Tamil actor Ajith Kumar has been in the news. In a video circulated on January 7, his race car was seen hitting the barrier of a racetrack and spinning out of control. He was then seen getting out of the car and walking, rather unaffectedly, towards an ambulance. The whole thing could have been a scene from one of his movies, but it was real. This happened when he was practicing for an upcoming race in Dubai. The 53-year-old-actor owns a racing team and had been serious about the sport for decades.
An emotional response for an incident of this nature, nearly life-threatening, from Ajith’s fan base would perhaps have received massive amplification had the actor’s fan clubs coordinated or manufactured a reaction. But as early as 2011, the actor had asked for all his fan organisations to be dismantled. He just wanted to be a professional, wanting the imaginary frames of his films to be just that. He did not want to exploit or extrapolate his creative enterprise into the hyperbole of real-life stardom.
In 2021, again, Ajith expressed his desire for a mundane existence when he asked people to cut out the title bestowed on him as ‘Thala’ (literally ‘the head’, meaning ‘the chief’). Whatever his prompts or provocations may have been, to willingly denounce a title, especially in the world of Tamil cinema, was no ordinary act. In what constitutes the Tamil cinema milieu, it is an established tradition to weld a grand title to the given name of a big actor, as if to celebrate immortal distortion.
As an extension of this filmy tradition, titles have also entered the melodramatic world of Tamil politics where, incidentally, some of the most dominant players in the last seven decades have been film personalities. E V Ramasamy has always been Periyar; it is ‘Perarignar Anna’, not just C N Annadurai; ‘Kalaignar’ (artist) not just M Karunanidhi; ‘Puratchi Thalaivar’ (revolutionary leader) for M G Ramachandran, and his follower was ‘Puratchi Thalaivi’ J Jayalalitha; then came ‘Captain’ Vijaykanth, and the most recent entrant is ‘Thalapathy’ (commander) Vijay.
These titles have a complex cultural play in the world of not just cinema and politics but within the larger Dravidian ideological ecosystem. It was, and is, part of an effort to forge new identities for not just film stars, but also the masses. That is while simultaneously imagining an exclusive and assertive Tamil universe.
As if breaking away from this tradition of embellishment, another film star, Kamal Haasan, also asked people not to address him as ‘Ulaganayagan’ (the hero of the world) in November 2024. He did this a few days past his 70th birthday. Unlike Ajith, he tried to explain: "It is my humble belief that the artist must not be elevated above the art. I prefer to remain grounded, constantly aware of my imperfections and my duty to improve. Hence, after considerable reflection, I feel compelled to respectfully decline all such titles or prefixes.”
Interestingly, Kamal Haasan posted this request both in Tamil and English, when the non-Tamil world was not exactly familiar with his adulatory Tamil crown. It was also interesting that Kamal Haasan was reflecting and opting out of the title many decades after he had adorned it, unembarrassed. What is it that changed? Is it about the passing of a cultural time in Tamil Nadu? Was it about shedding what had begun to look terribly anachronistic? Why was he not allowing that harmless split between the local and pan-Indian identities to continue? Why was he integrating the identities, suddenly, when it was unlikely to impact his film or political career?
Kamal Haasan’s political foray has anyway been as stillborn as that of his contemporary ‘Thalaivar’, the plain superstar Rajnikanth. Is doing away with the title a cosmopolitan embrace? Is it about a new political and cultural centrism in Tamil Nadu, distinct from both Dravidian and Hindutva politics? Or, is this about a new rational position that one desires politics and culture to reflect, shorn of all exploitation around caste and religion, nationalism and sub-nationalism?
Social media has also made titles, honorifics, the lumpenism of fan clubs and sycophancy much easier in general, but it has also democratised the process. It is like the exclusivity of the single-screen theatre having made way to multiplex and OTT platforms. To stand away from this crowd and chaos perhaps marks reinvention and solace to stars like Kamal Haasan and Ajith, how much ever an afterthought it may be.
With the transient attention that social media bestows, there can only be transient heroes. The age of heroes as we knew from Kamal Haasan’s prime may be over. Dropping the title may therefore be a precocious acknowledgement of this transformation.
There may also be no heroes anymore, only brands. And brands have a limited shelf life. The sub-nationalist and nationalist ethos of the 20th century that made cultural icons may be in decline, because the recipe that went into the making of it has seen the end of its logic in a new world. An urgent reaction to this is also apparent. Political movements around the globe are about making nations ‘great’ again, like Donald Trump’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ that built up sufficient traction to get him re-elected. The decline of the ‘great’ in Great Britain provoked Brexit some years ago.
The fact that the world may have reconfigured itself beyond the propaganda of such imagination of greatness is also visible in the H-1B visa debate in America and the post-Brexit economic quandary in the UK. They know they cannot take the world back, they cannot reconfigure the profitability model of immigration, but they still want to exploit the vestiges of sentiment. Hence, they manage to create delusions of greatness, like the delusion the titles in Tamil cinema perhaps reflect.
Anyway, the irony of the season in Tamil Nadu is from the music world. Even as Kamal Haasan dropped his title, musician T M Krishna was battling in courts to adorn one. The controversy around the conferment of the title of ‘Sangita Kalanidhi’ on him, invoking M S Subbulakshmi, a musician with ethereal titles herself, had paradoxical trappings of both tradition and reform. However, in the end it has been nothing but reiteration of a cultural status quo.
(Views are personal)
Sugata Srinivasaraju | Senior journalist and author of Strange Burdens: The Politics and Predicaments of Rahul Gandhi