Star power in politics

Corruption, the plight of the common man, the triumph of good versus evil are central concerns for the rest of India too, and most actors have played the Superman/crusader role in their heyday

Superstar Rajinikanth’s dramatic year-end announcement of his impending entry into Tamil politics, adroitly upstaging fellow thespian Kamal Haasan, raises an interesting question. The serial drama that is the Indian political scene should have yielded legions of leaders from India’s vibrant and thriving film world, you would have thought. Yet, apart from Tamil Nadu, where reel-life and real-life have converged for decades, and undivided Andhra Pradesh, over which N T Rama Rao (NTR) presided — unforgettably — for more than a decade, the rest of India has not experienced quite so pronounced an overlap between cinema and politics.

There have been, to