LONG BEFORE C Joseph Vijay asked Tamil Nadu for political power, he had already asked, and got, something more intimate: recognition.

For three decades, he had found a space in homes across Tamil Nadu , arriving through first-day-first-show whistles, television reruns, college dance floors, festival releases and YouTube clips.

So by the time he launched Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in February 2024, Vijay could make a political claim that other new entrants would have found impossible to match: “I did not enter homes after launching TVK,” he would tell supporters.…