Keralite movie director Ali Akbar chose to do Ghar Wapsi and converted back to Hindu Dharma to become Ramasimhan. In December, the director had revealed that he had left Islam for good but now he has officially changed his religion and name. 

Pratheesh Vishwanath, the former leader of the International Hindu Parishad and a leader of the Hindu Seva Kendram, informed about the director’s decision to convert to Hindu Dharma. Akbar was accompanied by his wife Lucyamma and both of them re-converted after performing Shuddhi Kalasham rituals conducted by a pujari. “From tomorrow, I will be called Ramasimhan, the best name”, said Akbar. 

Earlier on December 10, Akbar announced his decision to leave Islam on social media. Back then, Akbar opposed the Islamists who had celebrated the tragic death of CDS General Bipin Rawat. He had said that when Bipin Rawat, the Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Forces, died, many people were celebrating on social media and added that he was leaving the religion as a sign of protest.

Akbar had earlier posted a video on Facebook condemning Islamists who mocked the death of CDS Bipin Rawat and for some reason the social media platform suspended his account for a month! He opened another account just to declare that he was leaving Islam. 

“Within five minutes of speaking out against those who put up emojis, the account was blocked. I can not accept it, I can not agree with it, so I’m leaving my religion. I or my family no longer have a religion. That is the decision,” he said. 

So who is Ramasimhan? His story is a fascinating one of how even dangerous radicalization can be overcome, if one just has a brush with true Dharma and spirituality.

The Ramasimhan story

Our Hindu ancestors who lived near Angadipuram close to Perinthalmanna in Malappuram district believed that while Bhagwan Hanuman was carrying the Sanjeevi mountain, a few herb plants fell down in chains on nearby land. Tradition has it that a Maharshi obtained a darshan of Bhagwan Mahavishnu in his fearsome Narasimha avatar and built a place to commence worship of Bhagwan Narasimha. 

That temple is called the Malaparamba Maattummal Sri Narasimha Moorthy temple and Hindus started worshipping there. Mala means a garland made of flowers/ shrubs and Paramba means land. The temple is believed to be around 4000 years old. 

In 1794, Tipu and his marauding jihadi army desecrated and destroyed this temple using artillery guns. Thousands were forcibly converted to Islam and those who refused were killed without mercy. 3000 temples were destroyed by Tipu, in Kerala alone, it is estimated.

Temple lands that had thus fallen into ruins were taken over and administered by the local rulers and in this case, the Kundrackal Nair chieftains of the area. As per the last documentation before the Hindu genocide of 1921, the temple had 600 acres of land. 

During the 1921 Hindu genocide, ‘Moplahs’ (Malabar Muslims) high on Islamic fervor attacked the temple, smashed many murtis and dismantled portions of the temple. While the Hindu men were being killed, their women were systematically abducted and raped. Thousands of Hindu families ran for their lives, never to come back, including ex Kerala CM EMS Namboodiripad. 

Like elsewhere, Islamic kingpins were also spurred by economics along with religious fanaticism, and they looted Hindu property, occupied their lands and encroached temple land. The Narasimha Moorthy Temple now has 67 cents of land or around 1% of the original land. Traditional oral stories in parts of Palakkad district still remember Adi Sankara offering prayers at this very temple.

Ramasimhan

During the early 1900s, a Muslim landowner called Moidu Sahib and his two sons Uneen and Alippu leased 600 acres of land in Malaparamba from the Kundrackal Nair family and established the Moidu rubber estate. Uneen was highly educated and had worked at an estate owned by an Englishman. 

Moidu’s family had earlier converted following threats from Tipu’s army and become orthodox Muslims who served beef at feasts organized by them. Uneen married the daughter of a prominent timber merchant, Kalladi UnniKammu of Mannarkad and they stayed in a bungalow inside the estate overlooking the ruins of Narasimha Moorthy temple.

Uneen’s contempt and hatred for Hindu modes of worship led him to use the beautiful beams from the temple ruins to build a washroom in his immense bungalow. He wanted to humiliate Hindus through such acts of sacrilege. Having proved his credentials to fellow Abrahamic and idol-hating Britishers, he also gained heroic status among the Muslims. During a 1935 earthquake in Afganisthan, when the viceroy collected funds, Uneen was the joint secretary for the Malappuram division. 

No sooner had he touched the temple than began an incurable abdominal pain that made life hell for Uneen. Local Hindus approached a Sanyasi and astrologers who in turn advised Uneen to restore the Narasimha Moorthy Temple. Uneen found a sculptor who was working on a Narasimha Moorthy sculpture for the Vengara temple and immediately brought the half-done Murti and him to Malaparambu and installed it in the temple, once it was completed.

Bronze was used in the main Sanctorum and sub-shrines, and a well and a pond were also re-built. Easwaran Embraanthiri from Angandippuram was appointed the Thanthri and Uneen paid back by renovating the temple demolished by Tipu. Uneen could see the temple from his bungalow.

Uneen’s chronic ailment ended as dramatically as it started and he regained his health.  He started practicing meditation and yoga and beautified his bungalow with large pictures of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Islamist employees were fired to be replaced with Hindu ones as Uneen started learning Hindu philosophy. He turned vegetarian and appointed Narayana Iyyer from Angaadippuram and Raja Raja Iyyer from Thrissur as cooks. Chants of Puranas and Ramayana arose and he performed the Sapthaha Yajna following which his home became the meeting place of Hindu scholars.

