A big budget film Adipurush is slated to hit the screens in January next year. The publicity for the film started a little before Dussehra this year to build up hype. The lead actor Prabhas even flew down to attend Ram Leela at Red Fort, together with the President of India and the Chief Minister. A teaser of the film was also released at Ayodhya with much fanfare. It is the teaser which has ruffled feathers because it depicts Lord Ram with a moustache, Hanuman with a beard, and Ravana with spiky hair, aside from other aberrations.
Should the makers of Adipurush expect the Indian audience to be forgiving and overlook such distortions? I don’t believe they can, or should for what then will prevent future film makers from giving Lord Krishna a moustache as well or Lord Shiva a beard? Filmmakers cannot just play around with established iconography for they otherwise risk offending religious sensibilities.
Whenever any writer tells a story, at the outset, he includes a physical description of the characters as and when they appear. The Ramayana and Mahabharata too tell a story and they are no exceptions to this rule. Neither Tulsidas’s nor Valmiki’s Ramayana suggests anywhere that Lord Ram kept a moustache. Had this been the case, the depiction of Lord Ram in thousands of temples across the land would have had at least a few of the statutes showing him with a moustache.
The sculptures depicting Lord Ram in thousands of temples across India and even overseas all show him to be clean shaven which is in conformity with the written text. When calendar art was first introduced in India, the depictions similarly showed him to be cleanshaven, in conformity with the depictions in temples and the ancient texts of the Ramayana.
Clearly the film makers and the director did not mean to disrespect Lord Ram and the other divine presences that feature in the Ramayana, for why would they wish to sabotage their own film? With the controversy that has now emerged there are film critics who believe this is a singular case where it can be predicted that a film is bound to be a flop even before it has been released. In other words, public reception to the teaser has itself ensured that the film will not, cannot do well. Time alone will tell if this is true, but it is not an unreasonable presumption.
The film makers did not wish to disrespect Lord Ram in any way but they have certainly disrespected the cinema watching audience. This kind of carelessness is common enough though. For instance, this year the film Shabash Mithu cast Tapsee Pannu to play the cricketer Mithali Raj, although she does not resemble Mithali at all in appearance. Chakda Xpress, another cricketing biopic on the female pace bowler Jhulan Goswami, who is nearly six feet tall, also has a much shorter and fairer Anushka Sharma starring in it. Filmmakers assume that the audience does not care for authenticity. They are wrong here. One of the reasons why the biopic on the life of MS Dhoni was such a success was because his character was portrayed by the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who was also from Bihar and possessed a not dissimilar build. This is not to diminish Sushant’s outstanding performance in the film in any manner. As on date, filmmakers do not appear to care for authenticity. But money talks, and sooner or later, successive box office failures will force them to care, and have greater respect for the audience.
It is one thing to depict a cricketing legend wrongly, where sentiments will not be overly affected even if as a consequence the movie underperforms. It is a completely different thing to do so with someone like Lord Ram, Devi Sita, Lakshman and Hanuman. The Goddess Lakshmi has an owl as her vehicle, and in India the owl is considered to be a foolish bird. There is a view that Goddess Lakshmi’s vahan indicates how in this world of ours, there are very many foolish people with lots of money to blow up. Spending the enormous sum of four hundred and fifty crores on the making of a film where even the basics go wrong in such a fashion does appear to an act of monumental stupidity, if not crassness and insensitivity.
Old timers will remember the Ramanand Sagar television serial on the Ramayana which was a huge hit in the late eighties. Arun Govil, who played Lord Ram became an instant celebrity. Paradoxically enough though, his very success in playing the part may have ensured that he could not get other roles, because once having him seen him as Ram, the audience would not have accepted him as a comedian, villain or a supporting actor, or even a singing and dancing hero! Something similar happened to Dipika Chikhlia who played Sita.
If such little attention has been paid by the makers of Adipurush to the physical appearance of Lord Ram and the other divine and not-so-divine personages, such as Ravana, that form part of the Ramayana story, it stands to reason that the script too is likely to be found wanting in many respects. The focus of Adipurush appears to have been more to dazzle the audience, especially the younger set, with VFX and special effects, than to tell a timeless tale that captured the imagination of the people of this land for thousands of years. A similar attempt was made not long ago with another big budget film, Brahmasthra, which was also panned for its terrible screenplay.
Meanwhile India still awaits a film maker who has genuine reverence for our ancient epics, who seeks to tell a truly meaningful tale filled with emotion, passion but also wisdom, and for whom the profits that will follow will be incidental, though not unimportant.
Rajesh Talwar is an author of 35 books across multiple genres. He has worked for the United Nations for over two decades across three continents in numerous countries.
