Last week, when Rajinikanth flew off to Ayodhya to attend the Ram Mandir consecration, no one was surprised. He sat next to Sachin Tendulkar, exchanged a couple of words with Narendra Modi, and was among the first to get darshan.
Rajinikanth, who touched Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath’s feet during a visit to the state last year, promised to make an annual pilgrimage to Ayodhya too.
So far, so uncontroversial.
Rajinikanth is well-known for his pliability towards the Bharatiya Janata Party, despite his own will-they-won’t-they approach to entering politics himself. He’s previously hailed Modi-Shah as Krishna-Arjuna and espouses a very palatable brand of “spiritual politics”.
Blessings complete, Rajinikanth departed Ayodhya for Chennai, where he attended an audio launch on January 26 for his upcoming movie. With that, he slammed back to reality.
Now, the movie in question is directed by the superstar’s daughter Aishwarya Rajinikanth. It’s about cricket with a name that evokes leftist politics – Lal Salaam – and Rajinikanth plays a Muslim man named Moideen Bhai.
During the audio launch, Aishwarya said she didn’t like that her father was being called a “Sanghi” online.
“I usually stay away from social media, but my team often tells me what’s happening. I used to get angry seeing some posts. We’re human beings too. In recent times, many people call my father a Sanghi. I didn’t know what it meant. I then asked someone what was the meaning of Sanghi and they said that people who support a particular political party are called Sanghi,” she said.
She then said she wanted to “make it clear” that“ Rajinikanth is not a Sanghi”. “If he was, he wouldn’t have done a film like Lal Salaam.”
Now, if you play a stupid game, you win stupid prizes. Aishwarya and Rajinikanth got trolled by both sides – from the right-wing for being a “hypocrite” who insinuated that Sanghi is an insult, and by the usual players in the world of Tamil social media and memes where trolling culture is predominantly anti-BJP.
Aishwarya Rajinikanth: “Appa is not a sanghi.”
— Siddharth (@DearthOfSid) January 26, 2024
Meanwhile, Appa: pic.twitter.com/pHJIX26r0j
Rajinikanth finally had to issue a clarification – that his daughter never said Sanghi is a “bad word”, she’d merely “questioned why her father was being branded that way”.
These dizzying u-turns may appear confusing to outsiders, but it is simply a reflection of the challenges that Rajinikanth faces in a state where #GoBackModi reliably trends every time the prime minister crosses the border.
Even as Aishwarya scrambled to define her father as someone who is not pro-BJP, a constellation of celebrities elsewhere in the country was picked apart for not presenting their saffron credentials adequately. In those parts, not displaying those credentials is enough to attract blowback, from online trolling to tanking your film.
The contrast couldn’t be more stark.
Being ‘Sanghi’ not an easy choice in TN
The Ram Mandir inauguration was scripted by the BJP as being the culmination of India’s civilisational progress. To that end, though thousands were invited, the government drew up an elite list of 500-odd guests who got front-row seats to the consecration and received devotional goody-bags and Gita Press books.
As such, the pressure was on to express some kind of adulation for the new temple, built though it is on the ruins of a mosque destroyed by the same groups organising the consecration. Many donated towards the temple’s construction. Those who were invited showed up. Some even went the extra mile.
Our stars were overwhelmed by surprise visit of #shri yogi Adityanath ji to visit our waiting lounge at Valmiki Ayodhya airport to pay his thanks to filmdom for participating in Pran PRATISHTHA we felt blessed to have darshan of Shree Ram Lalla yesterday followed by PM SPEECH pic.twitter.com/B44KT8FwTo
— Subhash Ghai (@SubhashGhai1) January 23, 2024
Then there was MS Dhoni, who was invited for the consecration but didn’t attend. Online sleuths couldn’t figure out what kept Dhoni busy, considering he’s retired from almost all forms of cricket unlike his fellow invitees, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who skipped the consecration too. His social media was soon swamped with comments ranging from unhappy to furious. Online speculation was rife that Dhoni’s absence and his IPL team Chennai Super Kings’ studied non-mention of the temple were again a sign of right-wing sentiments being suppressed in Tamil Nadu.
Things played out similarly in neighbouring Kerala as well.
Take superstar Mohanlal. Even though he had endorsed the BJP’s candidate in the 2021 assembly poll, he chose not to accept the invitation to go to Ayodhya on January 22, possibly because his movie Malaikottai Vaaliban was scheduled to release four days later and in the light of the backlash that legendary singer Chithra received for posting about the temple. A “safe choice”, some said, given the diversity of his fan base, though right-wing trolls descended nevertheless. Simultaneously, a handful of Malayali actors and directors shared the Preamble of the Constitution on social media as a mark of protest against the Ram temple.
In Tamil Nadu, actor Vijay has been a thorn in the BJP’s side, taking on its GST and Digital India policies in Mersal. BJP general secretary H Raja then attempted to “out” Vijay as a Christian by tweeting a picture of his ID that carried his full name, “Joseph Vijay”. Unfortunately for the party, Vijay trolled the trollers by issuing a public letter thanking his fans under the letterhead “Jesus Saves”. His fans also doxxed the hapless Raja by tweeting out his address and contact information.
Actor Ajith Kumar also made it clear that he was keeping his distance from the party. In 2019, BJP state president Tamilisai Soundararajan urged his fans to spread the message of Modi amongst themselves. Ajith promptly released a statement saying he “had never forced my fans to vote for a political party and I will never do so”.
As for the temple consecration, the BJP was already bitter about the state of Tamil Nadu. The DMK’s stand, as defined by minister, actor and MK Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi, is that it “does not accept the construction of a temple by razing a mosque”.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman then claimed the DMK government had “banned” special poojas and programmes in temples in the state. She cited news reports from the right-leaning Dinamalar newspaper to make her point. The government’s Hindu, Religious and Charitable Endowments department said this was “blatantly false and fake” and filed a complaint against the editor and publisher of Dinamalar for “promoting enmity”.
Also this week, the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police told the Supreme Court that a “deliberate attempt” was being made to “portray the Tamil Nadu government as an anti-Hindu government”. All this just months after Udhayanidhi said the public must “eradicate Sanatana Dharma” stirring up yet more controversy.
When being a Sanghi is this unfashionable in Tamil Nadu, one can understand Rajinikanth’s quandary.
Public anger against the BJP was fuelled by the central government’s policies and projects. The BJP is still reeling from its break-up with the AIADMK and its state president K Annamalai is on the third leg of a listless yatra.
But it is still, arguably, trying its best. It went all out with the Sengol during the inauguration of the new Parliament building last May. The Ram Mandir consecration was preceded by Modi’s temple run through south India. Now, the prime minister is scheduled to visit Tiruppur at the end of February to “launch” the 2024 Lok Sabha poll. His visits are still derailed by black balloons and unkind hashtags, but the party is valiantly claiming it can win “all 40 seats” in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Rajinikanth has always been Tamil Nadu’s biggest superstar who’s been softest towards Modi-Shah. When even he’s unwilling to openly pledge his support, it’s a challenging road ahead for the BJP in the state.
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