Superstar Vijay (Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay) first became Ilayathalapathy. Now, he has taken oaths as Chief Minister (CM) Thalapathy Vijay. The few hours that followed looked less like a political transition and more like the opening scenes of a blockbuster Tamil film. Seconds before taking oaths, he lifted a table on the stage by himself to help others. Minutes later, he was taking selfies. The crowd roared. Cameras swirled around him. For a moment, politics itself looked cinematic again. Even his speech carried familiar shades of cinema. Anyone who watched Thalaivaa could recognise the same rhythm. The slow emotional pauses. The sudden rise in voice at crucial lines. The carefully measured silence before applause arrived like thunder. Vijay the actor was still visible inside Vijay the politician. At one point, he pointed at his wristwatch and declared that the time had started for Tamil Nadu (TN). It sounded less like an ordinary political statement and more like an interval punch dialogue delivered before the screen fades to black. Yet perhaps Vijay understands very well what former President’s wife Nancy Davis Reagan once said about the relationship between cinema and politics: “The movies were custard compared to politics.” Still, nobody yet knows whether TN’s newest political superstar will eventually prove Reagan wrong and turn politics itself into a greater spectacle.
Cinema enters the counting room
One-hundred-and-six parties. Four-thousand-and-twenty-three candidates. Two-hundred-and-thirty-four constituencies. One gigantic democratic carnival stretched across TN like a festival season. The State had 57,343,291 registered voters. Out of them, 48,798,833 walked to polling booths and pressed a button. That is 85.10 per cent of a historic turnout. In 2021, it was only 72.7 per cent. TN clearly had something restless on its mind this time. The State did not merely vote. It arrived with urgency. Among the 4,023 candidates, only 442 were women. Just 11 per cent. In a political landscape filled with giant cut-outs, roaring slogans and heroic imagery that number stands quietly in the corner like an uncomfortable truth. Nearly half the candidates, around 47.7 per cent, close to 2,000 individuals, were graduates. TN, it seems, still has deep affection for framed certificates and academic titles. Even in the age of cinema charisma, education continues to carry its own stage presence.
The youngest candidates were below 25. Govindharaju Ranjith among them is still discovering life, yet already attempting to govern it. The oldest was Durai Murugan, 87 years old and still refusing retirement from politics. TN’s ballot paper has always resembled an unusual family photograph: youth standing beside experience, ambition standing beside memory. And while Vijay now steals the headlines, history quietly whispers another name - Vaikom Narayani Janaki, the widow of Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran. A transitional heroine in every sense. She became TN’s first female CM and occupied the Chair for exactly 24 days. Brief like a passing monsoon shower. Yet, historic enough to remain in memory. TN became a State in 1950. In the 76 years that followed, four individuals who first made audiences laugh, cry, clap and whistle inside dark cinema halls collectively ruled the State for 43 years and five months. Nearly half of TN’s political life has unfolded under leaders born from the silver screen. TN’s voters have always followed a different political grammar. They do not simply elect politicians. They elevate beloved screen characters from cinema posters to the Secretariat itself. So, if Vijay succeeds, the CM’s office in Chennai may quietly become the world’s most powerful post-production studio.
Women at the centre of the ballot
The entire South Indian political landscape watched this Election like a turning point in history. And there were many reasons for that nervous fascination. One of the most striking features of the Election was the carefully choreographed social media campaign carried out by Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK). Politics moved through reels, short videos, fan pages and mobile screens with cinematic precision. The traditional campaign van suddenly looked old-fashioned beside the glowing light of smartphones. Youth participation exploded across the State. But, the real silent wave came from female voters. TN had nearly 29.3 million registered female voters, and around 85.76 per cent of them cast their votes, more than two per cent points higher than the male turnout. Women did not merely participate in this Election. They quietly altered its rhythm. Beyond the magnetic attraction of Vijay himself, several promises made by the TVK pulled women towards polling booths. During the campaign season, tea shops, buses, beauty salons and village gates echoed with conversations about the massive welfare and relief packages promised by the Party. In many homes, political debate slowly turned into kitchen-table arithmetic. Until now, the 2011 Assembly Election held the record for the highest voter turnout in TN’s political history with 78.29 per cent. This year’s (2026) Election surpassed even that landmark. It was not just another Election. It felt like a State arriving at a collective emotional moment. Considering these realities, it is impossible to ignore the role played by women in the successful rise of the TVK. Therefore, it is worth exploring what exactly the Party promised the people, especially women during this historic campaign.
