Filmmaker Ramasimhan Aboobakker quits BJP

PTI, Jun 16, 2023, 8:14 PM IST

Thiruvananthapuram: Malayalam filmmaker and Sangh Parivar fellow traveller Ramasimhan Aboobakker announced that he has quit the BJP.

Ramasimhan, as he is widely known after he renounced Islam in December 2021 and changed his name from Ali Akbar to Ramasimhan Aboobakker, was a state committee member of the BJP till he resigned all his organisational responsibilities in the saffron party in 2021.

The ‘Puzha Muthal Puzhavare’ director said there was no need to create any fuss about his decision as he is not going anywhere and would move with the ”dharma” that he has learned.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Ramasimhan said he is ”freed from everything. Only with one thing, with Dharma.” The director is the third film personality to quit the BJP in the past two weeks in Kerala. Earlier, Malayalam director Rajasenan and actor Bhiman Raghu had announced their decision to leave the saffron party and work with the ruling CPI(M).

BJP state president K Surendran termed the development as ”unfortunate” and said the party will examine the decisions of the film personalities who were associated with it.

He said the BJP state unit was not in a position to distribute powers to all. Surendran, however, said people are joining the BJP daily from other parties and organisations.

Ramasimhan said it has been a few days since he resigned. ”Now it came out, that’s all… It was now realised that if one wants to move with dharma, there should be no ties, so the ties were untied. That’s it,” he explained in another post on Friday.

In another post carrying a photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the filmmaker clarified that there is no question of leaving him and nobody needs to think so.

Sources said Ramasimhan decided to quit the BJP in protest against the style of functioning of the BJP state leadership.

It was evident from Ramasimhan’s latest Facebook post, which quoted a statement of Surendran indirectly snubbing his latest film, ‘Puzha Muthal Puzha Vare,’ based on the Malabar rebellion, also called the Moplah riot, that took place in north Kerala in 1921.

In October 2021, the director-turned-politician resigned from all responsibilities in the BJP, including as a state committee member, as he was ”pained” by the Kerala unit’s organisational-level action against a Muslim BJP leader in Kerala. Akbar (as he was known then), however, had said he would continue as a member of the BJP.

In an emotional Facebook post, he had said it was very difficult for the common man to understand the kind of humiliations and abuses being faced by a Muslim, from his own family and community, while working for the BJP.