Stepping away from Dravidian politics
CHENNAI: By coining a new term “spiritual politics” actor Rajinikanth has perhaps indicated he would be sharply deviating from the atheist ideology that was considered the core of Dravidian politics, though all major Dravidian political parties have deviated much from Periyar E V Ramasamy’s ideals.
While making the announcement of his political entry at Ragavendra Mandapam here on Sunday, Rajinikanth waved his spiritual guru ‘Baba mudra’ sign popularised by him in his film Baba. This drew criticism from a section of political commentators and parties that Rajini was trying to usher in soft Hindutva in Tamil Nadu.
Civil rights activist A Marx says ‘spiritual politics’ would result only in indirectly mixing religion and politics. “What is the necessity for spirituality or religion in politics? It only requires social ideologies,” he said.
He said the actor was disguising himself under ‘spiritual politics’ out of fear of losing his support base. “If not soon eventually he will tie up with BJP,” he said.
“His words ‘spiritual politics’ shows Rajini’s confused state,” said K Veeramani, president, Dravidar Kazhagam. He charged that Rajini was being backed by BJP.
Incidentally, while political leaders across the spectrum welcomed Rajinikanth’s announcement that he would join politics, it was BJP leaders who said Rajinikanth’s principles matched that of their party’s objectives and ideals. “Welcoming the actor Rajinikanth’s political entry, with motto of corruption free good governance which is the sole aim of BJP,” tweeted BJP State president Tamilisai Soundararajan.
Rajini disowned the entire idea of atheism in most movies and he had never hesitated to display his faith in Hinduism through his movies and personal life. In all his popular movies such as Arunachalam, Baba, Basha and Muthu, the protagonist was clearly a Hindu. However, most of his films never missed to have a Muslim friend, who is honest and upright.
S Gurumurthy, Editor of Tamil magazine Thuglak tweeted as “Rajini’s entry into TN politics will hopefully bring about tectonic changes in the 60 year old frozen Dravidian politics. His spiritual politics is nearer to Mod(i)’s than to any one else in Tamil Nadu or outside”.
Rajini’s political mind is largely unknown. In fact, in his speech on Sunday he recalled he grew nervous when a TV reporter put a mike on his face and asked him to spell out his political ideology. He had never taken a stand on any of the political issues so far. Unlike his colleague Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth had never made strong comments on political or social issues.
