How Vijay secured mass connect in 2 years that took MGR 3 decades back in the day

Vijay's TVK won 108 seats in its first Tamil Nadu Assembly election, drawing immediate comparisons with MGR's rise. The result highlighted the force of a digitally driven campaign, but his decisive test now shifts to government formation and governance.

In Short

• TVK turned ridicule from rivals into viral content across social platforms
• Women and young voters were targeted through precise digital outreach
• DMK reportedly built a dedicated online team to counter TVK's surge

Thirty years of grassroots work, cinema as his only weapon, one welfare policy at a time — that is what it took for the legendary actor-politician MK Ramachandran aka MGR to build his political identity as the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) supremo that eventually swept Tamil Nadu.

Cut to 2026, what MGR did over thirty years, Vijay managed to do it in just two years. As the Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections results were announced today, May 4,with Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) winning 108 seats, that number is the first thing everyone will say. It should not be the last.

How did Vijay manage to do the unthinkable in his first-ever electoral contest? And that too in just two years?

After all, in these two years, there has never been a criticism that Vijay hasn't faced. Not just Vijay, even those who openly declared their support for him were called Tharkuri(s) (intellectually lacking) everywhere. TVK's answer was simple: let them talk. Every Tharkuri joke became content, every dismissal became fuel, and social media made sure none of it went to waste.

But, what changed in these two years that changed the tide for Vijay?

In some ways, what Vijay did was simpler than what MGR did. In other ways, it was considerably harder.

How MGR captured the hearts of Tamil people

MGR spent thirty years building his political identity before he held a single elected office. He joined the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in 1953, worked in the grassroots for nearly two decades, won his first seat in 1967, and only formed the AIADMK in 1972. Even then, it took him five more years to become Chief Minister.

The tools he had were limited to what was available in a pre-television, pre-internet era: political rallies, pamphlets, and above all, cinema. He used the medium with extraordinary precision — playing farmers, fishermen and rickshaw-pullers in film after film, inserting political philosophy into song lyrics, building a screen identity so consistent and so rooted in the Tamil poor that by the time he entered politics formally, voters already knew exactly who he was and what he stood for. It took thirty years.

What did Vijay do in the social media era?

Vijay launched his political party Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam on February 2, 2024. Today, two years later, his party is delivering what commentators are already calling a political earthquake.

That is the simpler part: Vijay had access to tools MGR never had. Social media gave Vijay a reach that no number of political rallies could match. TVK's digital strategy — operating with precision and with specific targets, which are women and youth — ran circles around the established IT wings of both the DMK and AIADMK.

The ruling party, DMK, with decades of organisational muscle behind it, had to create a dedicated team just to counter TVK online. Campaign songs went viral on Instagram Reels. WhatsApp forwards did the work that loudspeakers outside theatres used to do. Nano influencers were deployed constituency by constituency. Holograms, robots, look-alikes and special merchandise, TVK knew the pulse of the youngsters and grabbed every opportunity to turn the fandom into votes.

In other words, what took MGR years to travel from a film set to the interiors of Tamil Nadu now took two years.

What favoured Vijay?

MGR operated in a two-party Tamil Nadu. When he broke from the DMK in 1972, the political landscape was binary. Converting his fan clubs into party branches, he swept a 1977 election that was essentially a referendum on whether Tamil Nadu believed in him. They did. The answer was unambiguous.

Vijay walked into a state where power had alternated between the DMK and the AIADMK since 1967 — nearly six decades of entrenched party machinery, caste alliances, dynasty politics, voter loyalty accumulated over generations, and an electorate politically sophisticated enough to have absorbed and rejected multiple film stars before him.

Vijayakanth built a party that peaked and faded. Rajinikanth announced his entry and withdrew before he could even begin. Kamal Haasan's Makkal Needhi Maiam contested and came away with nothing in 2021. Tamil Nadu had seen this film before and knew how it ended.

The Jana Nayagan impact

And then there was Jana Nayagan. MGR used cinema as his primary weapon, and it worked. Vijay intended to do the same — his final film, timed to release three months before polling day, carried unmistakable political messaging. The censor board held it up.

His opponents assumed, not unreasonably, that without his strongest weapon he would be exposed. Instead, the suppression of the film became its own campaign — the outrage travelled faster on social media than any film clip could have. MGR's cinema reached voters through theatres. Vijay's blocked cinema reached voters through fury.

What Vijay achieved, then, is both less and more than what MGR achieved. Less, because MGR built something over decades that was inseparable from who he was — his political identity and his screen identity had grown together until they were the same thing, tested and retested across thirty years of public life.

Vijay's identity, by contrast, is newer, its roots shallower, its ideology still being defined.

More, because he did it in a fragmented, cynical, three-cornered political landscape, without the film that was supposed to be his ace, using tools that didn't exist a generation ago, against parties with six decades of institutional memory — and still led in 108 seats on counting day.

MGR's test, when it came, was governance. He passed it — the mid-day meal scheme, free electricity for farmers, welfare programmes that outlasted him by decades.

While Vijay still needs a few seats to form a majority, talks have already begun.

But, Vijay's real test begins now.

- Ends