Stalin Turns Vijay’s Jaw Gesture Into a 1976 Recital

M.K. Stalin told C. Joseph Vijay on September 10 that the jaw gesture in the Tamil Nadu Assembly was true, because police broke his jawbones in 1976. The DMK president put that on a video the same morning, scars included, and asked the chief minister to read the record instead of acting it out.

Vijay had spent September 7 on graft. He read the Sarkaria Commission and Enforcement Directorate papers at the DMK, then put his right palm to his jaw on a MISA line. The files did not vanish. They just stopped being the clip.

Vijay Opened Two Files and the House Saw a Hand

The debate was on grants for the police and fire services. DMK members had spent weeks calling Vijay a film star who would not answer the House, and they had dared him to open three department files he said were on his table. He offered what he called a small sample, in a speech of about 40 minutes, and he said his government “will not touch even a single paisa of the people’s money; nor will we spare those who did.”

He started in the 1970s. Quoting a Tamil rendering of the Sarkaria Commission’s first report on Tamil Nadu, he said an 80-page stretch on the Veeranam drinking-water project, pages 71 to 150, recorded that Murasoli Maran, nephew of M. Karunanidhi, demanded a 2.5 per cent cut on a tender of more than Rs 16 crore, which he put at Rs 40 lakh. A witness, Purushothaman, spoke of Rs 29 lakh paid in seven instalments between 1970 and 1974, “like EMI on a loan.” Vijay said the panel found that the then chief minister “abused his official position,” on “cogent, convincing and reliable evidence,” and he noted that J. Jayalalithaa had already tabled the same report in 2001.

THE TWO FILES VIJAY READ

He then moved to a roughly 100-page Enforcement Directorate note he said had been sent to the previous government. Contractors in municipal administration and water supply, he read, paid 7.5 to 10 per cent of contract value as “party fund,” with Stalin, his son Udhayanidhi Stalin, the Leader of the Opposition, and others listed as “direct beneficiaries.” On TASMAC, the state liquor retailer, he quoted the agency as saying former minister V. Senthil Balaji entered a “criminal conspiracy from 2021 onwards” with “dishonest intention,” a phrase he repeated. Workers who collected money from bar owners around Karur and Coimbatore were the “Karur gang.” Customers, he said, were charged an extra Rs 10 to Rs 100 a bottle “in an organised manner” between 2021 and 2025. A man named Rathish, called an “unauthorised power broker,” later went to Dubai; Senthil Balaji’s brother Ashok Kumar was named on transport tenders.

DMK MLAs shouted through the speech, sat in front of Speaker J.C.D. Prabhakar, and walked out after the Speaker first agreed to let Udhayanidhi reply and then refused. Udhayanidhi told reporters Vijay had answered none of 15 questions and had delivered “mere punch dialogues in cinema style.” He called Vijay’s capture of power “an accident,” said the Sarkaria material had not proved wrongdoing, and listed live cases against the present side, including an income-tax case against Vijay.

He Tried to Retire MISA as a Shield

The hand arrived on the moral argument, not on the percentages. “You always say that you have faced MISA. But we know the history behind MISA,” Vijay said, and placed his right palm against his jaw. He added that seniors still keep MISA before their names “as a badge of honour,” and that if every charge is met with that badge, “we don’t know what to do.”

That was the wager inside the speech. TVK came to office promising a break from “party fund” politics, and the shortest way to make the promise stick is to treat DMK history as a method, not a martyrdom. Linking Veeranam to a 2021-to-2025 liquor collection lets him say the family and the cut appear in both decades. The MISA line was meant to stop the older story from closing the file. A palm on the jaw, on that sentence, did the opposite. A House gesture that lands on a jail beating will not be read as a stray tic, whatever is posted the next morning.

CPI(M) state secretary P. Shanmugam did not wait for a clarification. On September 7 he wrote that Stalin “was brutally attacked by the police, and his jaw was broken,” and that ridiculing someone’s appearance is “an act of irresponsibility” when the chief minister does it. His party gives the TVK government outside support. The scolding came from inside the numbers that keep Vijay in the chair.

On September 8, Vijay posted from the TVK account that the body language during his reply on the police grant “inadvertently came across in between” and “was not in any way intentional,” and he asked that it not be read as a personal insult.

