Kamal Haasan's dual role: DMK views one RS seat as small price to pay

He is more than just an actor. He is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, an accomplished singer, a choreographer and director, the only one to have got 19 Filmfare awards, the most by any Indian. Seven films starring him have made it to the short list of the Oscars “foreign films” category. He is fluent in English, French, and six Indian languages, including Kannada.

 

His politics, however, is confusing. His electoral performance in that arena sub-par. Kamal Haasan will shortly become member of the Rajya Sabha with support from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) although his party, Makkal Neethi Maiam (MNM), has turned out to be a super-flop. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it got 3.7 per cent of the vote. This came down further to 2.6 per cent in the 2021 Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu. Haasan himself lost from the Coimbatore (South) constituency to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Vanathi Srinivasan. The MNM also drew a blank in Tamil Nadu’s civic polls in 2022. His story, like many other actor-politicians in Tamil Nadu, testifies to the highly developed sense of discernment in the Tamil Nadu voter. They love him as an actor, not so much as a politician. His party’s performance also belies the popular belief that the celluloid rules politics in Tamil Nadu -- in the past, actors at the height of their star power, like Sivaji Ganesan, for instance, had bitten the dust when they thought they could make a seamless transition from movies to politics. Those who believe stardom dominates politics in the state need to remember that all those “stars” who made it were part of politics much before they made it in politics. In Tamil Nadu politics, you need to be more than just a pretty face.

 

Haasan launched the MNM in 2018. Why it is not clear -- but like Vijay, Seeman, Vijayakanth, Rajnikanth and others before him, he presumably thought he could present himself as an alternative to those in the state who want neither the DMK nor the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

 

By itself, this number is not small. Of Tamil Nadu’s voting population, 17-18 per cent tend to vote against both Dravidian parties. Recognising this, both the DMK and AIADMK have cast their net wide, making broadbased alliances with even the smallest of parties. The ruling DMK alliance, for instance, has eight parties currently. Running this can’t be easy.

 

Haasan is a self-proclaimed atheist but on most other political issues, he has been flexible. He started out with robust criticism of many of the policies of both Dravidian parties, but gradually veered round to the belief that the DMK was the best alliance fit for him. According to an agreement made during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he kept out of the polls, limiting himself to campaigning for the DMK, securing a promise that he would be a candidate for a Rajya Sabha seat. The current Karnataka versus Tamil Nadu standoff about his stand on Kannada (that it was born out of Tamil) has got him some numbers in Tamil Nadu.

 

For the DMK, this is a win-win situation. It would not like to see even one vote go astray and to those who don’t approve of its policies, it offers a “lite” version via an alliance partner. The MNM is one of these. A “strong” version is represented by the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), led by Vaiko, the man who was strongly supportive of the Tamil Tigers, left the DMK in protest against Stalin’s elevation by party leader M Karunanidhi, but returned to it eventually.

 

The way the DMK sees it, one Rajya Sabha seat is a small price to pay for all the skills that Haasan brings to the table. Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu are due next year. The people of Tamil Nadu have proved that while they want to see and hear Haasan (large crowds thronged all his poll meetings and at many, young men requested Haasan to make his signature movie gesture of twirling his moustache) the results proved that most of them then went on to vote for the DMK.

 

In the alliance-driven politics of Tamil Nadu, every percentage point of the popular vote matters. For the DMK, the next election is an existential challenge. If the party can reverse the tradition of the state electing the Opposition in Assembly polls, then it will have made a major political point. Haasan will be called upon to help in this. The current Karnataka controversy will come to his aid.