Monkeying With Hanuman
Sinister Designs
On a weekend when a civil war is raging in Manipur, it is only logical that the most trending topic on Indian Twitter is an action film.
Called Adipurush, the director Om Raut says his film is “a work of worship”. Inspired by the Valmiki Ramayana, the film inspired over half a million tweets on Saturday afternoon, when I hauled myself out of my couch to go see it. It’s a tedious action film, where the actors are largely props to zettabytes, or perhaps yottabytes, of computer graphics. When they do have lines to deliver, they are largely uninspiring, and underlined by pauses and cuts to scenery that is the 21st century equivalent of calendar art - lurid, exaggerated, and peopled with flora and fauna that liberally cross climatic zones every couple of seconds.
But it was not aesthetic sensibilities that led to the twitter-storm around Adipurush. Instead, it was religious sensibilities, and the hot-button topic appeared to be the crude nature of some of the dialogue in the film. If the film maker’s intent was to demonise Lankesh (Ravana) and his court, it would be quite logical to have one of them accost Bajrang (Hanuman) with the smart-ass line,
"तेरी बुआ का बगीचा है क्या जो हवा खाने चला आया"
“This isn’t your aunt’s orchard, that you can drop in for some fresh air”
This was one of the ‘Disgusting Dialogue’ that led The Sanatan Uday to call for a boycott of the film (below) The original tweet carried stills from the scenes which featured the offending lines, but now that the trending Twitter topic on Sunday morning is #AdipurushDisaster, the producers have gone into full-throttle damage control, and their lawyers recruited to enforce their copyright on material from the film.
I didn’t find this line objectionable, but then I am not a hyper-sensitive Sanatani, looking to be affronted at every frame. The lines that I did find misplaced, and which seem to have led to the most outrage, were given to Bajrang, aka Hanuman, when Vibhishana tied cloth around his tail, poured oil on it, and set it on fire:
“कपड़ा तेरे बाप का! तेल तेरे बाप का! जलेगी भी तेरे बाप की”
“Your Dad’s cloth, your Dad’s oil, and it’s your Dad’s (…left unspecified) that I will set on fire”.
This is the kind of line that a screenwriter would give to a petty gangster, a tapori, thousands of tweets protested, and it had the Twitterverse up in arms. Despite the scriptwriter and film-maker repeatedly underlining their noble intentions on prime-time television, the #AdipurushDisaster is a work-in-progress, and as I write this, there are reports that CM Baghel may ban the film in Chhattisgarh.
Hanuman is one of the most adored figures of Hindu iconography, and reducing his language to that of a sharp-tongued denizen of the streets has deeply disturbed millions. Om Raut claimed that every line in the film was deeply thought through, which makes one wonder about the intent of this particular line that backfired so spectacularly.
This is not the first time that Hanuman has been weaponised. A little over a year ago, I wrote:
“a different Hanuman appeared on car windscreens across India, a dark, aggressive visage, the Angry Hanuman. It appeared as the visual leading edge of a muscular Hindutva, representative of the trope that Hinduism had been emasculated by centuries of conquest, especially Muslim conquest.”
This weaponisation worked, despite the intent of the designer, Karan Acharya, who said, “My Hanuman has attitude, not aggression… But that is the problem with art. There is no limit to interpretation.”
I’m not sure about calling Adipurush art, but the film’s makers are certainly learning a lesson or two about how work - especially about beloved icons - can be interpreted. I have no problem with iconoclasts, but if you’re going to play with beliefs about mythical heroes, you had better be comfortable with having your feet held close to the fire.
One positive fallout of the Adipurush debate might be this questioning about misappropriation of Hanuman - Sankat Mochan, the Remover of Obstacles:
In response, at least a few souls are harking back to the Hanuman images we grew up with, of a loyal, rosy-cheeked companion to Lord Ram, his image sold as a child’s toy at village melas and temple fairs: