Tamil Nadu has seen this movie before. Only the hero has changed. Chief Minister Joseph Vijay’s decision to appoint his astrologer Radhan Pandit Vetrivel as Officer on Special Duty (Political) — and then hurriedly withdraw the appointment after outrage from allies and rivals — exposed an old political truth that leaders across parties prefer not to discuss openly.
For over half a century, the state sold itself as the citadel of rational politics. The land of Periyar, anti-superstition campaigns, ridicule of ritualism, and public hostility to priestcraft. Yet, behind the walls of Fort St George, chief ministers checked muhurats, ministers consulted numerologists, and political aides ferried horoscopes to astrologers before cabinet expansions and election filings.
So when Vijay appointed his astrologer, it was not anything new. India’s politicians have always done that. The surprise was the brazenness. Usually, these men enter through the back door. Vijay tried bringing one in through the front gate.
The backlash came from the opposition as well as allies embarrassed by the optics. Tamil Nadu’s political vocabulary still carries the muscle memory of rationalism even if its political class no longer practises it consistently. Ally VCK protested, Congress leaders winced, and the DMDK was furious.
Because there is a difference between a politician consulting an astrologer and the government appointing one. The objection was predictably about Vijay getting the state to formally legitimise his personal beliefs.
Radhan Pandit has always hovered dangerously close to power. In Tamil Nadu political circles, he was associated with J Jayalalithaa and was considered one of the astrologers she trusted deeply. Political timings, swearing-ins, legal strategies, campaign launches — everything was said to pass through astrological filters at some point.
Pandit supposedly predicted her sweeping 1991 victory and the turbulent political period that followed, and remained a fixture in her political life from around 1989 onwards. Later, he moved from Chennai to Delhi, dropped “Vetrivel” from his public identity for a period, and cultivated proximity to senior BJP leaders, particularly LK Advani.
India’s colourful archive of godmen
Beyond Tamil Nadu, Indian politics, too, has a long and colourful archive of godmen, mystics, tantriks and horoscope-readers wandering dangerously close to power. No chronicler of Delhi’s political underbelly can forget Chandraswami, the bearded fixer-godman who floated through Lutyens’ Delhi in the 1980s and 1990s like a character written by a particularly imaginative political novelist.
Chandraswami was a power broker disguised as a spiritual adviser. He cultivated proximity to Indira Gandhi’s circles, became especially influential during PV Narasimha Rao’s years, and maintained relationships with politicians across parties, businessmen, arms dealers and international figures. During that time, Delhi’s gossip circuits functioned on two certainties: governments might fall, and Chandraswami would somehow still know somebody important.
Indira Gandhi herself had her own famous spiritual influence in Dhirendra Brahmachari, the controversial yoga guru whose access to power during the Emergency years became legendary. Cabinet ministers, bureaucrats and political insiders understood that proximity to Dhirendra Brahmachari often meant proximity to the PM herself.
These people represented an older Indian political culture where power and astrology comfortably coexisted. Prime ministers who spoke the language of socialism, secularism and scientific temper often privately relied on men claiming access to cosmic certainty. Across India, from Delhi to Hyderabad to Chennai, ruling establishments consistently built parallel ecosystems of spiritual advisers.
Even today, many parties observe hush-hush astrological caution. Cabinet reshuffles and swearing-ins are often informally discussed around “inauspicious” periods such as shradh. Political announcements are delayed for “good timings” predicted by astrologers. An RSS leader whispered that as recently as two days back, AIADMK leaders were said to have avoided Ashtami and Navami and waited for an astrologically favourable time, 12 May, before formally executing a coalition break despite negotiations having concluded earlier. It also coincided with E Palaniswami’s birthday.
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Cutting across ideologies
India’s BJP era has merely professionalised the culture. Today’s godmen arrive in television studios, with teams, helicopters and event-management machinery. An old astrologer sitting cross-legged with a panchang has evolved into a full-spectrum political consultant in saffron robes.
And this dependence cuts across ideology. Rajnath Singh has long consulted astrologers, but not publicly. Karnataka strongman DK Shivakumar is known to be close with his spiritual advisers. Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda and son HD Kumaraswamy too have publicly displayed faith in astrology. Rationalists, socialists, Hindutva hardliners, regional satraps — all eventually seem to arrive at the same waiting room before elections.
Curiously, some of India’s most powerful leaders resisted this culture. Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Rajiv Gandhi consulted no astrologers. Vijay’s new ally Rahul Gandhi, too, does not seem to have a chosen one.
This is what made Vijay’s misstep so politically revealing.
He came to power carrying the burden of generational expectation. Unlike the ageing Dravidian heavyweights who dominated Tamil Nadu for decades, Vijay represented the possibility — at least symbolically — of a post-ideological younger politics. Yet one of the earliest controversies of his government dragged him straight into one of Indian politics’ oldest habits: the insecurity of power seeking reassurance from the stars.
There is another irony. The more India modernises, the more aggressively sections of its elite cling to superstition. Film stars consult numerologists before releasing posters. Businessmen change company names. Politicians swear allegiance to constitutional morality in the daytime and perform elaborate rituals for electoral luck by evening. The list goes on.
Astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar spent years warning against this collapse of boundaries between science and superstition. He repeatedly argued that astrology piggybacked on the legitimacy of astronomy — borrowing the language of celestial science while offering predictive certainties no scientific method could verify. He pointed out, often unsuccessfully, that astronomy studies stars; astrology sells destiny.
But in politics, rationality is often no match for anxiety. And politics is fundamentally an anxious profession.
Elections are uncertain, coalitions are fragile and loyalty is often temporary. In such a world, astrologers offer what political consultants cannot: the illusion of certainty. That is why they survive every ideological and political transition.
But even by India’s elastic standards, there remains an invisible line. Politicians may privately consult astrologers all they want. Democracies cannot legislate personal belief. The trouble begins when superstition acquires institutional sanction — an office, a designation, or a government seal.
That is where Vijay stumbled badly.
Many before Vijay believed in astrology, and many after him will. But he forgot that a chief minister’s office is not a private durbar. The moment an astrologer became an OSD, this ceased to be about personal faith and became a statement about governance.
And in Tamil Nadu — the state that once built an entire political identity mocking exactly this kind of deference to mysticism — this misstep was always going to explode.
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