‘Adipurush’ Makers Revise Lines After Backlash

Mumbai: The makers of ‘Adipurush’ have bowed to public demand.

Following backlash from several quarters, the film’s team will revise some lines which many claimed to have hurt sentiments.

‘Adipurush’ co-writer Manoj Muntashir took to Twitter to post a long note to explain his sentiments and the decision of director Om Raut and producer Bhushan Kumar.

“The first lesson one can learn from Ramkatha is to respect every emotion. Right or wrong changes with time but feelings remain. I wrote more than 4000 lines in Adipurush, some sentiments got hurt on five lines. In those hundreds of lines, where Shri Ram was glorified, Maa Sita’s chastity was described, I expected praise but I don’t know why I did not get it,” Manoj wrote in Hindi.

“My own brothers wrote indecent words for me on social media. My own, for whose respected mothers I read poems many times on TV, addressed my own mother with indecent words. I kept thinking, there can be differences, but where did my brothers suddenly get so bitter that they forgot to see Shri Ram who considered every mother as his mother? Sitting at the feet of Shabri, as if sitting at the feet of Kaushalya.”

“It is possible that in a three-hour film, I have written something different from your imagination for three minutes, but I could not know why you were in such a hurry to write eternal traitor on my forehead. Have you not heard the Jai Shri Ram song, didn’t you hear Shivoham or Ram Siya Ram? These praises of sanatan in Adipurush are also written by me. I have also written Teri Mitti and Desh Mere. I have no complaint with you.. you were, are and will be my own. If we stand against each other, sanatan will lose. We have made Adipurush for sanatan seva, which you are seeing in large numbers and I am sure you will see in future as well.”

He concluded by explaining the reason for the post.

“Why this post? Because for me there is nothing greater than your feeling. I can give countless arguments in favour of my dialogues, but this will not reduce your pain. I and the producer-director of the film have decided that some of the dialogues which are hurting you, we’ll revise them, and they’ll be added to the film this week. May Shri Ram bless you all!”

‘Adipurush’ features Prabhas as Raghav (Lord Ram), Kriti Sanon as Janaki (Sita), Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh (Raavan) and Devdatta Nage as Bajrang Bali (Lord Hanuman).

One of Nage’s lines came in for a lot of criticism — “Kapda tere baap ka, aag tere baap ki, tel tere baap ka, jalegi bhi teri baap ki (it’s your father’s clothes, it’s your father’s fire, it’s your father’s oil, it’s your father only who will get burnt).”

Manoj earlier said he had written the lines very meticulously.

“It is not an error… It is a very meticulous thought process that has gone into writing dialogues for Bajrang Bali and all other characters. We have made it simple because we have to understand one thing if there are multiple characters in a film, all cannot speak the same language. There has to be a kind of diversion, a kind of division,” the co-writer had told Republic World.

The ‘pedestrian’ dialogues were deemed to be disrespectful to characters of Ramayana. A PIL was also filed against the makers of the movie for hurting sentiments of Hindu community.