New Delhi: Kathmandu mayor Balendra Shah on Sunday (June 18) said that all movie theatres in Nepal’s capital city must stop screening Bollywood movies. Three days before that, Shah had demanded that the makers of Adipurush remove a line from the movie where Sita had been referred to as the ‘daughter of India’, The Hindu reported.
Soon after, the Pokhara Metropolitan City also enforced a similar ban, The Indian Express reported.
“Indian film Adipurush had a dialogue claiming Janaki was India’s daughter which is objectionable and we had given three days’ ultimatum to correct it. There is no doubt that it is the first duty of every government, government agency, non-governmental sector and Nepali citizen to protect the national interest by keeping Nepal’s freedom, independence and self-respect intact,” the Kathmandu mayor stated in the Facebook post.
“Three days ago we had called upon the makers of Adipurush to remove the objectionable section that shows Janaki as an Indian woman. Defence of Nepal’s sovereignty, independence, and self-respect is the first duty of all Nepalese governments, non-governmental organisations and Nepalese citizens. No Indian film will be allowed to be screened in the Kathmandu municipality area till the time this objectionable part is removed from the film,” Shah said.
Soon after the ban was announced, Adipurush‘s production company T-Series wrote to the Kathmandu mayor, saying it was “never intentional or deliberate to cause any disharmony for anyone”. “We request you to view the film in its artistic form and support the intention of reaching out to a larger audience to create interest in our history,” the letter signed by Radhika Das from the Super Cassette Industries Private Ltd also known as T-Series states.
Adipurush, released on Friday, contains the dialogue “Janaki is a daughter of India”.
Across the nation, theatres have now said they will not show the movie, Kathmandu Post reported. “Until Monday morning, only Kathmandu and Pokhara had decided to bar screening of the film. Soon other cities–Dharan, Itahari, Janakpur, Dhangadhi, Chitwan–followed suit,” said Manoj Rathi, a film distributor associated with Shree Venkatesh Films, the official distributor of ‘Adipurush’ in Nepal.
The Nepal Motion Picture Association, the organisation of cinema hall owners, is preparing to seek legal action, the report states. “We are confused as to who holds the authority to stop screening of movies that have been passed by the censor board. Are we allowed to run the movies, cleared by the federal government, or not?” said Bhaskar Dhungana, the president of the organisation. “We are preparing to take legal actions to find a proper solution to this issue.”