Arun Govil reacted to the controversy around Adipurush’s dialogues.
Arun Govil played Lord Ram in the television version of Ramayana made by Ramanand Sagar.
Even before its release ‘Adipurush’ was embroiled in controversies. Now, after its release nothing much has changed. The movie finally hit theatres on Friday, June 16, and reviews have been pouring in ever since then. For those who don’t know, it offers a modern interpretation of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Many people criticised the colloquial dialogues mouthed by a character in the film and others slammed the makers for hurting their sentiments. Now Arun Govil, who played Ram in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana shared his thoughts on the film.
Talking to ABP News, Arun Govil expressed, “Ramayana is a matter of faith for us and to tamper with its form in any way is unacceptable. Movie’s special effects are a different aspect, it’s about presenting the characters in the right way, which has to be considered with utmost seriousness.”
He added, “I don’t support this kind of language in Ramayana. I don’t understand what the makers thought of making this film. If the makers have made this film for children, then ask them, have they liked it?”
The team of Adipurush has decided to make “alterations” to the film’s dialogues after the dialogues of Hanuman received backlash for sounding overly colloquial, offending the audience. While it’s unclear which dialogues have been revamped by the team, the makers said they are revisiting the ones that have not gone down well with the audience, ensuring to resonate with core essence of the film and the same will reflect in the theatres in the next few days.
Recently, during an interview with Republic World, Muntashir was asked whether oversimplifying Hanuman’s dialogues in Adipurush was an error or a deliberate choice to connect with a broader audience. He said, “A very meticulous thought process that has gone into writing the dialogues for Bajrangbali. We have made it simple because we have to understand one thing (that) if there are multiple characters in a film, all of them can’t speak the language. There has to be a kind of diversion, a division.”
When asked about Hanuman’s dialogue in the “Lanka dahan” sequence, where he says, “Tel tere baap ka. Aag bhi tere baap ki. Toh jalegi bhi tere baap ki,” Muntashir said, “How do we all know the Ramayana? We have the tradition of katha vaachan, we read also but there is a vaachan parampara. Ramayan is the kind of granth (book) which we have heard from our very childhood, there is Akhand Ramayan, paath and many other things. I come from a small village where our grandmothers used to tell us stories from Ramayan in this language. One more thing, the dialogue that you just mentioned, it has been used by the greatest saints, storytellers in our country in the same manner as I have written it in Adipurush. I am not the first one to write this dialogue, it is already there.”
Om Raut’s film Adipurush hit theatres on Friday. It features Prabhas, Kriti Sanon, Saif Ali Khan, Sunny Singh, and Devdatta Nage in lead roles.
