Rajnikanth: Fan following

Chennai, March 28: Rajnikanth may be far from the heat and dust of the coming Lok Sabha polls but his fans are not.

The Tamil superstar’s 22,000 fan clubs (rasigar mandram) are ready to teach S. Ramadoss’ PMK a lesson for opposing his last major release, Baba, by taking a tip or two from the saintly political-cleanser role he had played in that film.

“Rajni’s fans have decided to oppose the PMK and will work to defeat all the six candidates the PMK is fielding, including five in Tamil Nadu and one in Pondicherry,” said Rajnikanth Fans Associations president Sathya Narayana in Pondicherry today.

The dispute goes back to August 2002 when Baba was released. Ramadoss had assailed the actor’s screen mannerisms, including his trademark lighting of a cigarette, for being a “corrupting influence” on the youth.

The workers of his OBC Vanniyar-based party went a step further, forcing cinemas not to screen the film in several towns of Tamil Nadu. The move, Narayana said, had “deeply hurt” the fans.

Baba bombed despite Rajnikanth, in the title role, playing a hero born of “divine grace” who tries to cleanse a corrupt political system. At the film’s end, he hints at coming back (to real-life politics) to serve the people instead of retreating to “Himalayan solitude”.

Rajnikanth had retreated from the political limelight after galvanising his fans into canvassing for the DMK-Tamil Maanila Congress combine in 1996 with his now famous one-liner: “If Jayalalithaa comes back to power, even God cannot save Tamil Nadu.”

The fans had then pedalled their way into remote villages to popularise the TMC’s bicycle symbol on the eve of the 1996 polls.

ADMK chief Jayalalithaa lost that Assembly election, held along with the Lok Sabha polls, partly because of the “Rajni factor”.

But the actor’s subsequent ambiguity in supporting the BJP in the 1998 and 1999 Lok Sabha polls confused his fans. In this situation, Baba made a symbolic difference because it depicted the saint in saffron robes as an ideal-ised motif.

With the fans now determined to “comprehensively defeat” the PMK at the hustings, the party must be feeling the heat in all six Lok Sabha seats it has decided to contest.

Ramadoss’ nominees will face the BJP in Chidambaram, Dharmapuri and Pondicherry and its ally, the ADMK, in Chengalpattu, Arakkonam and Tindivanam.

The decision of Rajnikanth’s fans will in effect likely help the ADMK-BJP combine and thus hurt the PMK, which is already squirming from having to face former member P.T. Elangovan as the BJP’s nominee from Dharmapuri.

In Pondicherry, the PMK is up against Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the sister of former Union minister late Rangarajan Kumaramangalam.

The actor, however, has so far not declared any support either for the BJP or Jayalalithaa. Narayana, too, ruled out Rajnikanth directly campaigning against the PMK.

The last time the superstar espoused a cause in public was in January 2003 when he went on a dawn-to-dusk fast in Chennai to plead for interlinking of the country’s major rivers.