In which we examine the most spectacular "we are definitely not helping him" in Indian political history, the CBI's most cinematically timed investigation, a film that was blocked, leaked and released only after elections, and how a party that did not exist 27 months ago just became Tamil Nadu's ruling party — splitting a 60-year Dravidian duopoly precisely as Delhi would have scripted it, if Delhi were scripting it, which it absolutely was not.
We begin Part II with a question. A simple, innocent question. The kind of question a child might ask, and which no adult in Indian politics will answer directly.
If you were the BJP — a party that has never won a single Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha seat since 2014, a party that is described by the Tamil electorate as "ideologically foreign" with the same regularity and certainty that the weather is described as "hot," a party that Tamil Nadu's political culture has rejected so consistently that its state unit president K. Annamalai became famous primarily for losing — if you were that party, and you wanted to break the 60-year Dravidian duopoly that has kept Tamil Nadu immune to your national dominance...
What would you do?
You could not win it directly. Tamil Nadu knows. You could not split it by supporting AIADMK — you tried that until 2023 and won nothing. You could not buy it with welfare schemes because Tamil Nadu already has welfare schemes and frankly does them better than you do. And you absolutely could not send Modi to Chennai and expect him to be received as anything other than the man who tried to impose Hindi on a state that has a dedicated holiday celebrating the day it defeated Hindi imposition.
What you could do — if you were very clever, very patient, and very committed to the long game — is manufacture a third force. A force that is ideologically anti-BJP in its public positioning (so Tamil voters trust it), that attacks DMK for corruption (so it takes votes from DMK), that fragments AIADMK's vote further (so neither old Dravidian party can form a majority), and that delivers Tamil Nadu into a hung assembly or a weakened government that eventually needs Delhi's support to survive.
And if that third force happens to be led by the most popular film star in Tamil Nadu, who has 85,000 fan clubs, who has been in politics via his fan association since 2009, and whose entry you can accelerate by applying just enough judicial and administrative pressure to make him look like a victim of BJP persecution — well. That would be very clever indeed.
We are not saying this happened. We are saying it worked out exactly as described. Make of that what you will.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Making of a Martyr — How the CBI, the CBFC, and a Stampede Turned Vijay Into Tamil Nadu's Most Sympathetic Figure
Vijay did not need BJP's help to be popular. He was already the most popular person in Tamil Nadu — a state that takes its film stars more seriously than most countries take their heads of government, and which has previously elected an actor as Chief Minister twice (MGR twice, Jayalalithaa six times). His fan clubs numbered 85,000 across the state as early as 2009. In 2021, his fan association contested 169 local body seats and won 115 — outperforming Kamal Haasan's actual political party, the PMK, the DMDK, and the NTK. In 2021. Before he had announced a party. Before he had held a rally. With a fan club whose legal status he had himself tried to disown in court.
The man was going to be in politics. The only question was when, how, and whether the journey would be smooth or rough. The BJP had a strong interest in the answer being "rough enough to generate sympathy but not so rough that he quits."
September 27, 2025: A TVK rally in Karur turns into a stampede. 41 people die. 80-120 are injured. The Tamil Nadu Police — under DMK's state government — files an FIR blaming TVK organisers for deliberate delay in Vijay's arrival, poor crowd management, and violation of traffic rules.
October 2025 onward: The Madras High Court constitutes a Special Investigation Team. The Supreme Court then transfers the investigation from the state SIT to the Central Bureau of Investigation — the central government's agency — and orders it to be supervised by a retired Supreme Court judge.
January 2026: CBI summons Vijay to Delhi. Twice. He goes. He is questioned. He makes a statement about being "in unbearable pain." His party accuses BJP of using the CBI to coerce him into an NDA alliance. BJP denies this.
Also January 2026: Jana Nayagan, Vijay's final film scheduled for Pongal release on January 9, is blocked by the CBFC. Examining committee recommends U/A certificate. Film is referred to revising committee. Delay becomes indefinite. Court battles begin.
April 9, 2026: Jana Nayagan — the film that couldn't get certified — is leaked entirely online in HD. TVK alleges BJP's Union Minister L. Murugan used influence over CBFC in the leak. BJP denies. CBFC denies. The film reaches every Tamil household anyway.
April 23, 2026: Tamil Nadu votes.
May 4, 2026: TVK wins 108 of 234 seats. Vijay is Chief Minister-designate.
May 8, 2026 (rumoured): Jana Nayagan finally gets a release date. In theatres. After elections. As if the film were never really the problem.
