Rajinikanth on CM Vijay: 'greater than what MGR or NTR did'

Rajinikanth called reporters to his residence on Saturday morning and spoke for the first time about Vijay’s election win and the noise around his own silence. He had, he said, expected the media at the airport over the previous two days; nobody had been there, and he didn’t want to wait until his next shoot to clear the air. Three rumours had been spreading on social media since the result came in, and he wanted to name and answer each one in person.

On the Stalin visit. He had gone to see Stalin after the result came out, and the visit had been read as Rajinikanth quietly trying to broker a DMK-AIADMK alliance to keep Vijay from the chief minister’s chair. He dismissed that flatly. Stalin has been a friend of nearly four decades, the Kolathur loss was personal for him, and the visit was the visit a friend makes. “Rajinikanth is not such a cheap or substandard person to talk like that,” he said.

On the airport “snub”. He had congratulated Vijay on X the moment the result was called. The much-shared airport clip, in which a man with a phone informed him that Vijay had been declared chief minister and Rajinikanth merely smiled and walked away, was not a snub. The man had not looked like a journalist, just somebody with a phone. The shock landed and he kept walking.

On the jealousy charge. “I am not in politics. When I am not in politics, why should I be jealous of him?” He paused, smiled, and added the line that has done the rounds of group chats since. “Perhaps if Kamal Haasan had become the chief minister, I don’t know if I would have felt jealous or not.” The room laughed. Even then, he said, he wouldn’t have been. “What is meant to be yours won’t miss you. What isn’t meant to be yours won’t come to you.”

Rajinikanth’s full address at his Poes Garden residence, in Tamil.

The framing then shifted. On the Vijay win itself, Rajinikanth’s language was unexpectedly admiring. He pointed to the 25-year generation gap, said comparing himself to Vijay was bad for him and the other direction was bad for Vijay, and then offered the line that will travel furthest. “At 52 years old, opposing the central BJP, and opposing two major parties here, he has won single-handedly. And that too, from our cinema industry. This is a greater achievement than what MGR and NTR did.” Surprise and happiness, he said. “Wow. Superb.”

On his counsel to the new chief minister, he kept it to two sentences and one number. Expectations are very high, and he believes Vijay will meet them; but people have to leave Vijay alone for two years. The cadres, in particular, should behave carefully, because every mistake a fan makes lands directly on the man at the top.

On the swearing-in invitation. He had not gone, and the absence had been read variously. He explained that he had never attended a single chief minister’s swearing-in. He cited a 1996 precedent: when Karunanidhi returned to power, Rajinikanth had been out of town, and the two men had simply met in person once he was back. The same courtesy is implicitly on the table here.

On whether he would meet Vijay with his own list of industry demands, the way Kamal Haasan did on Saturday, he was politely no. The Nadigar Sangam had already met the chief minister. The Producers Council was due in. Kamal Haasan had been and gone. “I don’t like to go again just for the sake of formality.”

On the 2001 question that fans still circle back to, asked whether he could have won the chief ministership if he had started a party then, he allowed himself one direct answer. “One hundred per cent I would have won. There is no doubt about it.” His reasons for not stepping into politics, he reminded the room, were already on the record in a three-page statement. He closed with the line he had come to deliver. “My hearty congratulations to Vijay.”