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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Vijay turned reels, whistles, and fan edits into a political triumph

TVK tapped into young people with promises of employment, better governance, and youth-centric politics, framing old regimes as outdated while invoking Tamil pride and resistance to divisive agendas.

Chennai: Vijay spent decades defeating corrupt politicians, saving the poor, and dismantling broken systems on screen. On counting day in Tamil Nadu, millions of voters handed him the chance to do it in real life.

In a state where the “actor‑chief minister” model is not new, actor-politician Vijay has delivered what many believed was impossible. His party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), stormed to 108 seats in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, shattering the decades-long dominance of the DMK-AIADMK duopoly and emerging as the single largest party in the state. Seen initially as a “third factor”, Vijay succeeded where stars like Kamal Haasan faltered, converting fandom into votes at scale.

Vijay entered politics without the organisational machinery that backed earlier actor-politicians such as MG Ramachandran, who spent years inside the DMK before launching the AIADMK. Vijay had no political apprenticeship, no cadre base, and no family network. Yet, powered by enormous fan loyalty, anti-establishment sentiment, youth-driven social media mobilisation, and a carefully cultivated on-screen image of a saviour fighting corruption and injustice, he managed to redraw Tamil Nadu’s political map in his very first electoral outing.  

For breaking Tamil Nadu’s entrenched Dravidian binary, surviving the Karur stampede fiasco and swirling personal controversies, and proving that mass stardom can still be converted into a formidable electoral machine in the social media age, Thalapathy Vijay and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) are ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week. 

Vijay never had to struggle to draw........

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