Capital Kathmandu and Pokhara have barred screenings of Hindi movies over an “objectionable” line in ‘Adipurush’, the latest Indian bilingual blockbuster
Cinemas in Nepal’s two biggest cities – capital Kathmandu and Pokhara on the shores of Lake Phewa – have imposed a ban on Bollywood films over an “objectionable” line in a new Indian action movie, ‘Adipurush’, which was released on June 16.
The film is shot in the Telugu language, which is widely spoken in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and India’s national language, Hindi. The movie is based on the Hindu epic ‘Ramayana’, and is written and directed by Om Raut and produced by Indian companies T-Series and Retrophiles. It stars Prabhas, Saif Ali Khan, Kriti Sanon, Sunny Singh and Devdatta Nage.
The mayors of Kathmandu and Pokhara have taken exception to a line that calls one of the main characters, Janaki, “India’s daughter.” Janaki is another name for the goddess Sita, wife of the Hindu god Lord Ram, who was abducted by the demon king Ravana in the ‘Ramayana’.
Nepal’s Hindus number about 80% of the population, and believe that Sita was born in Janakpur in modern-day Nepal. Janakpur was once part of the Mithila kingdom under king Janak and lies about 220km from Kathmandu on the border with India. The name Janaki stems from the fact that, in the epic, Sita was adopted by king Janak and raised as his daughter.
Balendra Shah, mayor of Kathmandu, issued a social media post ordering cinema halls in the capital to stop screening all Bollywood films. The makers of ‘Adipurush’ have been asked to remove the “objectionable dialogue,” he added. “No Indian film will be allowed to be screened in the Kathmandu municipality area until this objectionable part is removed from the film,” the post read.
Dhanraj Acharya, mayor of Pokhara Metropolitan City, also asked movie theaters to stop screening Bollywood films, according to Indian news agency ANI.
The film’s co-writer, Manoj Muntashir Shukla, has agreed to rework some dialogues, saying: “I wrote more than 4,000 lines of dialogue for ‘Adipurush’, but some sentiments were hurt by five lines.” It was not immediately clear if he was referring to “hurting the sentiments” of people in Nepal or India.
‘Adipurush’ was panned by movie critics but nevertheless had a successful opening, earning the equivalent of over $41 million worldwide in its first screening weekend. The film has broken the record set by ‘Pathaan’, which was released in January and features Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh.
Legendary bandit-turned-poet Valmiki’s Sanskrit poem ‘Ramayana’ is immensely popular in India, and was adapted into a TV series in the 1980s on the state-run Doordarshan channel. It has also been a source of controversy, such as in 2011, when Delhi University had to drop an essay by scholar AK Ramanujan on the various iterations of the epic after protests by fundamentalist Hindu groups which took issue with his work.
Bollywood and Nepal have also had an uneasy relationship. In 2000, four people were killed during rioting in Kathmandu over alleged anti-Nepal comments by Indian actor Hrithik Roshan, which he vehemently denied.
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