‘Adipurush’ released in Nepal by removing contentious dialogue

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, June 17: Prabhas and Kriti Sanon-starrer ‘Adipurush’ has been branded a retelling of the ancient epic Ramayan. However, it appeared to retell the familiar saga a little too much, and landed in hot water with Nepali officials.

One can only wonder why the filmmakers chose to assign a nationality to Sita, a goddess who lived in the Treta Yuga aeons ago before today’s nations existed. But they did and called Sita ‘India’s daughter’ going against the widely-held belief that the filial origins of the goddess revered as Janaki lie in Janakpur in present-day Nepal.

This move nearly cost the movie its release in Nepal and got every Hindi movie banned from the nation’s capital. 

On Thursday, Balendra Shah, Mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), gave the makers of the flick three days to correct the phrase ‘Janaki is a daughter of India’, not only in the Nepali version but also in India, and warned that no Hindi film would be allowed to run in KMC theatres if the demand was not met. 

Earlier, Nepal’s Film Screening Committee had also refused to clear the flick for exhibition in the country until the line was removed. Finally, ‘Adipurush’ complied and deleted the controversial dialogue, allowing it to release in Nepal as planned on Friday. However, safety concerns led some cinemas in Kathmandu to cancel the film’s first-day morning shows.

Meanwhile, the Film Development Board issued a statement on Friday, calling the movie “inaccurate” and objecting to India’s daughter line being included in versions screened in countries other than Nepal. 

The statement, signed by its chair Bhuwan KC, demanded that the mistake be corrected and worried that it could harm the cultural and diplomatic relations between 

Nepal and India. 

“The Board can never accept any movie anywhere in the world that, mistakenly or otherwise, presents any dialogue or visual that infringes on things like Nepal’s independence, national heroes and borders,” it read. Goddess Sita and her father King Janak are official national heroes in Nepal.

This is not the first time an Indian motion picture has upset Nepalis. In 2009, the country banned the Akshay Kumar-led ‘Chandni Chowk to China’ over a reference in it to India being Lord Buddha’s birthplace. 

Director David Dhawan’s 1998 comedy ‘Gharwali Baharwali’ also triggered outrage and protests for its false depiction of the Nepali people and traditions. 

Karma starring Dilip Kumar also met with anger in 1986 for featuring a map that showed Nepal as being a part of India.