"The CBI summoned him to Delhi in January. His film was blocked until April. His party was harassed at every level. He called BJP his ideological enemy. He won 108 seats. And now, two weeks after the election, his film is getting a release date. Coincidence is a beautiful word."
— Deep Throat Sharma, this correspondent, describing events in the order they occurred and drawing no conclusions whatsoeverCHAPTER EIGHT: The Mathematics of Victimhood — How Persecution Creates Votes In Tamil Nadu At A 1:4 Ratio
Tamil Nadu's political psychology has a specific feature that distinguishes it from every other Indian state: it punishes whoever attacks its heroes. This is not metaphorical. It is documented history. When the Income Tax Department raided Superstar Rajinikanth's house in 1996, it created a sympathy wave that arguably contributed to the DMK's landslide. When the Jayalalithaa government imprisoned Karunanidhi in 2001, Tamil Nadu sympathised with the old man and punished AIADMK in the next election. When the central government appears to target a Tamil icon, Tamil Nadu's immune response is fierce, tribal, and electorally decisive.
Vijay's people understood this. Vijay's party used this language explicitly — describing the CBI summons and the CBFC delays as "political conspiracy," as "pressure tactics," as proof that the establishment feared their leader's rise. Whether or not the CBI and CBFC actions were actually motivated by political calculation, the perception of persecution did exactly what persecution-perception does in Tamil Nadu: it generated sympathy, it generated outrage, it generated voter identification with the underdog, and it filled TVK rallies with the kind of emotional charge that no amount of campaign spending can manufacture.
"Even after so much pressure — the CBI, the audit departments, the film certification — our leader stands firm. What more needs to be said? The people of Tamil Nadu understand what is happening. And they will respond accordingly."
— TVK spokesperson Arunraj, February 2026, making a campaign speech disguised as a press statement, in a way that the BJP's alleged pressure tactics had made possibleThe Kashmir Files got CBFC clearance in days. The Kerala Story 2 sailed through certification. Both films are, by critical consensus and the party's own characterisation, aligned with BJP's ideological messaging. Jana Nayagan — a political action thriller by a man calling BJP his "ideological enemy" — sat in CBFC committees for four months, went through three court battles, and was eventually leaked online in its entirety before a certificate was issued. Whether this is because Jana Nayagan is a terrible film that required extensive review (it is not, by early accounts) or because of political calculation, the comparison generates a specific kind of Tamil fury that requires no explanation to anyone south of the Vindya mountains.
CHAPTER NINE: The Tamil Nadu Chessboard — Two Birds, One Actor, Zero Fingerprints
Here is what the results of the 2026 Tamil Nadu election look like, in plain numbers:
Now look at what these numbers mean for Delhi's interests, if Delhi had interests in this outcome:
The DMK is finished as a national opposition anchor. Stalin, who was INDIA bloc's most credible southern face, has gone from 159 seats to 59. He cannot credibly claim to lead Tamil Nadu's politics anymore. His son Udhayanidhi, who was being groomed as the next generation of Dravidian leadership, lost or barely survived. The DMK's ability to leverage Tamil Nadu's 39 Lok Sabha seats as a national bargaining chip has been dramatically reduced.
The AIADMK is a managed decline. Whatever alliance it forms is at the mercy of TVK or DMK for survival. It is no longer a pole of Tamil politics. It is a collection of MLAs looking for a home.
Vijay needs Delhi's support to govern. With 108 of the 118 seats needed for majority, TVK must either form a coalition with DMK (awkward, given Vijay spent two years calling Stalin corrupt) or find support from smaller parties and independents — all of whom know that their survival depends on not antagonising the central government too directly. A Tamil Nadu Chief Minister who needs to manage a thin coalition has fewer tools to challenge Delhi than one with a comfortable majority.
BJP won nothing. But BJP also lost nothing. Governing Tamil Nadu was never the objective. Fragmenting Tamil Nadu's politics permanently was the objective. Mission accomplished at zero electoral cost.
"We didn't need to win Tamil Nadu. We needed Tamil Nadu to stop being a problem. And it has stopped. Two birds. One actor. Zero fingerprints."
— Nobody from BJP said this. This is satire. But if you substituted "electoral fragmentation of Dravidian politics" for "problem," it would be an accurate description of the outcome.CHAPTER TEN: The Fan Club Timeline — A 17-Year Political Project That Was Definitely Just A Fan Club
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Brilliant Absurdity — He Called Them The Enemy And They Helped Him Win
Let us state the conspiracy's central absurdity plainly, because it is genuinely funny even if you do not believe it: the BJP's alleged strategy in Tamil Nadu required them to apply pressure on the man calling them the enemy, so that Tamil voters would rally behind that man, so that he would win the state, so that the state would be fragmented away from the DMK, so that BJP would benefit in future Lok Sabha elections despite winning nothing themselves in 2026.
