The Malikappuram Phenomenon: A Demographic Culture Shift

I was thinking of penning a review of the latest Unni Mukundan starrer Malikappuram but then as I started to reflect, the article I wanted to write became bigger until I just felt I must put it down to words.

I had not heard of Unni Mukundan till the January of 2022 when I heard people talk of his film Meppadiyan. I am a non-resident Keralite and one from the generation of the 80s and 90s. I watch Malayalam cinema selectively and have generally been alarmed at the trend.

I remember as a kid when we used to travel to Kerala for vacations, almost the day we reached there, a whole host of uncles, aunts and cousins would pile into a single car (Ambassador usually, borrowed from someone) and go for the then running blockbuster movie; usually of Mohanlal.

We would go for the night shows and it was a treat I used to look forward to with great pleasure. As a child coming to Kerala, I revelled in the images on the screen. A very rustic and eminently relatable Mohanlal with his mundu (dhoti) usually at half mast, Hindu in character, facing the challenges of an everyday person in the quintessential Keralite milieu of the times.

The Hindu character of his house, his family, the entire environment was unmistakable in the depiction on screen.

The usually Hindu heroine would be wooed by the hero but in a manner that was in sync with the conditions in his life. Their love story would blend in with the plot but would hardly be the centrestage of the movie experience.

The films would be family-centric entertainment and everyone would usually be satiated with the experience in those two-plus hours.

As we grew up and the millennium changed, Mohanlal became this larger-than-life superhero who started to play roles increasingly removed from everyday life. I got disenchanted and began to watch Malayalam cinema less and less.

The turn of the century saw the nature of cinema storytelling in Kerala change, mirroring changes on the ground. At first, I noticed the changes but did not register their import. Slowly, as my identity crystallised I could recognise the creeping changes.

Evangelist forces were up to their usual game of appropriation, inculturation, demonisation and erasure through the Kerala church.

The big and imposing churches that were mushrooming all over Kerala were appropriating the deepasthambam (part of a Hindu temple), chenda melam (percussion instrument orchestra played at temple festivals) and their palli perunnals (church festival, copy from the temple festival) were becoming bigger and grander. The Hindu in Kerala thought this is syncretism.

Islamic identity also began to assert itself at around the same time. The burqa, hijab, skull caps and mustache-less beards, Arabic, which I never saw in my growing years, started becoming commonplace. Mosques also started to mushroom everywhere, particularly on the main thoroughfares. And their azaans became louder.

Communism has long been the third religion in Kerala. And Hindus in very large numbers are card-carrying members of the Communist Party which in recent times has morphed into a Hinduphobic outfit in the state.

In fact, many of the changes described above have been facilitated by the Congress (primarily minority-dominated) and Communist (primarily dominated by supposedly godless and casteless Hindus).

Mirroring this phenomenon on the ground, movies also began to change. Meanwhile, the state appropriated the festival of Onam as a secular godless festival. Vamana Jayanthi went out of Onam celebrations, even while the temple to Vamana murti at Thrikkakara remained the biggest symbol of Onam celebrations.

Movies began to be taken over by Abrahamic and lately, fashionable post-modernist themes. Sure, the stories began to get more sophisticated and I must admit that many of them were well-crafted. It brought a revival of cinema of sorts but it became cinema not of the masses but of segments of society.

There was either subtle Hindu-bashing or the erasure of the Hindu from the cinema frames and in its place rose mindless violence, titillation, drugs and gore, borrowed from Bollywood and elsewhere, or sophisticated post-modern, woke stories with atheist, pretend-intellectuals.

Both of these drove out families from the theatres and cinema viewing as a family activity almost ceased. Malayalam cinema was almost talking about a post-Hindu Kerala.

On the ground too, the Hindu didn’t realise it, but he was slowly being erased from the Kerala milieu. A similar phenomenon is under way in neighbouring Tamil Nadu too.

The Sabarimala Verdict

Cut to 2018, and one decision from the courts became a watershed moment in the history of modern Kerala.

The Sabarimala Verdict of the Supreme Court of India was a punch in the solar plexus of the sleeping Hindu who was shocked beyond belief that the court had ruled against a long standing tradition which had its own reasoning.

