Under the Banyan Tree - 1 (DMK Chief Karunanidhi)

Arulnidhi Thamizharasu's debut movie in Tamil is titled Vamsam, which literally means "lineage", and there could hardly have been a more apt title considering that the young hero is the grandson of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi. At the movie's music launch last month, the DMK patriarch advised the youngster: "I want to see you make a successful career through your hard work and not because of your family background." Neither had worked for the last member of the family to face the arclights, M.K. Muthu, Arulnidhi's uncle and Karunanidhi's son from the first of his three wives, who in the 70s acted in a handful of movies, all of which bombed. The fears of the same happening to Arulnidhi are, however, remote considering the vice-like grip that the first family of Tamil Nadu has come to acquire over the entertainment industry in the state.

Consider these: Karunanidhi's extended family, which is making a relatively late entry into the movie business, already has a near monopoly in the satellite TV business and rules the airwaves. The Sun TV Network, owned by grand-nephew Kalanidhi Maran and his brother Dayanidhi Maran, the Union textiles minister, boasts of 20 channels that reach 95 million households in India. It also beams to 27 countries with a large south Indian diaspora, including the US, Canada, most of Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It runs 45 FM radio stations, two daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 1.2 million, four magazines and SunDirect, the direct-to-home satellite TV service which has 5.5 million subscribers.

Karunanidhi

Sun TV controls over two-thirds of the cable market through its subsidiary Sumangali Cable Vision, and earns close to Rs 90 crore every month from subscribers. Sun Pictures, the movie arm of the Rs 1,000-crore Sun Network owned by the Maran brothers has distributed over a dozen films since 2007 and recently landed Kollywood's biggest catch Endhiran, starring Tamil superstar Rajinikanth and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. At Rs 150 crore, it is supposed to be the costliest movie made in India and it is said Sun Pictures took it up after Rajinikanth approached Kalanidhi, as the original promoter pulled out citing financial reasons. "When we met Kalanidhi for the film he said we will make it the biggest. He does anything and everything bigger and better than others. That's why people who matter in India from all industries-cinema or otherwise-are eager to know who this man is. He is really the biggest star," Rajinikanth gushed at the music launch of Endhiran in Malaysia early this month.

Rajinikanth may well have been speaking about the family itself which is a collection of sons, daughters, grandsons and grand-daughters, nephews and grand-nephews, equally divided and split between politics and business and equally successful in both. There's Kalanidhi, grandson of Karunanidhi's sister Shanmuga sundarammal, who got his MBA from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania in the mid-1980s and returned home to take charge of a women's magazine his family was associated with. But his passion remained television, which was then dominated by the state broadcaster. His big break came in 1998 when the satellite broadcast industry was handed to private players and Sun TV was among the first to get a licence. The rest, as they say, is history.

Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/110515/under-the-banyan-tree.html?page=0