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Pogaru: Kannada film panned for insulting Hindus and Brahmins

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Featured Image: A scene from the film 'Pogaru' insulting Brahmins | Credits: Twitter

Makers of the Kannada film Pogaru have been panned by audiences in Karnataka over the film’s scenes that insult and demean Hindu rituals and the Brahmin community.

The film contains scenes where a rowdy insults a Brahmin priest performing a ritual and places his foots on the priest’s shoulder in a degrading manner. The protagonist of the film too indulges in such insulting scenes in the film, where, in one scene, he hangs a Brahmin upside down from a crane, assaults him and then proceeds to abuse him and the Hindu deities, and mocks the tradition of Hindus having darshan of deities in temples.

Furthermore, in another scene, the protagonist insults a Brahmin who is carrying water for puja by aggressively accosting him and using that water to wash his face; whereas, in other scene, he makes insensitive remarks about the vegetarian diet consumed by Brahmins.

The state’s Brahmin community is up in arms over the film’s offensive scenes that insult Hindu traditions and the Brahmin community.

Written and directed by Nanda Kishore, and produced by B. K. Gangadhar, the film had earlier run into controversy over a song-and-dance sequence glorifying physical abuse, sexual harassment and eve-teasing. In the song-and-dance scene, the lead character, played by actor Dhruva Sarja, harasses his love interest, who is played by Rashmika Mandanna. To get her attention, the lead character and his henchmen burn motorcycles, vandalise shops and beat up people. The lead then proceeds to hug her inappropriately as she visibly squirms in his arms. In the dance sequence, the protagonist also threatens to cut her up with a knife and electrocute her using live wires. All this, while the henchmen watch and cheer on.

BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje too raised objections to the scenes in the movie on social media platform Twitter, and called for the screening of the film to be stopped.

“It has become a fashion to humiliate Hindus & take a ride on our sentiments. Whether they have guts to portray other religions in this manner? Screening of #Pogaru film has to be stopped until such objectable scenes are censored. Hurting Hindu emotions can’t be ignored [sic]”, she tweeted.

Journalist Chiranjeevi Bhat too criticised the film for portraying Brahmins in a derogatory way and insulting the whole community. He objected to the scenes in the film in a video, which he uploaded on Twitter and YouTube.

Soon after, the journalist received several death threats via phone-calls from one Shekhar, an admirer of the lead actor Dhruva Sarja, asking him to take down the video, otherwise he would “do what needs to be done”.

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