Tamil Nadu politics: Kamal Haasan continues shoot and scoot, says voters suffer consequences of selling their votes

After expressing himself all these months in 140 characters, Kamal Haasan on Wednesday surprised everyone with a Coimbatore cameo where he told his fans that it was their responsibility to change politics because “disease, poverty and bumpy roads are our making”.[caption id=“attachment_1851981” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Kamal Haasan. AFP[/caption] “You took money and gave your vote without realising that you are being paid from the money that belonged to you in the first place. You have sold five years for just Rs 500 and Rs 1,000,” said Haasan. Clearly, in the multiple National awards winning actor’s book, the people are as much to blame for the mess in Tamil Nadu as the MLAs they elected. This means Kamal Haasan 2.0 has realised that criticising politicians would only get him brickbats. Like many of his films, Haasan’s political utterances over the past few months have been provocative, blunt and controversial. The ruling party, the AIADMK has come in for a fair bit of the criticism, with the actor terming the administration corrupt. On 21 August, when the merger of the two factions of the AIADMK took place, Haasan in poetic Tamil tweeted that the people of Tamil Nadu had been given the clown’s cap. In Coimbatore, Haasan has shown he wants to be the moral compass, who will ask uncomfortable questions of both the political class and civil society, daring to earn their wrath. He has a point when he says that Tamil Nadu, by the manner in which the electoral process is badly compromised with money power, has plumbed to its lowest. If the actor, with his ability to connect and articulate can nudge the honesty quotient in people so that they do not sell their votes, he would have achieved his purpose. But then how different is Haasan’s angst different from Rajinikanth’s address to his fans in May, where the Superstar too spoke about the need to have a clean political ecosystem. One difference is that while Rajini made a guest appearance, Haasan has stayed the course. At least, so far. Haasan’s tryst with Twitter is what has got everyone to salivate at the prospect of a Rajinikanth vs Haasan political contest. With Rajini dropping hints that he was mulling a political plunge, Haasan’s loaded tweets obviously led most to wonder if he too was preparing to play a neta. His answer has been ambiguous yet direct. “People ask whether I am jumping into politics. My reply is that I have already entered politics. We have to start our political journey somewhere. I have done mine on Twitter.” Predictably he has been dubbed by his critics as a Twitter warrior. But I view Haasan differently. I see this man, deeply influenced by the life and works of Mahatma Gandhi, trying to be the Anna Hazare of Tamil Nadu. Fearless, controversial, direct. Just like the man from Ralegan Siddhi. K Hariharan, author and professor of Film Studies who knows Haasan closely also is emphatic that the actor has no intentions of entering electoral politics but lead some kind of a vigilante movement. “He is reinventing himself as a political critic. What he is saying is his critical look at society and his way of engaging with his one and a half lakh fans,” says Hariharan. A lot of criticism has been coming Haasan’s way that this pinch-hitting on Twitter and soundbite-a-minute persona is only with an eye to ensure high TRPs for the ‘Bigg Boss’ reality show that he is hosting. While there is no way to find if that indeed is the driving force behind Haasan wading into controversies, what is certain is that in the Ulaganayakan (Universal Hero), Tamil Nadu has found an unlikely opposition leader. While the DMK can be pushed back with the whataboutery of 2G scam allegations, the ruling party cannot do the same with Haasan. When its minister C Ve Shanmugham calls him “a third rate actor”, he only exposes his own ignorance. When another minister SP Velumani threatens to audit the amount of tax Haasan has paid for the movies he produced, he displays the arrogance of power. What the Haasan of 2017 is trying to do is to keep himself alive in the ecosystem of today. But he will be challenged at every stage, with politicians accusing him of being a mere critic without showing the courage to get into the muck and clean up the system. So far Haasan has resisted the provocation, choosing to be a ‘political animal’ outside the zoo. In any case, Haasan is too much of a non-conformist to fit into the political system. Calling a spade a spade wouldn’t quite work in a culture where knives are a fingerprint favorite. What the AIADMK would be worried about is that the anti-ruling party tirade would end up benefiting the DMK. There is already enough suspicion that Haasan indirectly is batting for the DMK. And just like Rajinikanth’s two lines against Jayalalithaa helped Karunanidhi’s DMK romp to power in 1996, Haasan could be starring in a sequel two decades later, with MK Stalin playing the lead role this time. While the jury is out on that one, for the moment, Haasan is clearly writing the screenplay for a Tamil Nadu that is vibrant and rebellious.