சட்டமன்றத்தில் 7.9.2026 அன்று காவல்துறை மானிய கோரிக்கையில், என்னுடைய பதிலுரையின் இடையேயான எனது உடல்மொழி எதேச்சையாக வெளிப்பட்டதுதானே தவிர, அது எவ்வகையிலும் உள்நோக்கம் கொண்டதில்லை என்பதைத் தெரிவித்துக்கொள்கிறேன். ஆகவே, தனிப்பட்ட முறையில் யார் மனதையும் புண்படுத்துகிற செயலாக அதை…

— TVK Vijay (@TVKVijayHQ) September 8, 2026

VCK president Thol. Thirumavalavan said on September 9 that the note did not change his view: the body language was undignified. Law minister C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar kept pointing at the ED papers and the Sarkaria text. The argument had already split in two, files in one room and a jaw in the other.

Stalin’s Reply Begins in a Leper Ward

Stalin did not debate the percentages first. He accepted the mime. “Thambi Vijay, the gesture you made was indeed true. My jawbones were broken in the police attack. I still bear the scars of the attack,” he said in the September 10 video, and he walked the arrest in order.

Thambi Vijay, the gesture you made was indeed true. My jawbones were broken in the police attack. I still bear the scars of the attack.

M.K. Stalin, DMK president, video statement, September 10, 2026

On January 31, 1976, the Union government dismissed the DMK ministry after Karunanidhi attacked MISA at a Marina meeting. Police came to the Gopalapuram house for the son under MISA “the very next second,” Stalin said. He was away, staging the play Vetri Namadhe at Madurantakam. Karunanidhi sent them off: the boy would return, and the father would call. On February 1, he did. Stalin was in his early 20s, a DMK youth worker, and he went to Madras Central Prison.

He said he and others were locked in a place used for leprosy patients. Ten people shared a small room and one pot to urinate in. The stench stayed while they slept. At night, police beat them with lathis and boots so they would not sleep, and life convicts were sent in to hit them. “Due to their beating, my dear brother, Member of Parliament Chitti Babu, died inside the jail itself. Due to their beating, my jawbone was broken. You also showed it like this, keeping your hand near the jaw, right? That is correct.”

He tied the night to the party Vijay claims. “From the time of Perarignar Anna, this is the history of the DMK. That I am also part of that history is a matter of pride for me. No matter who tries to demean me, history can never be changed.” Vijay has called C.N. Annadurai an inspiration. Stalin told him to use the Assembly library he had mentioned and read the struggle instead of performing it.

Only then did he turn to the files. Governments had changed since Sarkaria, he said, and if the Veeranam charge had stood, someone would have acted; repeating it was “political vendetta.” The ED letter, he said, belongs to an agency used against opponents, including Congress leaders who sit with Vijay. He put a figure on that, 95 per cent of ED cases ending without proved charges, as his own claim, not as a court statistic.

What the Ismail Commission Already Found

The jail story is not only a party memory. After the Emergency, the first AIADMK government under M.G. Ramachandran asked Justice M.M. Ismail to look at the treatment of MISA detenus in Madras Central Jail between February 1976 and February 1977. The commission gave its report on September 26, 1977, and found the charges against jail officials substantially correct. In April 1978, law minister K. Narayanaswami Mudaliar told the House the government had broadly accepted the findings on ill-treatment of MISA prisoners. The 1978 Assembly motion on the Ismail findings is still on the record.

FROM DISMISSAL TO THE ISMAIL REPORT

1. January 31, 1976: The Union government dismisses the Karunanidhi ministry.
2. February 1, 1976: Police arrest M.K. Stalin under MISA and take him to Madras Central Prison.
3. February 2, 1976: Warders and convicts beat MISA prisoners through the night, in the presence of jail officers, after the men are put into a block just emptied of leprosy patients.
4. January 4, 1977: Chitti Babu, former Chennai mayor and DMK MP from Chengalpattu, dies at 41, a day after a second operation.
5. July 20, 1977: Stalin tells the Ismail Commission he was beaten, slapped, and kicked in the stomach.
6. September 26, 1977: The commission submits its report and indicts jail officials.

An unsigned 1978 note in Economic and Political Weekly, later cited in a long Emergency retrospective, summarised the finding: MISA prisoners, mostly DMK, including an MP, several MLAs, former mayors, and a former minister, were “deliberately set upon” on the night of February 2. They were lodged five or six to a cell in the worst block, found blood-stained cotton and bandages, and were given no food, water, or bedding at first. Chitti Babu was operated on November 22, 1976, and January 3, 1977, for anal and urethral constrictions the commission linked to beating and kicking in the lower abdomen. He was a known heart patient and diabetic. He died of a heart attack the next day. Stalin has said the older man formed a shield to take blows meant for him.

