All Hindi films have been banned in Nepal from Monday onwards after outrage over certain dialogues from the recently released Bollywood movie – Adipurush.
Directed by Om Raut, Adipurush is inspired by the Hindu epic Ramayana and features actors Prabhas, Saif Ali Khan, Kriti Sanon, Sunny Singh and Devadatta Nage in lead roles. It is based on the story of the triumph of good against evil, where Lord Rama finds himself in a battle against Ravana, the demon King of Lanka. Several of its dialogues came under scrutiny including one where Goddess Sita’s birthplace is said to be India instead of Nepal.
The revered Hindu goddess is believed my many to have been born in Janakpur, a southern district of Nepal. According to reports, the screening the film has been halted nationwide, after it was initially banned in the cities of Kathmandu and Pokhara.
Authorities deployed police personnel to 17 cinema halls across Kathmandu to ensure that no Hindi films were screened.
Before the film was released, Kathmandu’s Mayor Balendra Shah had warned it would be banned if the section mentioning Goddess Sita as “India’s daughter” remained, and demanded that censors cut the offending dialogue for Nepali audiences.
However, outside of Nepal, the section remains unchanged, prompting Shah to issue a wider ban.
He took to social media on Sunday and wrote: “Banning only this film in the Kathmandu municipality while it runs in other parts of the country and abroad will establish a misleading fact.”
He continued, “So screening of any Indian film will be prohibited from tomorrow [Monday] in Kathmandu municipality unless the objectionable part is removed from the film.”
Nakim Uddin, founder of QFX Cinemas, Nepal’s largest cinema chain, said that they were not going to support the ban.
“The announcement has disturbed the screening of Indian films in Kathmandu, but we are moving to court against it,” he told AFP news agency in an interview.
The film has not just been embroiled in controversy in Nepal, but also in India, where several moviegoers felt disappointed with the use of offensive dialogues, bad quality VFX as well as the filmmakers’ decision to change the essence of the original characters from the epic.
This forced the filmmakers to make an announcement saying that they would remove the dialogues and re-release the film.
Screenwriter Manoj Muntashir Shukla, the man behind the dialogues tweeted, “I wrote more than 4,000 dialogues for Adipurush, emotions were hurt by some five.”
