To Be Or Not To Be

The last has finally been said on the matter. Or has it? After keeping thepublic and the politicians guessing for months about his plans to join politics, TamilNadu superstar Rajnikant seemed to give some indication of his intentions last week.

And what better vehicle could he have chosen than the release of his latest film, Muthu(The Pearl). The film is quite clearly Rajnikant’s political soliloquy. A remakeof a successful Malayalam film, the Tamil version has an additional 20-minute footage inwhich Rajnikant expounds his political views at length. And the clincher – "Iwill not take back the things and the words I’ve given" – echoes hisSeptember 27 declaration that he would not enter politics. There are also loadedreferences. The "Throne" is openly ridiculed and in one dialogue, Rajnikant sayspointedly: "Even I will be a different personality if I sit in the chair. Do you wantthat to happen?"

Many in the political arena had indeed counted on it, fuelled by Rajnikant’soff-screen rhetoric. Speculation had been rife for months on whether he would take theplunge into politics. And politicians of every hue had actively wooed the starcrowd-puller to join their camp. Despite his emphatic statement to the contrary, thegeneral feeling being that the filmstar was buying time till the release of Muthu afterwhich he would be free to unveil his political plans. On the eve of the film’srelease, madhavan, an AIAMK MP and a follower expelled party leader R.M. Veerapan, wasjubilant. "All MGR’s followers will form one unit which will be supported byRajnikant and the Congress," he predicted. "And the next chief minister will beof Rajnikant’s choice."

The filmstar himself had exhibited distinct signs which were interpreted as a preludeto a political career. Early this year, he had boycotted the ruling party’s inauguralfunction of the Jayalalitha film City on the ground that it should have been named afterthe thespian Sivaji Ganesan. He went so far as to actually condemn the act in the presenceof chief minister Jayalalitha at a function to honour Sivaji Ganesan. And in July, at thesilver jubilee function of his last blockbuster Badshah, he denounced the growing "bomb culture" in the state. With a fan following as formidable as his and his recent public statements, it was naturally assumed that a political debut was imminent.

But the release of Muthu, and the film’s implied political message, seemsto bely the assumptions of Rajnikant’s political debut. Says Cho Ramaswamy, politicalcommentator and the editor of Thuglak: "Rajni has realised that others areusing him. He told me recently that he has categorically rejected the idea of joiningpolitics."

Rather than deliberate moves on Rajnikant’s part, significant developments in thestate this year had catapulted the star into the political limelight: a shake-up in theDMK, with M. Karunanidhi opting out of the National Front (NF), mounting corruptioncharges against Jayalalitha and the decision of the breakaway Congress led by former TNCCchief K. Ramamurthy to align with the DMK.

There was panic in the Congress camp. With 39 seats, Tamil Nadu plays a crucial role inany parliamentary election. Since 1980, the Congress had been winning all the seats it hadcontested by aligning with either the DMK or the AIADMK. Left with no party to provide thenecessary votes, the beleaguered Congress high command was looking for a charismaticperson with popular appeal.

What made the choice easier was the fact that relations between 18, Poes Garden(Rajnikant’s residence) and 36, Poes Garden (Jayalalitha’s residence) wereanything but genial. And after the Badshah function, all hell broke loose. AIADMKMPs and MLAs issued a volley of statements condemning both Rajnikant and Veerapan, theproducer of Badshah. Rajnikant’s fans retaliated violently and burntJayalalitha’s effigies. Says well-known script writer Ananthu: "Rajnikant’sblunt-speak had earned him appreciation. Of being a simple but honest man who had spokenaloud what many have suppressed."

But that was not how most viewed it. Soon after the Badshah incident, NFchairman and the then Andhra Pradesh chief minister N.T. Rama Rao appointed Rajnikant tothe executive committee of the Tirupathi Venkateswara Temple. "This is Rajni’sfirst political appointment. Many more significant ones will follow," NTR promised.Taking the cue, political brokers zeroed in on Rajnikant every other day, and S.R.Balasubramaniam, the leader of the opposition and senior Congressperson was literallypleading with the star to join the party.

Caught unawares by the swift development, Rajnikant too was lulled into believing thathis future lay in politics. But the belief was short-lived. The intrigues in AndhraPradesh and his abortive mission to patch-up the differences between NTR and Chandra BabuNaidu gave him his first taste to the world politicking. Meanwhile, Jayalalitha sackedVeerapan from the AIADMK who, along with the erstwhile Janaki faction of the AIADMK,started implying that Rajnikant was backing him in his efforts to realign MGR’s votebank. The superstar soon realised that both Veerapan and the Congress were using his imageand popularity to suit their own ends which culminated in his September declaration of:"I will not join politics."

What Rajnikant must have also realised was that he was not of the same stature as MGR.Says M.S.S. Pandian of the Madras Institute of Development Studies: "The mode ofpolitical meditation employed by MGR was a product of his screen image and its successfulinsertion into the cultural mosaic of the subaltern classes. It was a combination ofpopulist appeal and ideological attributes." Moreover, the MGR Fan Association, withabout 10,000 branches throughout Tamil Nadu, was the backbone of the AIADMK. Rajnikant hasnone of these.

Rajnikant’s graduation to superstar status was not through a carefully constructedimage of a messiah but as a lively comedian not averse to the vices of life. Since thelate 80’s, he had been playing the role of a comedian-hero. Comments a DMK leader:"While MGR used films for his politics, Rajni is using politics for his films."And the release of Muthu should bring the curtain down on the drama surrounding thesuperstar’s intentions. Rajnikant’s message emerges loud and clear from thefilm: "I would like to be a travelling vagabond: don’t trap me in politics".