Of MGR, Sivaji Ganesan, and Tamil Nadu’s star-studded politics

The spectacular emergence of erstwhile AIADMK wide caput and Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), who was fundamentally embedded with the Dravidian question adjacent arsenic an actor, to the apical occupation successful the State aft splitting from the DMK, has fed – and continues to provender – the phantasy of respective fashionable actors successful Tamil Nadu.

Actors with immense instrumentality followings, specified arsenic Sivaji Ganesan, Kamal Haasan, and Vijayakant, arsenic good arsenic fashionable stars similar K. Bhagyaraj, Karthik, and Ramarajan, person tried their luck successful elections with constricted success. Now, up of the 2026 Assembly polls, histrion C. Joseph Vijay – arguably Tamil cinema’s biggest prima contiguous – has launched the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), hoping to replicate MGR’s historical occurrence successful 1977.