ARI Working Paper Series

This paper (which forms a chapter of a study of south Indian film stars and politics) deals with the period stretching from the early 1970s to the mid01980s, during which time the three film stars who are at the centre of the study — M.G. Ramachandran, N.T. Rama Rao and Rajkumar — either enter the field of electoral politics or (in the case of Rajkumar) come close to doing so. The aim is to chart the significance of their entry to Indian political history: what did they contribute, what did they achieve or fail to achieve by bringing this “extraneous” dimension to bear on India’s parliamentary democratic political order?

It is argued that while there are common elements that make these three stars readable as symptoms of a problematic political order, there are differences in the way their actions and decisions contribute to the evolution of the language-specific polities they rule over.