Filmmaker Ali Akbar, who rechristened himself Ramasimhan to become the Muslim face of the BJP in Kerala, now feels sidelined in the party.
Ramasimhan with wife Luciamma while being initiated to Hinduism. (Supplied).
Ramasimhan Abubacker, previously Ali Akbar, stands apart from other Malayalam filmmakers for the agility with which he embraces change in tune with the times.
Adversaries of the 60-year-old filmmaker view him as an opportunist with no ideological conviction. He, however, is unperturbed.
Born to a Muslim family in Wayanad, Ali Akbar was an active member of the Students Federation of India (SFI), the student arm of the CPI(M), while in college. He debuted in the tinsel world with Mamalakalkkappurath, or Beyond the Mountain Ranges, in 1998.
The movie depicted the miserable living conditions of tribespeople in Wayanad and won widespread appreciation. It even fetched him the Kerala State Film Award for Debut Director.
The film still remains a poignant reminder of the marginalisation of the tribespeople in the hills of an otherwise progressive state.
The same director, however, made the satirical Bamboo Boys in 2002.
The movie, both written and directed by Ali, was about four tribesmen travelling from their jungle home to a city to meet a doctor. It portrayed the tribals as barbarians who deserved no respect.
It turned out to be a success despite its underlying racism and its portrayal of the tribespeople in a manner that reinforced stereotypes for his urban audiences .
The two movies reflected the shift in Ali’s perception. He left Wayanad to join mainstream cinema and, in due course, changed his political and religious identities.
A little over a year ago, Ali converted to Hinduism and changed his name to Ramasimhan Abubacker. His rhetoric against Muslim clerics won him a huge fan following in BJP-RSS circles and the anti-Islam section of Christians in Kerala.
Filmmaker Ramasimhan. (Supplied)
He rechristened himself Ramasimhan after a Muslim who was believed to have converted to Hinduism in 1948 in Kerala’s Muslim-majority Malappuram district and was then killed by religious fanatics.
He embraced Hinduism after people, suspected to be clerics, posted emoticons below social media posts on the accidental death of the former Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat.
On 10 December, 2021, Ramasimhan announced that he had left Islam, and the next month he formally converted to Hinduism.
After joining the BJP, he announced an ambitious movie project to endorse the Sangh Parivar narrative of the 1921 Malabar Revolt. The BJP bosses, however, did not offer him a position in the party other than membership in the state committee.
After quitting the post in October 2021, he continued as an ordinary party member, hoping for a rehabilitation offer. It did not come as he expected.
On 15 June, Ramasimhan announced on Facebook that his endless wait for a role and position in the BJP was over. He left the party by sending a single-sentence resignation letter to the party’s state-unit president K Surendran.
“I am fed up with the BJP, and there is no place for artists like me in that party,” he said on social media.
Many people in Kerala found the statement a repetition of what filmmaker Rajasenan and actor Bheeman Raghu said last week to justify their decision to leave the BJP and join the ruling CPI(M).
Ramasimhan performing Karkkidaka vavu puja. (Siupplied)
Rajasenan and Raghu were diehard BJP members and had unsuccessfully contested elections. They, too, were fed up with the lack of patronage from the BJP.
They joined the CPI(M) claiming that the Left party had a broad mind and could accommodate artists.
But Ramasimhan, who contested the Kerala Assembly elections from the Koduvally constituency as a BJP candidate in 2016, categorically said that he would not join the CPI(M).
When contacted, he told South First that he was not going anywhere and would continue to remain a staunch follower of the dharma that he had learned over the past few years.
“Free from everything. Only with one thing, with dharma,” he posted on Facebook in response to questions on his future political plan.
Ramasimhan said he resigned from the BJP a few days ago, but it had become public only now. “Now it came out, that’s all… It was now realised that if one wanted to move with dharma, there should be no ties, so they were untied. That’s it,” he explained in another post on Friday.
He also said it was very difficult for a commoner to understand the kind of humiliation and abuse being faced by a Muslim from his own family and community while working for the BJP.
“I tonsured my head once when veteran BJP leader Kummanam Rajasekharan lost an election. I will not tonsure my head for anybody,” he said.
Despite assigning him the task of propagating the Hindutva narrative among Muslims in north Kerala, the BJP now feels the director-turned-politician was a big failure. His statements denouncing Islam and endorsing the hate politics of BJP-RSS were often trolled.
Ramasimhan was apolitical during the peak of his career, but devoted himself to aggressive Hindutva in recent years.
In 2014, he unsuccessfully contested against Congress heavyweight Mullapally Ramachandran on an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket from the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency.
Within a fortnight, he left AAP, accusing its state leadership of corruption and financial mismanagement.
A poster of Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare, a Hindutva interpretation of 1921 Malabar rebellion. (Supplied)
Interestingly, none of the BJP leaders, barring state vice-president AN Radhakrishnan, has responded to Ramasimhan’s resignation.
Stating that joining the CPI(M) would be suicidal — like jumping into a well — for him, Radhakrishnan termed the BJP an outfit with inner-party democracy.
Among his more than 20 films, only Mamalakalkkappurath and a documentary on differently-abled literacy worker Rabia Chalikunnu were notable.
The documentary fetched him the National Film Award for Best Educational/Motivational/Instructional Film in 1996.
His campaigns endorsing the Sangh Parivar theory of so-called “love jihad” failed to find takers, and the film Puzha Muthal Puzhal Vare (From River to River), which presented the Hindutva version of the Malabar rebellion, flopped. Theatres refused to screen it, and people rejected it on OTT platforms.
Those who know Ramasimhan are waiting for his next move. They feel that his perceptions and opinions could change anytime.
The CPI(M) would not have any hesitation ideologically to welcome Ramasimhan. It opened its doors to Rajasenan and Raghu, who had made several anti-Left statements over time while supporting hardcore Hindutva politics.
Ramasimhan, however, is unlikely to drop his Hindu identity and his newly-acquired name, at least for the time being.
After the news of his resignation from the BJP became public, several pro-Hindutva social media users who liberally contributed to the making of Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare demanded their money back on his Facebook page. He had launched a crowd-funding drive to make the movie.
They said they contributed money to a fake nationalist Muslim who was after power and positions. “Politics is the art of the possible…”. Ramasimhan knows it well.
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