Actor turned director Raja Bundela’s Pratha, which released 23 years ago on November 29, is about a young girl in Madhya Pradesh who is drugged and projected as a living goddess to villagers by vested interests.
Protests against the film broke out in certain parts of the country.
Says Bundela, “The objections were about Irfan Khan, a Muslim actor playing a Holy sadhu (mendicant). The dissenters say the Sadhu rapes the protagonist in a temple. That isn’t true. The crime is committed in the basement of the temple. They say that I have degraded Sati [a Hindu ritual of burning a wife in her husband’s funeral pyre]. My film had nothing to do with Sati.”
The film is about a boy (Deepak Bandhu) who returns to his village to discover his fiancee (Ashney Shroff) has been turned into a goddess by the locals. He is not allowed to even meet the girl he loves, as she is held captive in the temple. But one night, he rescues her. Bundela knew the film was controversial. But the thought of creating publicity appalls him.
Bundela feels the controversy was created to humiliate him. “People are laughing at me and saying, ‘Badi achchi publicity hai‘ [great publicity].
A gifted stage, television and film actor, Raja Bundela’s first feature film as a director landed itself in a roaring controversy. On November 18,2002, during a private screening of the film, Bundela was roughed up by Bajrang Dal activists.
According to the Bhopal administration, Bundela orchestrated the violence to generate interest in his film.
Recalls Bundela, “I was missing from the screen for ten years. I was tired of doing the same kind of roles. I launched a production company Prayas, which produced serials like Mujhe Chand Chahiye, O Maria and Yeh Shaadi Nahin Ho Sakti. Pratha was my first feature film. On 18 November, before the press screening, I was given a memorandum that some scenes in my film were objectionable. Earlier, I had also received some intimidating letters from Jhansi, Lalitpur and Gwalior asking why I hadn’t cut the objectionable scenes. Suddenly, during the screening, a huge gang of Bajrang Dal members roughed me up. K K Sharma [Bundela’s host in Bhopal, who had arranged the films’ screening] took me to the hospital. He told me that the demonstrators had got carried away. Next thing I know is that I am accused of stage-managing the violence on myself! The cops told me Sharma had accused me of this. Sharma, a District Forest officer, claims that though I was staying with him, he did not know why I was in Bhopal! Actually, the police wanted me to lodge an FIR immediately after the incident. But even after four hours of the incident, Sharma did not take me to the police station. I was persuaded not to lodge an FIR. The cops warned me against keeping quiet, arguing that those who attacked me were well-known goons and that I may be blamed later. I trusted Sharma because he was a friend. I returned to Mumbai the same day. Suddenly the following day, I’m all over the papers as the person who got himself beaten up. Does that make sense?”
