About a month ago, Ambedkar was found trending on Tamil Twitter as a hashtag. It was not on the occasion of Dr BR Ambedkar’s birth or death anniversary or in connection to matters of electoral politics but because of a mainstream reality show Bigg Boss Tamil. When Hotstar, the OTT platform in charge of the 24*7 streaming of the events of the show, edited out the portion of a contestant, R Vikraman, reading out his letter written to Ambedkar, there was a backlash on social media questioning the need to censor it. People demanded that the networks responsible, Disney+ Hotstar and Vijay Television, telecast the edited portion. The segment was telecast on Vijay Television the next day and the letter went on to become an important point of discussion in that week’s Sunday episode with Kamal Haasan, the host.
The person who used this mainstream entertainment show as a platform to put forward the politics of equality and social justice was a contestant named R Vikraman. This 34-year-old journalist-turned-politician brought with him his Periyarist/Ambedkarite ideologies to compete against 20 fellow contestants in Bigg Boss Tamil Season Six, a show that came to an end after 106 days last Sunday. Contrary to the expectations and wishes of some co-contestants and many “neutral” YouTube show reviewers who deemed him unfit and unsuitable for this kind of a reality show, Vikraman turned the tables and reached the finals with immense support from the public.
It is generally known that the Bigg Boss show is viewed as a prototype and reflection of society. What set Vikraman apart was that he not only saw it as one but played it as such. He approached the game with acute social awareness and responsibility. In addition to performing the given tasks to their fullest, he put forth virtues that were morally, socially, and politically right. His politics of equality ranged from being politically correct to feminism to anti-casteism.
Vikraman was particular about political correctness as it was a show being watched by millions. He called out discriminatory remarks regarding gender stereotypes, and communal prejudices. As part of a task, he was asked to pick a woman contestant who was a “kudumba kuthu vilaku” (roughly, a ‘family-oriented girl’), a common phrase used in Tamil to describe feminine girls who are ‘homely’, docile, and chaste. Vikraman rejected the idea and chose to pick a strong bold woman contestant instead. When a fellow male contestant pointed out that boys work better as a team than women, Vikraman asked him to not make such generalised and misogynistic comments. He asked a fellow contestant to not use the phrase “fish market” to indicate loudness, due to its casteist and classicist undertones. Vikraman was able to start and engage in these conversations with others without being preachy and assuming a moral high ground. It was not that it did not irk the co-contestants in the beginning but many eventually started seeing his perspective and accepted him.
Even Bigg Boss was not spared for being politically incorrect. When a task letter had used the word “adimaigal” (slaves), Vikraman expressed his displeasure at using this derogatory term and within a few minutes, Bigg Boss changed the word to “sevagargal” (helpers).
The way Vikraman conducted group discussions revealed his understanding of the difference between majoritarianism and democracy. He encouraged decisions that were finalised only through discussions and debates and sought everyone’s consensus. He understood the adage “arasiyal pazhagu” (roughly translated as practise politics/make politics a habit).
Vikraman took a firm stand against comedy that involved body shaming and cross-dressing. He sensitised his housemates on the offensive nature of such jokes. The fact that he did it on the very channel that was responsible for promoting such humour made it both ironic and powerful. Vikraman’s consistency in calling them out, led to a considerable decrease in the number of body shaming jokes that were made in the house and the cross-dressing tasks that were popular in previous seasons were not a part of this season.
During conversations about cross-dressing and toxic masculinity, Vikraman displayed his understanding of gender. He turned the Bigg Boss house into a Gender 101 classroom by trying to explain to his housemates: one’s body does not determine one’s gender; gender is an individual’s choice and right; gender cannot be defined and is fluid; concepts of masculinity and femininity are meaningless and void. It was refreshing to hear such discourses in Tamil on a mainstream show.
He stood apart from the men in the house who flared up when their fragile male egos got hurt by women’s simple nods, laughs, and comments. He was perhaps the only male contestant who was able to maintain healthy relationships, founded on equality and mutual respect, with strong and bold women like Maheswari and Shivin despite fights and disagreements among them.
