Ramanand Sagar’s son Prem Sagar commented on the western media’s inability to understand Ramayan. In his latest interaction with Swarajya, the son of the celebrated filmmaker recalled an incident where his father and the team of Ramayan collectively decided to not sell the show’s telecast rights to BBC. Sagar said for the most part of the Western media, Ramayan is still a costume drama, and back then too, it was a source to attract more Asian viewers for their channel.
Explaining what happened three decades back, Sagar told the publication that before his father and Arun Govil (who played the role of Ram in the show) were called for an interview before signing the contract. However, as soon as they realised that the channel actually wanted to film Arun in his avatar while walking the entire studio, they decided to cancel the contract. Prem Sagar was quoted saying, “They had decided to buy telecast rights to the Ramayan for the Asian population. Ramanand Sagar, Arun Govil, Arvind Trivedi (who played Ravan) and I went to their Liverpool studios for an interview before signing the contract. But they wanted Arun Govil dressed and paraded as Shri Ram in full costume and crown through the BBC studios so they could film it. Papaji and I realised it was a calculated attempt to break the image of Shri Ram as divine, worshipped in every grain of soil in India. We refused their bait.”
Sagar, who has also published a biopic on his father which was launched on The Kapil Sharma Show recently, calls his father a ‘rishi’ who was born to rewrite Ramayana for the electronic audience. The popularity of this Indian mythological show is unprecedented and nothing has changed in these three decades from the time when the show was first aired on Doordarshan. The faith in the ideals of Lord Ram remains intact and that’s probably the reason why the show broke all existing records of the TRPs and set a new standard of television viewing all across the world with its re-run during the lockdown.
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