This is either the most sophisticated political strategy since Chanakya or it is complete coincidence dressed in a suspicious outfit. The outfit is tailored. It fits perfectly. The tailor denies having been involved.
K. Annamalai — BJP's Tamil Nadu chief, the man who contested and lost, who spent years building BJP's presence in a state that kept rejecting it — has been conspicuously quiet about the TVK victory. He has not declared it a BJP defeat. He has not declared it a disaster. He said the party would "analyse the results." In a state where BJP won approximately 4 seats, "analyse the results" is the political equivalent of a student who failed with 4/100 saying they will "review their performance." The review, one suspects, will conclude that 4 is acceptable when the alternative was zero and the actual objective was someone else's 108.
"Political observers have speculated that the BJP may be seeking to maximise TVK's electoral prospects to split anti-DMK votes."
— An actual quote from an actual political analyst in an actual news article, not from BreakingBakwas.com, cited here because the newspaper said the quiet part out loud and we did not want the creditThere is also the matter of Vijay's government's survival. 108 seats. 118 needed. The 10-seat gap requires support from independents, smaller parties, or — in the worst case — DMK itself. Any of these arrangements puts Vijay in a position of managing a fragile coalition in a state that has a long tradition of coalition governments collapsing colourfully, midterm. A coalition government in Tamil Nadu that faces instability will, at some point, need to manage its relationship with the central government. The central government, which is BJP. The same BJP that is Vijay's "ideological enemy." The same BJP that allegedly blocked his film and summoned him to Delhi. That BJP will now be the authority that signs off on central funds, Governor's cooperation, and the hundred other levers the Centre has over state governments.
It is possible that Vijay manages this with the same disciplined independence he showed during the campaign. It is also possible that governing a state with a 10-seat deficit changes certain calculations. Delhi is very aware of this arithmetic. Delhi is always very aware of arithmetic.
CHAPTER TWELVE: The Ghost of Rajinikanth — What Happens When The Plan Doesn't Work, And Why Vijay Is Not Him
Vijay is not the first Tamil superstar to be nudged toward politics by forces interested in fragmenting the Dravidian ecosystem. Rajinikanth — the other superstar, the one with the smoking cigarette and the philosophical monologues — spent years hinting at a political entry, announced his party in 2017, drew enormous crowds, was widely expected to contest the 2021 election, and then cited health reasons and quietly retreated. Tamil Nadu's political industry exhaled. The Dravidian parties survived. Nobody fragmented anything.
The difference between Rajinikanth's political non-entry and Vijay's is this: Vijay actually did it. He filed the forms. He announced candidates for all 234 constituencies. He stood in a booth in Perambur and cast his vote for himself. Rajinikanth blinked at the last moment — possibly having calculated the actual difficulty of governing a state of 83 million people after a career of playing characters who solve all problems in three hours with background music. Vijay, fifteen years younger and considerably more politically prepared, did not blink.
And so Tamil Nadu has its first non-Dravidian Chief Minister in sixty years. Or rather: a Chief Minister who positioned himself as the alternative to Dravidian politics, while being more Dravidian in ideology than either Dravidian party managed to appear in this cycle. The irony is extraordinary. The conspiracy theory is complete.
"Jana Nayagan — his final film — is a political action thriller in which he plays a former police officer fighting a corrupt system. The CBFC would not certify it. It was leaked online before the election. He won the election. The film is now getting a release date. If someone had submitted this as a screenplay, the producer would have said the third act was too on-the-nose."
— Deep Throat Sharma, this correspondent, noting that Tamil cinema and Tamil politics have always been indistinguishable and that this should have been less surprising to everyoneWe leave you here at the end of Part II, in the middle of Tamil Nadu's new political era, with a Chief Minister who called BJP his enemy and may now need BJP's cooperation to govern, with a film that was blocked and leaked and is finally releasing, with a stampede investigation that gave CBI jurisdiction over a state-level incident and is still ongoing, and with 41 families in Karur who lost someone at a political rally and are still waiting for accountability from the new Chief Minister who was the subject of that investigation.
Not everything in this conspiracy theory is funny. Some of it is just sad. We note this before Part III, which is the saddest and most data-heavy section of all: the midnight votes.
