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Lyricist-writer Manoj Muntashir found himself at the centre of the ongoing controversy around the film Adipurush, after a section of the its core audience complained that certain lines of dialogue written by him offended their religious sensibilities. Adipurush is an adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayana, starring Prabhas as Raghav, Kriti Sanon as Janaki, and Saif Ali Khan as Lankesh. Produced on a reported budget of Rs 500 crore, the movie has been struggling at the box office after delivering a strong opening.
This has been attributed to the unanimously negative response that the film has attracted from both critics and audiences. Muntashir has been credited as the film’s co-writer, alongside director Om Raut. He has also penned the lyrics for the film’s songs. By virtue of this, Muntashir has been made the face of everything wrong with the movie.
And his subsequent comments in defence of his creative decisions have further alienated him from his audience. During all this, director Raut has mostly stayed mum, but appeared in a joint interview with Muntashir a day after the film’s release, where he said that audience response matters more to him than reviews.
But this isn’t the first time that Muntashir has attracted criticism. Here’s a brief introduction, and a rundown of his past controversies:
Muntashir, which means 'scattered soul' in Urdu, is a pen-name. He was actually born Manoj Shukla in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. In a radio interview, he said that he chose the name Muntashir 'randomly', because he felt that Shukla didn't have 'weight'. "I had started writing poetry, and I needed a pen-name, but I felt Shukla didn't have enough weight," he said, adding, “In a split second, Manoj’s journey from ‘Shukla’ to ‘Muntashir’ was complete. The best part is that I am the only Muntashir who has ever existed in the world of poetry. So to date, my pen name stands unique.” He later changed his name to Manoj Muntashir Shukla.
As a lyricist, Muntashir has written songs such as d "Teri Mitti", "Galliyan", "Tere Sang Yaara", "Kaun Tujhe", "Dil Meri Na Sune", "Kaise Hua", and "Phir Bhi Tumko Chaahunga". He has also written the Hindi dialogues for Telugu-language films Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, in addition to Marvel's Black Panther.
Muntashir has credited none other than Amitabh Bachchan as discovering him, and giving him the opportunity to write scripts for the game show Kaun Banega Crorepati. "I was hand-picked by Mr Bachchan to write KBC," he said in an interview with Bollywood Hungama in 2017, adding that Bachchan had liked his work on the travel show Yatra, and wanted him to be a part of KBC. He went on to write for India’s Got Talent and Indian Idol Junior. "In three or four months, I went from the pavement to having my own car," he recalled.
Muntashir in an interview with Scroll cited the legendary Salim-Javed as influences. "The way Salim-Javed understood the pulse of the audience who spends three hundred rupees in a dark theatre to watch a film is amazing,” he said. “At first, we were a country that understood dialogues to be only big, bombastic lines such as the ones from, say, Mughal-e-Azam. Now, who spoke like that? But look at Salim-Javed’s dialogues. ‘Mere paas maa hai’ or ‘Kitne aadmi they?’ Salim-Javed had the conviction to turn small everyday lines into dialogues. And they did it by creating great situations but balancing it with minimalist lines. I want to bring that kind of simplicity in my writing.”
Muntashir, like many major composers and writers working in the Indian film industries, has also faced accusations of plagiarism. It was discovered that his song "Teri Mitti", for the film Kesari, was similar to Haqeeqat’s "Kar Chale Hum Fida", which was written by Kaifi Azmi. Some people also claimed that he had plagiarised his poem ‘Mujhe Call Karna’ from his book ‘Meri Fitrat Hai Mastana’ from a 2007 poem by Robert Lavery. “None of my creations are 100% original. File petitions against me and I will respect every decision of the court. Momin’s lines inspired one stanza of the song Teri Galiyan, Tere Sang Yara was inspired by Firakh Gorakhpuri’s couplets and my own song Teri Mitti has been translated in so many languages but I do not think my name was written anywhere," he said in a video posted on social media, addressing these allegations.
After "Teri Mitti" lost at the Filmfare Awards to the Gully Boy song "Apna Time Ayega," Muntashir took to his favourite venue, Twitter, and shot off another rant. "Dear Awards... Even if I try all my life.. I won’t be able to write a better line than ‘Tu Kahti Thee Tera Chaand Hoon Main Aur Chaand Humesha Rahta hai’. You failed to honour the words which made millions of Indians cry and care for their motherland. It would be a great disrespect to my art if I still continue caring for you. So here I bid you a final good bye. I officially announce- I won’t attend any award show till I breathe my last. Alvida,” he wrote in a tweet.
In 2021, Muntashir courted controversy when he posted a video on Twitter titled “Who are your ancestors?” In the video, Muntashir called Mughal emperors 'dacoits', and was criticised by several people from his own industry for 'seeding hate' towards the Muslim minority. “Cringe. Bad poetry, unwatchable. Should drop the pen name too. Why profit off of something you so hate," wrote actor Richa Chadha, making a reference to his pen-name. Filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan said that Muntashir's comments reeked of 'bigotry laced with casteism.”
A day after Adipurush was released in theatres to negative response mostly centred around his dialogues, Muntashir appeared in an interview on Republic, and attempted to defend his creative choices. He said, "A very meticulous thought process that has gone into writing the dialogues for Bajrangbali. We have made it simple because we have to understand one thing (that) if there are multiple characters in a film, all of them can’t speak the language. There has to be a kind of diversion, a division.”
A day after defending his writing, Muntashir appeared in an interview with Aaj Tak, and made his most outrageous claim yet. He said that Adipurush isn't an adaptation of the Ramayana at all, but is merely inspired by it. “The name of the film is Adipurush. Let me be clear about two things, we have not made Ramayana, we were only inspired by it. Even if you see our disclaimer, we were very clear about it. It would have been easy for us to name the film Ramayana, keeping in mind the marketing strategies. But we knew from the beginning that we are only heavily inspired by the Ramayana, but we are not making Ramayana. We just made a small chunk of the battle fought in the Ramayana,” he said, directly contradicting earlier statements about having not deviated from the text at all.
Announcing that changes will be made to the objectionable dialogues, Muntashir wrote in a Twitter note that he has been made a punching bag. He wrote, "I can give countless arguments in favour of my dialogues, but this will not reduce your pain. I and the producer-director of the film have decided that some of the dialogues which are hurting you, we’ll revise them. They’ll be added to the film this week. May Shri Ram bless you all,” adding that he wrote around 4000 lines of dialogue for the film, which weren't controversial.
In new interviews, Muntashir further dug himself into a hole when he claimed that Hanuman isn't a god, and described his depiction in the film as 'childlike'. "Bajrangbali bhagwan nahi, bhakt hain. Humne unko bhagwan banaya hai (Lord Hanuman is not a god but devotee. We have bestowed upon him the status of a deity)," he told Aaj Tak in an interview, adding, "Bajrangbali daarshanic batein nahi karte hai (Bajrangbali does not deliver philosophical lines)."
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