Bengaluru: “Madam, your Instagram page is getting comments asking when will you get married,” asked a reporter, almost blushing herself.
“Find me a boy first. A Gouda boy. You find I am unable to see anyone,” replied Divya Spandana, Kannada actor and star campaigner of the Congress for Karnataka, looking intermittently at the blushing party leaders sitting next to her.
Spandana, also known as Ramya, campaigned for her party in the southern state, which goes to polls on May 10. It has been almost three years since he stepped down as the head of the social media wing of the Congress and went incommunicado.
In her 20-year-long acting career, none of Ramya’s achievements have been as surprising as her surprise entry into the Lok Sabha in 2013 after winning from the Vokkaliga heartland, Mandya. Now despite his comeback as a Congress campaigner, it is the actor’s personal life that fascinates everyone.
But how did he contest the election? Speaking to ThePrint in Bengaluru on April 26, a day before she started campaigning, Ramya said, “I didn’t know anything about politics, my father was a friend of (former CM) SM Krishna.”
He said, “Ambareesh (MH Amarnath, former Kannada actor and ex-MP from Mandya) and SM Krishna could not agree on a candidate from Mandya. Siddaramaiah was in a bit of trouble (because of this) so he reached out to my father and asked, ‘Why don’t we invite Ramya to contest the election?’ That’s how my name came about. Because I am from Mandya and the same community.”
The day he filed his nomination papers and made his electoral debut in Mandya in 2013, his father (RT Narayan) died of a heart attack. His death left the actress distraught and shattered.
Despite her grief, Ramya entered the Lok Sabha for a nine-month term before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, making her one of the youngest Members of Parliament.
“I didn’t know (anything) about assembly, Lok Sabha, constituencies, districts… and ten days later, I was in Parliament,” she told ThePrint, recalling her stormy entry into electoral politics.
Ramya won the Mandya Parliament seat in a Lok Sabha by-election in August 2013 by defeating Janata Dal(S) candidate CS Puttaraju by a margin of 55,000 votes. However, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, she lost to the same candidate by a margin of 5,000-odd votes. In 2017, he was promoted to the post of Congress Social Media Cell chief.
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‘Re-entry? Perhaps!’
Although her tenure as the head of the Congress social media wing was short, it was under Ramya that the party increased its appetite for aggression to take on the BJP’s online army.
His Twitter post comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ‘bird’s droppings’ in 2018 kicked up a storm, earning him a lifetime of dedicated trolling. Even Rahul Gandhi reportedly pulled her up for it, while BJP MPs, MLAs, leaders and supporters attacked her online.
In March this year, flamboyant BJP MP Pratap Simha posted a picture with Ramya, who was trolled for being a star. “Politically, I still criticize him. But I really like her acting,” Simha said in response to one such post.
Re-entering the political battleground, Ramya said it was Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal who approached her to ask if she would be their star campaigner.
“I took a break in 2019 for personal issues and then Covid happened. Now I have my own production house and I am making a comeback with a film. We will start shooting in July. Meanwhile, the Star program came for publicity.
In her new avatar, Ramya looks rejuvenated, and is more organized in her priorities. “You don’t have to follow the path of those ahead of you, you can change it. Today times have changed, the perspective of women in politics has changed, so I want to make my place and set new standards.
But he insisted that his film is not a gateway for his re-entry into the political fray as it will not release before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
While non-committed to her preferred seat as “it depends on the party”, she finds an organizational role more attractive. Prodded about the possibility of a seat of his choice, or a ticket for the 2024 contest, he said, “Maybe! Who knows!”
There are many politicians in Karnataka – some even from the same party – who do not see eye-to-eye in public, but Ramya may be an exception. “I was asked (to contest) in this election as well – not only by the Congress but also by the BJP. But I don’t think I can take that responsibility right now. But we will see,” he told ThePrint.
Did he consider the option of joining BJP when the offer came? “Not at all. When I was going through such a difficult phase in life, how could I have Rahulji do so much for me? She was quick to respond.
reel to real politics
Karnataka has a limited history of electing film personalities as political leaders, compared to neighboring Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where J. Cinema personalities such as Jayalalithaa, MG Ramachandran (MGR) and NT Rama Rao enjoyed ‘god-like’ status. ,
However, pressure has been exerted on Kannada film stars to do politics and parties capitalize on their popularity as crowd pullers.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when actress Sumalatha toured villages as part of her campaign as an independent from Mandya, the most asked question to her was whether superstars D-Boss (Darshan Thoogudeepa) and Yash, who supported her Had campaigned for, will come again for the district.
Sumalatha has several films to her credit in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada and her late husband Ambareesh was an iconic actor with a checkered political history.
A Bengaluru-based political analyst, requesting anonymity, told ThePrint, “In Karnataka, actors are not given much political importance.”
The analyst recalled a particular incident when Kannada film icon Dr Rajkumar was at the peak of his career in the early 1970s. He later became the face of the Kannada movement (for the unification of the state) and was asked to contest the assembly elections. Rajkumar and his family were reluctant to enter politics, although his eldest son Shivarajkumar was married to the daughter of the then Chief Minister S. Bangarappa.
“It was said that Devraj Urs of the Congress, who was the longest-serving chief minister of the state, asked the prince to stay away from politics. A little later, in 1974, Rajkumar released a film titled Sampathige Saval (Challenging Money/Power). While there is nothing to prove that the film was a reaction to what Urs allegedly said to Rajkumar, the timing has fueled speculation,” said the analyst.
There are many other actors – Ananth Nag, Umashree, BC Patil, Madhu Bangarappa, to name a few – who have had limited success as politicians.
Actor Kichha Sudeep was asked by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to campaign for the BJP for the upcoming assembly elections, unleashing a flood of online hate against the actor and his union of choice.
Rajkumar’s son Shivrajkumar and his wife Geeta are campaigning for the Congress.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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