Despite the verdict, the Hindu did not think that on the ground this ruling would make a difference. But that Mandalakkalam (the Sabarimala season) in 2018, Keralite Hindus were in for a deep shock.

The state government of Kerala had decided that it was going to implement the Supreme Court’s verdict in letter and spirit and was actively engaged in getting women of reproductive age to go to the shrine.

The Sangh Parivar also was in support of the verdict initially, for reasons best known to it, but in the face of stiff resistance from the ReadyToWait movement spearheaded by Malayali Hindu women, they course corrected.

That Sabarimala season in 2018 is etched in every Malayali Hindu’s mind as they watched with utter disbelief, the machinations of a stubborn communist state government going to any lengths to defile Sabarimala.

This could perhaps have been the trigger for someone like Unni Mukundan who seems vocal and unapologetic about being a Hindu.

In his first home production Meppadiyan, Unni used Ayyappan as the background motif to the story. I happened to see it only because it kicked up a controversy in Kerala; the showing of a Seva Bharati ambulance in the movie.

Whether the usage of the ambulance was intentional or not, it was one more reminder to the Hindu that they are cancelled in Malayali society! 

Malikappuram

Coming to Unni Mukundan’s latest movie Malikappuram, I think Aravindan Neelakandan’s review of it here, captures many aspects beautifully.

I have been following the movie’s journey closely from the time it came to my notice. The movie initially struggled to even make it into people’s consciousness, because pre-release, I think news about it was wilfully suppressed.

No online reviewers, no channels, no newspapers covered the movie. It was only Sangh Parivar members who kept talking about it. 

Post its release, word of mouth slowly spread and the movie began to gain traction. I went to watch it with little expectations and did not anticipate it to be anything spectacular.

But, once in the theatre, I was spellbound.

The story is simple, and indeed there is nothing really spectacular about the story. Yet, it captures your attention and captures it fully.

From babies and toddlers, to little ones and grandmothers, it's brought Hindu families back to the theatres in droves as is epitomised by these short videos shared by Unni on his Instagram account.

And it has touched something deep and raw in ordinary Hindu women who are seeing in Unni Mukundan’s portrayal of Ayyappan, perhaps a balm for the deep wound that was created in 2018.

To be fair, Unni Mukundan also brings a certain divine aura to the screen with his portrayal and there is a certain honesty and intensity on his face that inspires people. 

Word-of-mouth has been singularly instrumental in the movie joining the 50 crore club. And this, before the dubbed versions in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi have been released.

Here is a potential pan-Indian movie that has perhaps intentionally or unintentionally realised that Bharat is about families. To bring Bharatiyas in droves into the theatres, it requires telling a good family story. And it is a quintessentially Hindu trait to transmit through stories.

The movie does not have a heroine in the sense of a love interest of the hero. Neither does it have an item number. Its success has reassured us that individualism and wokeism have not yet taken over Bharatiya society. 

The movie also shows a way forward for Kerala. To quote from R Jagannathan’s latest book Dharmic Nation: Freeing Bharat, Remaking India

“Looked at more closely, Savarkar’s sense of a unified India dominated politically by Hindus is not as outrageous as it seems….

In India, the closest we have come to such an arrangement is in Kerala, where politics is religiously delineated, with strong Muslim and Christian parties pushing their agendas. What is missing is Hindu domination at the top, as Hindus are represented by weak caste-based parties (the Nairs and Ezhavas have their own parties). In short, Kerala is the opposite of what a Savarkar would have wanted, by allowing the minorities to play up their identities, but not Hindus.”[Emphasis by me]

Choosing Swami Ayyappan as the mascot to kickstart a revival of Hindu pride is only apt as he is the god who transcends jati (community) and matham (religion) while being entirely about Advaitic transcendence.

Ayyappan belongs to everybody if they choose to worship him. But that would also mean that they subscribe to the Hindu Advaitic metaphysics of Tattvamasi.

Being Hindu does not mean that others cannot come along. They can and they will, as long as mutual respect is the foundation of such engagement.

Let Malikappuram be the start of a revival of Hindu consciousness in Adi Shankara’s own land!