{"id":10287254,"date":"2025-10-04T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T08:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/?post_type=article&p=10287254"},"modified":"2025-10-04T16:42:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T11:12:30","slug":"superstar-vijay-rally-town-siege-perumal-murugan-account-10287254","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/political-pulse\/superstar-vijay-rally-town-siege-perumal-murugan-account-10287254\/","title":{"rendered":"Superstar Vijay, a rally, and a town under siege: Perumal Murugan\u2019s account"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday evening, renowned Tamil writer Perumal Murugan sat down to write about a rally in his hometown, Namakkal. It was not just any rally. Actor Vijay, leader of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), had come there on the morning of September 27, just hours before the fatal stampede at his next stop in Karur.<\/p><\/ev-engagement><\/ev-engagement>

\n

Murugan\u2019s blog post in Tamil is not a political speech. It is a vivid diary, part report, part sketch, written in the clean, unsentimental lines that he is known for. What he describes is a town reshaped by frenzy, banners that bent the sky, crowds that arrived at dawn, and an organisation as fragile as a paper screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Saturday, September 27, the first town where Vijay came and spoke was Namakkal,\u201d Murugan begins. \u201cBecause of the Karur tragedy, the reports of the Namakkal meeting did not appear much, and whatever appeared also did not get attention. As a resident of Namakkal, I wish to record what I saw and what I inquired and learned. This may be taken as a press note.\u201d<\/p>\n

The piece is striking in its frankness \u2014 neither in the language of campaign reports nor television news tickers. It is the language of a man walking through his own town, watching it bend under the weight of a new political spectacle.<\/p>\n

A stage built on banners<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two days before the rally, Murugan had wandered down Salem Road, where the meeting was to be staged. He notes how the site itself seemed ill-suited. Shops lined both sides, the road narrow, the only way to hold a speech being to stop right there, in traffic.<\/p>\n\"vijay After the stampede, in his video message on September 30, 2025, Vijay said the government may do “anything to him,” for the stampede but should spare his party men. (Express photo by Arun Janardhanan)\n

\u201cThe plan was that Vijay would stop at one place and speak for twenty to thirty minutes. People along the road would watch him, be satisfied, and return home. That was why they chose this spot, I thought,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

But what caught his eye were the banners \u2014 huge sheets blocking a quarter of the road. They had no permission. The police had warned, photographed them, but the party men ignored the orders. The fines were too small to matter.<\/p>\n

Here, Murugan\u2019s tone is dry, almost amused. He sketches the petty defiance of local cadres, men certain they could pay off the state with a day\u2019s earnings.<\/p>\n

A retired policeman\u2019s advice<\/strong><\/p>\n

The TVK had sent a retired deputy superintendent to Namakkal, a man once in charge of policing the district. He came two days ahead. His advice was practical: fence off the transformers with tin sheets, remove the giant banners, arrange a medical camp, provide water at six places. Even cut down some of the thirty-foot flag poles. \u201cWhen the campaign vehicle stops, and Vijay speaks, the poles may lean and fall,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

But, Murugan notes, \u201cthe district leadership did not follow all of it. They followed some, and ignored the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

This refusal, he suggests, would later define the rally \u2014 a half-hearted order, a careless execution.<\/p>\n

\u2018Bussy\u2019 – The General Secretary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Murugan\u2019s essay turns toward \u2018Bussy\u2019 Anand, TVK\u2019s general secretary. Anand had arrived early, shuttling between Namakkal and Karur. He checked the flagpoles himself, shaking them to see if they were planted deep enough. But as the man who decides party responsibilities next to Vijay, he was surrounded by functionaries eager for attention. \u201cHe looked at the place only in name, then left quickly,\u201d Murugan records.<\/p>\n

There is also a subplot of caste and ambition. The West District Secretary, Sathish Kumar, shared Anand\u2019s caste, a minority in Namakkal. His hopes of an election ticket were slim. Instead, a wealthy Gounder backer was spending on rallies, expecting the seat. Murugan describes this quietly, but the politics is unmistakable: communities trading money for chances, leaders orbiting Vijay\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

A Schoolyard Start<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vijay landed in Trichy at 8.50 am, even though permission for the Namakkal speech<\/strong><\/a> was granted for 8.45 am. From there, the campaign bus was not stopped two or three kilometres outside town, as expected. Instead, it was parked inside a school compound, 25 km away. Teachers and students screamed when they saw him.<\/p>\n

From there began an unpermitted roadshow. \u201cTo cover the twenty-five kilometres took more than three hours,\u201d Murugan writes. The bus crawled forward. People crowded the road. Inside, Vijay waved. Outside, faces pressed against the glass.<\/p>\n