WHAT STALIN SAID THE CELL HELD

• The ward: A block used for leprosy patients, with the smell left in the room.
• The crowding: Ten men locked in a small cell, in his September 10 account.
• The pot: One vessel for all of them to urinate in, and sleep in the same air.
• The nights: Lathis, boots, and life convicts used so the men could not sleep.
• The cost: A broken jawbone on Stalin, and Chitti Babu dead inside the jail.

The first volume of Stalin’s life story, Ungalil Oruvan, runs 334 pages and stops at the prison gate, with the wail promised for the next book. He has called that jail a torture camp in the years since. The September 10 video is the short version he now hands to a chief minister who says he did not mean the mime.

The Left Scolds Him and Still Votes With Him

Shanmugam’s September 7 note did more than protect an old comrade. It showed the terms of CPI(M) support. The party will back TVK on the floor and still call the chief minister irresponsible on the same day. Harsh personal attacks, Shanmugam said, belong outside a House that runs on tax money, and Vijay’s police-grant reply had not answered members on law and order.

That split is built into the arrangement. CPI(M) and CPI helped TVK form the government and backed the confidence vote, then stayed out of the cabinet so they could keep criticising labour and farm policy. A partner with no ministry can scold a jaw tic without bringing the government down. Vijay needs those votes. He also needs them quiet when he goes after DMK’s Emergency dead. He cannot have both on the same afternoon.

VCK took a narrower path. Thirumavalavan condemned the body language and still walked into the alliance room. The scolding and the seat can coexist if the partner wants the committee. They cannot if the partner wants to stay free to attack the government. Stalin’s video makes that choice sharper, because it asks every Dravidian and Left ally to treat 1976 as closed history, not stage business.

TVK Named an Alliance the Communists Skipped

On September 9, Vijay chaired the second post-poll coordination meeting at TVK headquarters in Panaiyur. The combine took the name Secular Social Justice Victory Alliance. Congress, VCK, the Indian Union Muslim League, and MDMK attended. CPI(M) and CPI did not, the second boycott of formal talks since July 1.

WHO CAME AND WHO STAYED OUT

• In the room: Congress (5 MLAs), VCK, IUML, and MDMK, with Vijay in the chair.
• Outside: CPI(M) and CPI, still promising issue-based support on the floor.
• The invite: Ministers N. Anand, Aadhav Arjuna, C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar, and Rajmohan had called on the Left offices the week before.
• The reason given: No cabinet seats, and no wish to lock 2029 and local-body pacts inside a TVK committee.

Shanmugam said on September 8 that outside support would continue and that CPI(M) would still share views on a common programme. CPI state secretary M. Veerapandian said the same. The empty chairs were not a vote against the jaw. They were a vote against being folded into Vijay’s next election machine without a ministry. They landed, even so, in the same 72 hours as the gesture, the clarification, and Stalin’s prison narrative. A chief minister who needs Left votes to look secular now has a public record of those parties teaching him Emergency manners.

A Courtesy Call That Stopped at Gopalapuram

Stalin spent part of the video on a visit. After Vijay took office, he came to Stalin’s house. Stalin said he held the younger man’s hand, heard an apology for hard campaign lines, and answered that he was keeping nothing in his heart. He also told him to speak with the dignity of the office. “It seems you have forgotten all that.” He accused Vijay of turning the Assembly into a place for reels, of using a DMK-built bridge for photos, and of posting clips “to hide your inefficient administration.” He listed cancelled Parandur airport work, a farm-loan promise he said was not kept, a six-cylinder pledge cut to three, and a women’s cash promise of Rs 2,500 that he said is still the Rs 1,000 his government paid. Those are his charges, hung on the same reel as the broken jaw.

He closed on the House he wants back. Discuss law and order, welfare, and Tamil Nadu’s rights, he said, and leave “unnecessary controversies.” He told DMK cadres that losing office is the other face of service, and that the party fought for grandfathers and fathers and will fight for the sons. Vijay, on September 7, had placed himself in another line: 1967 Annadurai, 1977 MGR, 1982 NTR, 2026 Vijay. He wanted the files to end the MISA reflex. The reflex is what the state heard.

The graft papers are still on the table, and so is the Ismail record. Between them sits a right palm on a jaw, a clarification that convinced nobody who already knew 1976, and a Left that can vote for Vijay in the afternoon and correct his body language at night.