Why is Adipurush all wrong?

Since its release last week, ‘Adipurush’ is getting critiqued by people from all walks of life for its representation of the timeless tale of the Ramayana.

The dialogues by Manoj Muntashir are getting widely slammed. The epic tale of Rama and his quest to rescue Sita is a journey filled with moral lessons. But in the film, Manoj Muntashir makes characters from the story speak lewd dialogues of the sort spoken by those on the street as they indulge in rioting and slogan mongering against Muslims. All of this seems done with thorough thinking and Muntashir belongs to the same group that uses history and mythology to peddle hate against a community.

When Bajrang (Hanuman) comes back from Lanka after speaking to Janaki (Sita) and giving a challenge to Ravana, he is asked about the events in Lanka. Bajrang says, “Jo hamari behno ko haath lagayenge unki lanka laga denge” (“Anyone who touches our sisters will be dealt with strongly”). Critics contend Hanuman would never say something like this as he considers Sita his mother and even refers to her as one. It is not difficult to see what this means in the context of the botched-up conspiracy of ‘love jihad’. Dialogues like this show how mythological characters are co-opted to initiate and justify conflict with other communities.

Muntashir includes such crude dialogues and uses the character of Hanuman to propagate his venomous vision. In the entire film, Bajrang speaks less like a brave hero and more like a goon. It is easy to identify where he comes from with the kind of language he uses to talk to other characters.

Such co-option has been going on for years, with the term ‘Jai Shri Ram’ now having less religious significance and serving more as a war cry. It creates a disjointedness to hear such words being spoken by mythological heroes cherished in the subcontinent, and shows how the religious right-wing wants to paint mythology in favour of its divisive worldview. Rama, Sita, and Hanuman need to be saved from such appropriation, else people like Muntashir will repurpose them to stretch their motives.

As a whole, the film doesn’t work because of the absence of any emotional high points of the kind present in abundance in the original epic. One can hardly feel anything when the much-awaited meeting of Hanuman and Rama takes place or when Lakshmana gets killed in battle.

The sheer terror of the antagonists in the epic is lost in a hurried replication on-screen. The storytelling is so flat that even in the climax, when Rama finally kills Ravana, the sense of victory of good over evil doesn’t register in your heart even for a second. It all just feels like a mindless action-piece where the soul has gone missing.

The emotions are then expected to be released through shallow scenes where Raghav (Rama) gives a speech to his army before the war. Director Om Raut and Manoj Muntashir’s Rama is no longer the epitome of calm, but is more concerned about creating history and being answerable to the coming generations. Muntashir writes dialogues keeping in mind Hindutva undertones when Raghav asks his soldiers to rupture the enemies’ chest with a saffron coloured flag. It doesn’t help at all when Ravana is painted in black and made to look more like a Mughal emperor than someone in the Ramayana era.

Making no sense within the contours of the film, these dialogues are a reflection of an entirely different audience; an audience waiting for their gods to justify the hateful pride rising in their hearts. This kind of criticism by the right wing is ironic as the dialogues reflect their own thoughts against Muslims, which escape into the open through slogans during the Ram Navami celebrations or online.

But by looking at such a crass representation of mythological heroes, were they to realise the amount of bigotry in their own being, the film could unknowingly become reflective. That is just wishful thinking.