By 2.30 pm, he entered Namakkal. By 2.45, he began to speak on Salem Road.<\/p>\n

The thirst and the waiting<\/strong><\/p>\n

The picture Murugan paints is less of a rally than of \u201ca town under siege.\u201d People had arrived at dawn, at five o\u2019clock. Shops closed. Food and water vanished.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of those present came from rural areas,\u201d he writes. \u201cThey did not have the habit of carrying water or snacks. Even if they brought children, they brought nothing. They thought: we can manage at the venue. But even if there was no food, at least water was needed. With only one place distributing water, the crowd rushed, climbing over one another.\u201d<\/p>\n\"vijay The stampede occurred soon after Vijay began his speech in Karur. (Express photo by Arun Janardhanan)\n

By 10 am, people began fainting. By the time Vijay spoke, more than a hundred had collapsed. Some were trampled, some broke bones, he writes.<\/p>\n

His prose is unblinking here. A doctor at the camp knew acupuncture and homoeopathy, and revived many. Fifty were sent to hospitals. Some to Coimbatore. \u201cFortunately, there were no deaths,\u201d Murugan writes.<\/p>\n

(According to the state government, of the victims in Namakkal, 34 remained in hospital beyond a day, and four for over three days \u2013 one of them in critical condition.)<\/p>\n

A crowd without control<\/strong><\/p>\n

The police stood outside, instructed not to interfere. Murugan quotes them as saying that crowd management is the party\u2019s job, their role only to prevent riots. Volunteers climbed transformer fences, tore down banners for footholds, screamed Vijay\u2019s name<\/strong><\/a>. Pushcart vendors ran away in fear.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike being stranded in a desert,\u201d Murugan writes of the thirsty crowd. When asked about toilets, one man said, \u201cOnly if we drink water will that problem arise.\u201d<\/p>\n\"karur\" Over a dozen people who sat on a tree branch collapsed on a crowd, worsening the situation further. (Express photo by Arun Janardhanan)\n

Murugan writes that leaders were nowhere to be seen. The functionaries, instead of managing the chaos, trailed after Vijay, hoping to be noticed. They wanted their faces etched in his memory, so they followed him from the airport, circled his bus, even schemed about what gift might catch his eye.<\/p>\n

Murugan writes, \u201cTheir whole thought was about registering themselves in Vijay\u2019s mind. So no one came forward to manage the crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

A farce with tragic edges?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The piece captures the exclusivity Vijay maintains even with his own party men, leaving them begging for scraps of attention, while the crowd is left to fend for itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, when political leaders visit a town, they stay for a few hours at the government guest house or a private lodge, meet district functionaries, discuss party and district issues, give guidance, and check on the arrangements. In TVK, it was not so. Neither the district secretary nor other functionaries had any opportunity to meet Vijay. It was only \u2018Bussy\u2019 Anand who met them and spoke,\u201d Murugan wrote.<\/p>\n

ALSO READ<\/span> | Stalin\u2019s caution in sparing Vijay backfires, actor issues challenge to CM: \u2018Do whatever you want to do with me\u2019<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

Doctors worked without food or tea till six in the evening at Namakkal. Some patients who regained consciousness asked, \u201cHas Vijay left?\u201d When told he had already come, they ripped out glucose drips and tried to run back into the rally.<\/p>\n

The closing note<\/strong><\/p>\n

The blog ends on a sharp edge. The district secretary, Sathish Kumar, has since been booked. His anticipatory bail plea was dismissed.<\/p>\n

But Murugan\u2019s piece offers no loud judgment. His sentences carry the plain inevitability of a town overwhelmed. The detail is precise. The tragedy is only a few hours away in Karur, but in Namakkal, it is already written in miniature.<\/p>\n

Murugan\u2019s piece reads like a mirror \u2013 of fans who arrive at dawn without water, of leaders who seek only to be seen, and of a state learning what it means when cinema becomes politics.<\/p>\n

(Murugan is a celebrated Tamil writer known for exploring rural caste dynamics and social realities. In 2014, after his novel, Madhorubhagan, faced violent backlash from caste organisations and Hindutva groups in Namakkal \u2014 including book burnings and threats \u2014 Murugan was forced to sign an apology and declared “writer Perumal Murugan is dead.” The coordinated campaign, which included threats to his family and public demands for censorship, led to his self-imposed literary silence and temporary exile from his hometown. Only later, a Madras High Court judgment helped restore his creative freedom.)<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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