The iconic teleserial Ramayana from the late 1980s is set to be telecasted again. The news of the show being re-telecast comes during the time when it is being compared with Om Raut's recently released film 'Adipurush'. Amid severe backlash and on public demand, the makers have decided to re-telecast Ramananad Sagar's Ramayana. The series featured Arun Govil as Ram, Deepika Chikhalia as Sita and Sunil Lahri as Lakshman. Late Dara Singh portrayed Hanuman and Arvind Trivedi was featured as Ravana.

Ramayana

When and where to watch Ramayana

Taking to Instagram, channel Shemaroo Tv shared the promo of the super hit show Ramayan and captioned it in Hindi, "We are bringing to you all dear viewers the world-famous mythological serial "Ramayan"... Watch "Ramayan" from 3rd July at 7:30 PM only on your favourite channel #ShemarooTV."

Soon after the makers unveiled the promo of 'Ramayan' fans flooded the comment section.

"SiyaRam," a fan commented. Another fan wrote, "Jai Shree Ram."

Times when Ramayana has been re-telecast

The first time Ramayana was telecast on DD was on 25 January 1987.

Reruns of the series aired on Star Plus and Star Utsav in 2000's. It was re-telecast again between March and April 2020 during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown in India on DD National and broke all records for viewership globally for any TV show.[

The show is dubbed in Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Tamil which aired on Star Suvarna, Star Pravah, Star Jalsha, Star Maa and Star Vijay respectively

Adipurush controversy

Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding Adipurush has intensified the Allahabad High Court on Tuesday pulled up makers of the film over its dialogues have hurt the sentiments. The court directed co-writer Manoj Muntashir Shukla to be made a party in the case, and issued notice directing him to respond within a week.

The court was hearing a petition demanding a ban on 'Adipurush', which claims to be a mythological action film based on the Hindu epic Ramayana.

"The nature of dialogues in the film is a big issue. Ramayana is a paragon for us. People read Ramcharitmanas before leaving home," it said, adding that films shouldn't touch certain things.

"Agar hum log ispar bhi aankh band kar len kyonki yeh kaha jaata hai ki yeh dharm ke log bade sahishnu (tolerant) hain to kya uska test liya jayega? (If we close our eyes on this issue too, because it is said that the people of this religion are very tolerant, will it be put to test as well?)," the bench remarked.

The Allahabad High Court questioned whether the film certification authority, popularly called the censor board, fulfilled its responsibility.

Regarding the argument of the respondents that a disclaimer had been added to the film, the bench said, "Do the people who put the disclaimer consider the countrymen, and youth, to be brainless? You show Lord Rama, Lord Laxman, Lord Hanuman, Ravana, Lanka and then say it is not Ramayana?"

"We saw it on the news that people went to the theatres and got the film shut down. Be thankful nobody vandalised it," the court added.

As per a report in Live Law, the Court also noted that the sentiments of the people must have gotten hurt by the way the movie portrayed the religious characters of Ramayana. The Court added that recently it has come across several movies wherein the Hindu god and goddess were shown funnily.

The Court, however, clarified that the issue was not about any one religion, but, any particular religion should not be depicted in a bad light. While stressing that the Court has no religion of its own, the Court said its only concern is maintaining the law-and-order situation.

The verdict

The Court will continue to hear the pleas in the coming days.

The film stars Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh, Prabhas as Raghav and Kriti Sanon as Janaki.