Not more than a day has passed since the film’s release, and team Adipurush is already caught in a deluge of controversies. Amid reports of fans assaulting filmgoers for criticising the Prabhas starrer, a Nepalese politician threatening to restrict Hindi films in Kathmandu over the film’s claim that Sita is “India’s daughter”, and the Hindu Sena filing a public interest litigation against the film for allegedly making a “mockery” of Ramayana, a scene from the film featuring actor Devdatta Nage (who portrays Hanuman) is triggering major outrage.
Ahead of the depiction of the famed Lanka Dahanam scene from the Hindu epic Ramayana, which Adipurush is adapted from, Devdatta can be heard spouting the dialogue, “Tel tere baap ka, aag bhi tere baap ki, aur jalegi bhi tere baap ki,” which roughly translates to, “The oil is your father’s, the fire is also your father’s, and what will burn is also your father’s.” The lines are being widely criticised for its colloquial and “uncouth” tone, with many stating that Hanuman’s language would have been more Sanskritised and never this crude. Some others opined that the dialogues were simply “pure cringe”.
Meanwhile, the film’s dialogue writer Manoj Muntashir has claimed that the dialogues in the film were made simpler on purpose. “It is not an error, it is a very meticulous thought process that has gone into writing the dialogue for Bajrangbali (Hanuman),” he told Republic TV, adding that he was “not the first person to write this dialogue, it is already there.”
“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,” he said.
Further citing India’s legacy of kathavachan (storytelling), he added, “Ramayan is a story that we have been hearing since childhood. I come from a small village. When our grandmothers told us stories of Ramayan, this is the language they used.”
Ok. So, It was deliberate. pic.twitter.com/Nbg46HbY7P
— Alishan Jafri (@alishan_jafri) June 16, 2023
Netizens, however, remain unhappy with the writer’s explanations. Many have also demanded an apology from him and the film’s director Om Raut, for allegedly “defaming Hindu gods” by attributing such “crass” language to them.
The dialogue writer of Adipurush @manojmuntashir as well as the director should apologise to the nation for the pedestrian dialogues written for the movie, especially for Lord Hanuman. It hurts every Indian’s sensibilities to see the kind of language being attributed to our…
— Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) June 17, 2023
Yesterday, Manoj Muntashir said that he deliberately kept the dialogues as they are since everyday language would help them connect with their audience.
— Abhishek Baxi (@baxiabhishek) June 17, 2023
Dodo thought everyone speaks like the bhakt groups he indulges in. He thought normal people go 'jali na' to argue or disagree.
Adipurush is directed by Om Raut, and stars Prabhas as Ram, Kriti Sanon as Sita, and Saif Ali Khan as Ravan. The film, which was made at a reported budget of Rs 600 crore, was released in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada languages. The film was initially supposed to be released in January. However, the teaser of the film, which offered a glimpse into its visuals, attracted heavy criticism from the audience for its poor visual effects. The production house then had to rework the effects, leading to the delay in the film’s release.
Read Adipurush review: A wooden Prabhas in a CGI extravaganza