Muslim clerics and Islamists in the area were enraged and they branded Uneen a ‘madman’ and put him under house arrest. His Hindu friend, Vallyunni Thirumulpaadu complained to the authorities and he was released. 

In 1946, Uneen and his family (except his wife) decided to do Ghar Wapsi and they went to Arya Samaj at Kozhikode. Buddha Singh, a gentleman from Punjab did the ritualistic Shuddhi Kalasham rituals and the brothers accepted Hindu Dharma. Buddha renamed Uneen as Ramasimhan and his brother Alippu became Dayasimhan. Moidu, the father, became Swaravar Singh and Ramasimhan’s sons changed their names to Fateh Singh and Zorawar Singh.

Fateh and Zorawar were the two brave sons of Guru Gobind Singh who were bricked alive for refusing to accept Islam at the orders of the Mughal tyrant Aurangazeb.  When they were martyred, Zorawar was 9 and Fateh 6. 

Ramasimhan’s wife returned to her father and disagreed with Ramasimhan when he told her that “Now that I am Rama, come back only if you can come as Sita”. Ramasimhan learned the Vedas, became a Brahmin and married Kamalam Antharjanam, daughter of Puzhakaattiri Kottuvaayil Mangalath Narayanam Namboothiri.

Muslim clerics approached Ramasimhan telling him that conversion to Hindu Dharma was a ‘mistake’. He replied that it was his grandmother who committed the mistake by converting to Islam under pressure from Islamists. He added that he had converted to Hindu Dharma to correct that mistake. Clerics feared that more Muslims might follow in Ramasimhan’s footsteps and escape their tight grip, en masse. So Islamists decided to attack and kill Ramasimhan.

Ramasimhan’s estranged father-in-law Kalladi UnniKammu and the clerics conspired and at midnight on the 2nd of  August, 1947, jihadis armed with deadly weapons slaughtered Ramasimhan, his brother Narasimhan, his wife Kamala Antarjanam and their cook Raju Iyer, while they were asleep. The conspirators knew that Ramasimhan had recently surrendered 6 guns. including double-barrel ones, to the Government. 

Within days, Islamist fanatics demolished the Narasimha Moorthy temple and its compound walls and threw the divine Murtis into the temple well. Granite from the temple Sanctorum was used to pave a road leading to a nearby quarry and remains buried there, even today. Wood and other precious articles were used to build mosques nearby.  

Terrified Hindu locals who were by then the minorities could not even give a decent cremation and the bodies rotted inside the rubber estate bungalow. Economic jihad followed and pretty soon the temple and its land came under ‘Moplah’ control.

Keshava Menon, a brilliant police officer from the Malabar District Police arrested nine murderers, retrieved the murder weapons from a pond, collected evidence and filed charge sheets immediately. Four jihadi murderers were sentenced to death by the Palakkad District and Sessions Court. Moplahs raised huge amounts and appealed in the Madras high court where a judge named Horwill released all the accused citing ‘lack of credible evidence’!

The Congress treachery led by Mohandas Gandhi (slyly citing secularism) against Hindus seen during the 1921 Hindu genocide, repeated itself. Kozhipurathu Madhava Menon, a Congress Minister in the then Madras Government, allegedly collected bribes from the rich and influential Islamist landlords and businessmen and took an active part in the appeal proceedings filed by the Moplah murderers, thereby financially enriching himself. 

Advocates were specially instructed to dilute the legal representation of the case in the Madras high court, concrete evidence was destroyed and prosecution witnesses were threatened and harassed into silence. Another Congress leader and advocate U Gopala Menon paid bribes to get the case dismissed. It led to Moplah jihadis being set scot-free, on January19, 1949.

As always, the Hindus felt betrayed by both Congress and the State. However, fate had its own designs. The main conspirator Kalladi UnniKammu, advocate Gopala Menon and a wealthy Islamist from Cheruvannur who aided and abetted the Ramasimhan family massacre, all went insane, it is alleged. 

However, atrocities against local Hindus continued and Muslim gangsters who encroached 599 acres and 33 cents of temple land, ‘sold’ them off to other Muslims. This in spite of the fact that the government notified it as disputed land and refused to accept levies for nearly 50 years.

The Temple restoration

Fearing Islamist retaliation, local Hindus did not enter the temple premises till 1990. In 1992, on the anniversary of the killing, Viswa Hindu Parishad and RSS leaders entered the temple. Govindan Ezhuthachan entered the Sanctum Sanctorum’s floor and lit a diya thereby performing the first pooja in years. Police arrested 15 workers alleging that they tried to ‘incite communal violence’, the same day. Malappuram district VHP went to the court requesting the right to worship.  

The court case dragged on for many years and in 2003 a temple welfare committee was constituted. Upon receiving reports from the land commissioner and the surveyor, in 2005, the Court ordered the release of 67 cents of land to the Temple Trust. They found the sacred Narasimha Murti in 6 pieces. On 14th March 2007, a temporary temple called the Bala-Aalayam was consecrated. On the 16th of January, 2008, the renowned temple architect Kanipayyur Krishnan Namboothiri laid the foundation stone.

Ironically, those at the forefront to oppose the temple restoration were the family members of Dayasimhan, Ramasimhan’s brother. They had converted back to Islam as soon as their father was killed by the Islamists.

Incidentally, huge tracts of land where Ramasimhan’s bungalow and estate once stood are now in the hands of the Muslim Educational Society (MES) owned by the rabid anti-Hindu Fazal Gafoor.