How the mighty have fallen again

The heat and dust in Karur that Saturday was merciless, the kind that parched throats and blinded eyes. By noon on 27 September, the textile town in western Tamil Nadu had become a furnace. Mothers who came to Velusamypuram on the road to Erode to see their favourite screen idol Vijay shielded their infants with torn pallus, the scorching sun making the delay in his arrival unbearable.

TVK (Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam) cadres, mostly men, fanned themselves with crumpled pamphlets and old newspapers. Children cried for water. Old men slumped and fainted. But still they waited. For Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar, the film star they called Thalapathy, who’d promised to lead them in real life the way they had seen him on screen — protector, saviour, the man who always stood up to injustice.

Upon the procession’s arrival at Velusamypuram in the evening, the crowd surged forward, causing barricades to collapse and tin roofs to give way, leading to a stampede that crushed many before they could get out of harm’s way. A celebration had turned into a carnage in no time. Images of scattered slippers, uniforms caked in dust and ambulances stranded in traffic made national headlines.

For people in Karur, the tragedy was more than just an accident. It was, as many put it, the moment when cinema and reality fell apart.

For decades, film stars have had an outsized influence on the political imagination of Tamil Nadu. But Karur raised questions: can spectacle translate into governance? Can a screen hero face the unglamorous, unforgiving demands of public life? Can a political movement sustained by fandom survive real-life tests?

TVK had submitted a letter to the Karur police on 25 September seeking permission for a rally in the centre of town. They were denied permission by the police, which cited safety reasons and allotted an alternative site at Velusamypuram on the Karur–Erode road, a stretch often used for political meetings. Some 500 personnel were deployed, with the police expecting a crowd of 10,000–15,000, as the party had indicated.

According to the official schedule, Vijay was to speak at Namakkal around 8.45 am and Karur at 12.45 pm. But he got to Namakkal at 2 pm. By the time his vehicle reached Karur, it was 7 pm. Tens of thousands had been waiting in the heat since morning. Supporters who had followed him from Namakkal added to the milling crowd. Videos released later showed people spilling onto the road, climbing trees and tin-roofed shops, and surging forward when Vijay’s bus drew near the stage.

Witnesses recall the moment. As one survivor said: “By the time he arrived, many had fainted. He just tossed water bottles, waved and left.” Those bottles sailing through the air in the twilight struck many as a grotesque cinematic gesture that mocked the desperation below. Umayamma Lakshmi, who had brought her two children, said bitterly, “We believed in him because of the films. But in real life, he abandoned us. That’s not a leader.”

Grief overwhelmed the town. Ambulances carried the injured; relatives clutched photographs and cried outside hospitals; rumours spread faster than official statements. The political class grew restless. Vijay himself kept silent. When reporters approached him at Trichy airport, he brushed past them without a word.

Later, he released a video, saying he was “writhing in unbearable, indescribable pain”, urging the chief minister to protect his supporters. For dramatic effect, he even added that if punitive action had to be taken, it should fall on him, not his party cadres.

The police filed FIRs against TVK organisers and formed special teams to pursue them. Opposition parties demanded an independent probe. An NDA fact-finding panel called for a sitting Supreme Court judge to lead the inquiry. Under pressure, TVK suspended its statewide tour and cancelled rallies. A campaign that had made Vijay a national curiosity suddenly looked like a liability.

One cannot separate the tragedy in Karur from the arc of Vijay’s life. Born in Chennai in 1974, the son of director S.A. Chandrasekhar and singer Shoba, Vijay entered the film industry at the age of ten. His early career was rocky, with critics calling him unpolished. However, by the early 2000s, he had found his shtick: the righteous hero who fought injustice and protected the vulnerable. Ghilli, Thuppakki, Mersal, and Master made him box-office royalty.

With those films came politics by implication. In Mersal, lines about GST and demonetisation provoked fury from the BJP. Vijay publicly condemned NEET and attacked the centralised policies of the Modi government, positioning himself as a citizen who was also a star.

Over time, his fan clubs morphed into social service groups organising blood donation camps, flood relief efforts and grassroot campaigns. In 2021, they contested local elections, and TVK was launched in February 2024.

Vijay borrowed freely from the Dravidian tradition, invoking Periyar and Ambedkar in his speeches, promising to empower the youth and fight corruption. But his critics noted that he didn’t talk policy, that his speeches were high on rhetoric and low on substance.

Unlike MGR, who cut his political teeth in the DMK before breaking away, or Jayalalithaa, who turned charisma into administrative command, Vijay had no apprenticeship. He preferred grand rallies to press conferences, video messages to uncomfortable questions. His immaturity was evident in silences during crises, in his vague pronouncements on water disputes, caste inequalities or fiscal bargaining with Delhi.

Will the Karur incident be a turning point in Vijay’s political life? For some keen observers of Tamil Nadu politics, the incident was a snapshot of the contradiction he embodies between his screen persona and his real-life appetite for battles he wages on screen. Says veteran journalist P.K. Sreenivasan: “His film characters embody empathy and courage, but in politics, he avoids responsibility. He [projects] compassion, but when reality demands it, he retreats. That is manipulation, not leadership.”

For survivors, the disappointment was raw and personal. N.P. Ramesh, a shopkeeper who pulled a child out of danger, said, “We thought he would care. Instead, he arrived late, threw bottles, smiled and left.” Sundaram Raghavan, a young man who followed Vijay’s convoy, remembered a boy collapsing while his mother screamed. “And Vijay? He threw a bottle and walked off.”

That image of Karur will endure: those plastic water bottles flying across the twilit sky, glittering briefly before falling into a desperate crowd — a reminder of the disconnect between art and the life it imitates.