A manifesto written in everyday life
The TVK's manifesto reads less like a policy document and more like a letter written to the women of TN, one that speaks in the language of kitchens and school gates, of bus queues and gold bangles, of mothers who count cylinders and daughters who walk home after dark. From a dedicated department for women's safety supervised personally by Vijay, to monthly financial assistance of Indian Rupees 2,500 for women heads of households, free liquefied petroleum gas cylinders, interest-free loans for self-help groups, fast-track courts for crimes against women, panic buttons in buses, free sanitary napkins through ration shops, gold and silk for brides, and a gold ring and welcome kit for every newborn, the promises sweep across the entire arc of a Tamil woman's life, from the cradle to old age, from the domestic hearth to the public road. Taken together, they form not merely an Election manifesto, but an emotional contract, one built on the quiet acknowledgement that the women of this State have long carried the weight of the household, the burden of insecurity, and the silence of unmet need, and that it is finally, overdue, their turn.
The TVK has underscored its "emotional contract" with the women of TN by appointing Selvi Sampath Keerthana as the sole female member of the new Cabinet of Ministers. At just 29, the postgraduate statistician and former political strategist secured a historic debut victory in the Sivakasia Constituency that had never before elected a woman to the Assembly. Her presence in the Ministry is more than a mere appointment; it is a signal that in Vijay's new Government, the voices of young, educated women will no longer be confined to the campaign trail, but will have a seat at the head of the table There is a famous Tamil saying that the value of women and gold never declines.
While Vijay's manifesto tries earnestly to hold that value high across TN, the writer found himself stopped cold by words arriving from across the Palk Strait. At a Party briefing organised by the SLPP, Namal Rajapaksa told the press he had already advised his wife to remain silent. Many problems, he assured the room, would then be solved. That is the measure of the man. That is, perhaps, the measure of what women in Sri Lanka might expect from a politician shaped in his image. The contrast is not new. When Sajith Premadasa, during the last Presidential Election, promised sanitary products for girls in need, polite society did not engage with the idea. It laughed. It reached for the name of an Indian film Pad Man and used it as a punchline. A genuine public health concern was dressed up as comedy and sent off the stage. That moment still stings. The current regime, for its part, has shown no greater appetite to treat it as a priority either.
Against that backdrop, Vijay's manifesto carries a quiet but considerable weight. He did not speak about women as a vote bank. He spoke about safety on night buses. About girls staying in school. About brides, newborns, self-help groups and fast-track courts. He spoke, in other words, about life as women actually live it. Whether cinema shaped the politician, or the politician has simply read society more honestly than most, nobody can say with certainty. Some whisper with a warm smile that perhaps actress Trisha Krishnan deserves a quiet footnote somewhere in those pages. Whatever the truth, one thing stands without argument. In this Election, women were not the backdrop.
Where politics meets its limits
They were the headlines. To protect women in TN, Vijay has promised much. But, his gaze does not stop at the State border. He has spoken of an independent referendum for Eelam Tamils to determine their own political future. He has criticised the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's silence over attacks on Tamil fishermen, reminding audiences that 14 years ago, he stood in Nagapattinam in solidarity. Katchatheevu too, has found its place in his narrative. Three things. Three signals sent across the water. Yet, promising a referendum is not as simple as providing free electricity for those within the 200-unit bracket in TN. These are stirring words. Beautiful, even. But, whatever Vijay tells his voters, the architecture of India’s foreign policy is designed in New Delhi, not Chennai. It carries the signature of the Prime Minister, not the CM. Under the current dispensation in Delhi, such vows remain, at best, eloquent sentiment, the kind of words that travel well on a campaign stage and dissolve quietly in the corridors of power. We have, after all, heard similar echoes from Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin during his own tenure. Regarding the provocative ideas that Vijay has aimed toward Northern Sri Lanka, the Consulting Editor of the Jaffna Monitor recently addressed him in a pointed letter. In it, he offered a blunt request: “Please stay away from such drama.” It is a sharp warning, though whether a "super-duper" actor can ever truly leave the drama behind remains to be seen.
And yet, one possibility lingers. The Northern youth of this island may find in Vijay something that they have long stopped looking for in their own traditional leaders. If that quiet pull grows into something louder, the rise of "Thalapathy" becomes a challenge not to the sovereignty of Sri Lanka, but to the Stale political authority that has stood there for decades. If Tamil youth in the North are to eventually call for a branch of the TVK in Jaffna, it would not be a surprise at all. It would simply be the next scene in a very long movie.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication