Chennai: In the world of virtual debates weighing the importance of an issue or individual in the news, Rajinikanth’s media interaction on Friday seems to have attracted equal traffic from his admirers and detractors.
While the former argued that their superstar was only reiterating his oft-stated position that he would indeed launch into politics but is yet to decide on allies, the critics insisted he has done a U-turn from being a saffron bhakt to now pose as a critic of the BJP on the attempts to saffronise Tiruvalluvar and the economic slowdown.
The critics recalled on social media that Rajini had, while announcing intent to launch into politics, made clear his would be ‘aanmeega arasiyal’ (spiritual politics) and that could only mean ‘saffron politics’. His attempts to distance himself from the BJP, thus, are only shallow whereas deep within him remains the desire to ultimately back Modi and his party.
Many a twitteratti reflected this in their post soon after the Poes Garden media meet.
“Rajnikanth himself jumped into the tub full of saffron colour and now blaming BJP”, was one such tweet from @TholaRam.
Ram was responding to the post from another twitteratti, who called himself @Pun_Starr and said: “Rajnikanth says, ‘BJP is trying to paint me saffron.’ Somewhere in heaven, Sardar Patel & Bhagat Singh laugh out loud”.
And some on social media have also sounded a word of caution that now that he distanced himself from ‘saffron’,Rajinikanth can expect “a raid or revival of the case against his wife”.