Popularity
When President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt visited India, Sivaji Ganesan was the only individual, granted permission by the Indian Prime-minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to host a party for Nasser. Nasser was given a number of valuable mementos depicting the civilization and culture of South India. Sivaji Ganesan was the first artist from India to visit the United States, in the cultural exchange programme of the US government, in 1962, invited by the then President John F Kennedy, where he took the role of India's cultural ambassador. During his visit there, he was honored by being made the honorary mayor of Niagara Falls, New York for one day and was presented the key to the city. The only other Indian who has had this honour before Ganesan was Jawaharlal Nehru. On 22 March 1976, he went over to Mauritius on an invitation from Prime Minister Ramagoolam and took part in their independence day celebrations and stayed as their government guest for four days.
During his visit to the United States in June 1995, he visited Columbus, Ohio. Participating in the dinner hosted to honor Ganesan, the Mayor of the city, Greg Lashutka, honored him by announcing him as an honorary citizen of Columbus. On the same occasion the Mayor of Mount Vernon read out and gave him a special welcome citation. The Columbus Tamil Sangam was formulated on that day and Ganesan was made the honorary President of that association.
Ganesan has remained as one of the popular Tamil actors with a large fan base. At the peak of his career, Ganesan had 3000 registered fan clubs, which worked at promoting his image and films.
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Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.”
—Thomas Campbell (1777–1844)
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)