Nadigar Sangam

The Nadigar Sangam (English: Actors' association), officially known as the South Indian Artistes' Association (SIAA), is a union for film, television, and stage actors in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, based in Chennai. Formed in 1952, the group has a charitable trust fund to provide pension to retired actors, voiced support for actors caught in controversy, and have collectively protested socio-political issues.

Elections in the Nadigar Sangam, which is made up of over 3000 members, are held once every three years to determine the president of the group.R. Sarathkumar, who had been elected unopposed three times since 2006 when former president Vijayakanth stepped down, was ousted after an election on 18 October 2015 by Nassar.

Film director K. Subrahmanyam, who had helped Sri Sathyamurthy start the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce, was approached by actors R. M. Somasundaram, T. N. Sivathanu, N. N. Kannappa and Sattampillai Venkatraman to create a representative organisation in Tamil Nadu for professional actors from South Indian cinema, since many filming studios of Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada cinema industries were also based in Madras (now Chennai) at the time. Subsequently in August 1952, they launched the Junior Actors Association (Thunai Nadigar Sangam) for junior artistes. Thereafter, M. G. Ramachandran expressed his desire to join this group and insisted that there should be no difference amongst actors on the basis of seniority, and hence, it came to be called the Nadigar Sangam. As films from all the four southern languages were shot in Madras during that period, it was later renamed Thenn Indhiya Nadigar Sangam (South Indian Artistes Association). On November 15, 1952, it was registered as a society with rules and bylaws in place. K. Subrahmanyam and MGR donated money to help run this association, and began recruiting members. The founder-president was T. V. Sundaram, while the vice-presidents were MGR, S. D. Subbulakshmi, S. D. Sundaram and K. Vembu. The secretaries were T. N. Sivathanu and R. M. Somasundaram, while R. S. Manohar was appointed as the treasurer. The first member on its rolls, as of 1955, was N. N. Kannappa, and the next was M. R. Santhanam. In November 1955, a magazine, Nadigan Kural (The Voice of the Artiste) was started by MGR, who served as its first editor.