Vikraman is literally a man written by women! I hope he continues seeing success in politics & personal life ❤️
— Sanaa (@WhySanaaWhy) January 22, 2023
When a contestant GP Muthu remarked that he would have hit Dhanalakshmi had she been his daughter to discipline her, the whole house insisted that she excuse him citing his age as a reason. It was Vikraman who made it clear that age or gender did not warrant authority and superiority over others and even parents had no legal right to hit their children.
While it has become customary to gloss over caste when talking about social inequalities prevalent in our society, Vikraman never shied away from it. When he wrote and performed a script about manual scavenging related deaths, he highlighted how it was primarily a caste issue. The objective of the play was to say no to manual scavenging and it was effectively conveyed without the play being poverty porn or a heroic glorification of manual scavengers.
In an entertainment show like Bigg Boss which follows a fixed template for generating content, Vikraman seemed to write his own script for entertaining people. He spoke about gender, feminism, anti-casteism, importance of political correctness, and the need to resist fascism. The channel’s reluctance in telecasting these in the main one-hour episode reveals how the media still holds on to its role as a reinforcer of Brahminical-patriarchal values. When the show highlights toxicity and forced narratives of insubstantial “love” tracks, it exposes the channel’s regressive politics and its narrow conception of what amounts to entertainment.
By having a contestant who was vocal about his politics and enjoyed people’s support, the channel was left with no choice but to become political itself. The network chose to capitalise on it. Vijay Television on all of their social media platforms uploaded the video of Vikraman explaining how the state got its name “Tamil Nadu” in the Pongal episode with the caption “Tamil Nadu… Tamil Nadu than” (Tamil Nadu is Tamil Nadu) as a response to the controversy regarding the name of the state. When Vikraman casually requested Beef biryani, the segment was featured in the one-hour episode. Usually only upper-caste experiences are found ubiquitous in popular culture and airing these invisibilised common practices makes it political. Bigg Boss himself was found saying Ambedkar’s revolutionary ideological call of “Educate. Agitate. Organise.” on the last day of the show. Post the backlash received for editing out Vikraman’s letter to Ambedkar, Hotstar too seemed to have made some changes to its political stance. Names of Periyar and Ambedkar which were muted in the beginning of the show rang loud and clear towards the end. Wish Hotstar had not muted their names from the very beginning.
Vikraman was responsible for a lot of conversations that happened on social media regarding the differences between arrogance and araseetram (righteous anger), Tamizhar Aram (virtues of Tamils), pagutharivu (rationality), resistance through fashion, and many more. Twitter spaces organised by Vikraman’s supporters became an everyday affair averaging 200 participants and in addition to the show’s happenings, ideas and theories of Marx, Periyar, and Ambedkar were actively discussed. All this was new in any discourse related to Bigg Boss Tamil.
When other fandoms on Twitter used the term boomer to mock a modern and rational person like Vikraman, it showed how people throw words in social media without understanding their meaning. It may also stem from Gen Z being unable to relate to a person who can articulate long, complete sentences in proper and fluent Tamil.
Topics like gender and political correctness usually remain exclusive to elite spaces populated by intellectuals. By choosing to talk about these on a mainstream show, Vikraman has broken the barrier and has succeeded in facilitating access to the general public.
The title ideally belongs to Vikraman or his fellow finalist, Shivin, a trans woman who in addition to playing a brilliant game caused a revolution by her mere presence on the show. But sadly, the winner was Azeem, a contestant whose very approach and strategy in the game was to degrade others. His actions on the show earned him the tags of being a narcissist, misogynist, bully, and serial abuser. Vikraman cautioned that normalising this behaviour would be fatal. But Azeem has managed to win and some even tend to excuse his damaging behaviour as “just a game”. His victory has caused reasonable and much needed outrage among the public and netizens.
Azeem’s victory over a self-respecting progressive, socially and politically conscious contestant like Vikraman, justifies why Tamil society eyed the show with suspicion and doubt when it was first pitched six years ago. If the show has more seasons and continues in a similar fashion, despite the many moral interventions from the host Kamal Haasan, there is no doubt that in another three years, there would be a contestant who would make Azeem look like a gentleman. Some contestants from previous seasons who received severe backlash for their behaviour, now look like innocent children compared to Azeem. And for any civilised society that wishes to progress, this cannot be taken as a good sign.
Aazhi is currently a research scholar in the Department of English at Stella Maris College, Chennai.