In the 1984 general elections, contested in the backdrop of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the Congress party had won an unprecedented majority of 402 seats in the Lok Sabha and the BJP was reduced to just two seats. The political events in the years leading up to the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government changing this policy to allow the streaming of Ramayan need to be emphasized. It is pertinent to note that until Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan burst out on telescreens in January 1987 Doordarshan’s programming was, as a policy abiding by India’s secular ethos, religion-neutral. No television show before – or since – touched an 82 per cent captive viewership of the television audience not even Mahabharat which had far superior direction and production value or any of Sagar’s later religious offerings such as Luv Kush and Krishna. Undoubtedly, in Indian television’s history, Ramayan was a landmark. Indeed, since Javadekar’s announcement millennials would have heard a fair share of stories from their parents or grandparents about the life-altering impact the Sunday broadcasts of Ramayan had on them – the religious high of seeing Lord Ram personified on screen by Arun Govil, the emotional upheaval over Deepika Chikhalia’s portrayal of Sita’s hardship during vanvas and the devotion for Dara Singh’s endearing (or amusing) Hanuman.
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Requests for re-telecast of these shows have flooded Twitter and other social networking sites.įor the generations born after the mid-1990s with the luxury to choose from multiple TV entertainment channels, the Centre’s decision may sound comical. For this section, other offerings from the DD stable – Alif Laila, Shaktiman, Surbhi, Captain Vyom, Chandrakanta, Malgudi Days, Turning Point, et al – may have a higher nostalgic value than Ramayan.
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Chopra for Doordarshan after the success of Sagar’s Ramayan, will also be aired twice daily.įor lakhs of Indians who joined the country’s burgeoning television audience between 1988 and the mid-1990s when privately-owned TV entertainment channels hadn’t yet swallowed Doordarshan’s monopoly on viewership, the full import of the government’s decision, with its undeniable political overtones, may be lost. A few hours later, the public was also informed that the televised version of another Hindu epic, Mahabharat, produced by B.R. The announcement by Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar about the government’s decision to have Doordarshan broadcast Ramayan twice daily – between 9-10 am and 9-10 pm – has been met with predictable applause from some quarters, possibly fuelled.
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Now, with the Coronavirus lockdown guaranteeing television channels a captive audience of nearly a billion Indians – as against the 650 million worldwide viewers that Sagar’s TV series alone clocked over the decades if Wikipedia is to be believed – the BJP-led Union government has decided, “on public demand”, to re-telecast Ramayan. Perhaps unwittingly, the TV series also acted as a catalyst for the BJP’s Hindutva politics giving momentum to the then dormant Ram Janmabhumi movement by the time Sagar’s 78-episode series concluded in August 1988. Ramanand Sagar’s televised version of the Hindu epic, Ramayan – first aired by public broadcaster Doordarshan in January 1987 – had changed India’s still-nascent TV entertainment industry.
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In a country where politics and religion are inseparable, even seemingly harmless entertainment that draws its content from religious texts can have a potent impact on the political landscape.