Opinion Express View on Vijayakanth: The Captain’s exit

Never the king, once a kingmaker and forever the Captain. That was Vijayakanth, the actor-turned-politician whose incandescent eyes and brawny persona endeared him to Tamil Nadu’s cinema-loving masses in the 1980s and 1990s. Founder of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) and twice elected MLA, Vijayakanth, who died this week at 71, nursed chief ministerial ambitions, like his idol M G R. But the adulation of fans, he found, does not easily become an enduring vote bank and the DMDK was reduced to a bit player within a decade.

When the DMDK’s fortunes first began floundering, perhaps Vijayakanth drew solace from the fact that his success in cinema had come after a shaky start, when a string of flops followed his debut in 1979’s Inikkum Ilamai. A hard worker who kept a punishing schedule — he was known for working three shifts in a day, acting in an astonishing 18 films in 1984 — Vijayakanth was aided by his undeniable charisma as he rose to stardom. At a time when Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan dominated the scene, Vijayakanth carved out a niche, playing men who always fought the good fight — against corruption, terrorists or feudal landlords — and became known as Puratchi Kalaignar (revolutionary artiste) and Karuppu (dark) MGR. But the epithet that stuck came in 1991, from his 100th film, Captain Prabhakaran, in which he played an Indian Forest Service officer in relentless pursuit of a brigand.

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Vijayakanth’s heroic image, and real-life generosity, helped his party to a promising start, with an impressive 8 per cent vote share in the 2006 Assembly polls. The DMDK peaked in 2011, emerging as the second largest party in the state and Vijayakanth became Leader of the Opposition. But DMDK’s initial political appeal as an alternative to the DMK and AIADMK soon vanished, and the Captain’s dream of becoming CM remained unfulfilled.