figures within the TVK would later admit that even on the night before counting, the expectation was modest — perhaps 60 seats, perhaps the role of Opposition leader. What unfolded instead was something closer to a rupture.

Yet, Vijay’s rise in this election carried its own contradiction. In many constituencies, the TVK finished second, close enough to matter; not always enough to win. As the results settled, the arithmetic pointed to a possibility Tamil Nadu had not seriously entertained in decades: a coalition.

In Panayur, outside Vijay’s residence, police officials established contact points and senior bureaucrats prepared for transition. Inside, Vijay’s circle remained small — Bussy Anand, Aadhav Arjuna, CTR Nirmal Kumar, K Sengottaiyan, among the few TVK leaders with administrative experience, and a handful of newer figures who have risen with the campaign. It didn’t resemble a war room that had pulled off a victory. Instead, it was closer to a film set after an unexpected box-office success — a team suddenly aware that the next project would be judged differently.

In the moments after the victory, there were surreal events. An astrologer visited Vijay’s residence. An actress friend was among the few who were allowed through his gates. Vijay met his parents late at night after a day that had redrawn his life.

But beneath the first flush of victory lay a harder question: What kind of Chief Minister would Vijay be?

His supporters argue that he has already managed something larger than a state: a vast film industry ecosystem, with budgets, labour networks, distribution chains and global markets. That experience, they say, is not trivial. It is governance of a different kind.

His critics counter that cinema is not governance. That a state like Tamil Nadu, with its complex bureaucracy and layered social contracts, cannot be run on instinct and image. Both arguments hold some truth.

Tamil Nadu did not vote only for Vijay the actor, or Vijay the outsider, or Vijay the promise. It voted for a possibility that something new, however uncertain, might still be allowed to enter a system that had long seemed closed. Joseph Vijay — shy and elusive — walked in through that door.