Dear OMG! Team,
I watched the movie OMG! Oh My God! today and have many
complaints. I think it would be sane and reasonable to express my feeling and
opinion about your production by writing to you, instead of filing a case
against God for allowing you to make such a movie. Just like you chose to identify
God with Lord Krishna in the movie, by OMG Team I mean to address director
Umesh Shukla, producers Ashvini Yardi, Akshay Kumar &; Paresh Rawal, and writers
Bhavesh Mandalia &; Umesh Shukla.
Complain#1: You
are copy-cats and it shames our country India:
I found that your movie is "inspired by" (read:
copied from) an English movie. The original movie is "The Man Who Sued
God" which clearly has exact matching plot as in your movie. Since it was
made many years before your movie has come up, it is clear who copied
whom. I read about The Man Who Sued God here: [Link1], [Link2]
It is pretty evident that you copied the concept and plot of your movie and it
shows badly for our nation. Why couldn’t you be original? If you made a remake
of that movie, why didn’t you take permission from them and also mention it in
writing in the credits?
Complain#2: You
went on telling lies that you hadn’t make the movie for “earning money”:
I read it at many places about your claim that you had made
this movie to spread awareness and not to “earn money”: [Link1],
[Link2].
But having watched the movie, I felt otherwise and here are my reasons. There are
at least two brands which have been openly promoted (obviously leading to
commercial gains). One is Godrej and the other is ABP News. At least in two
scenes, the Godrej brand has been clearly projected with intent to advertise. In one of these, when the
entire building falls to the ground, a “Godrej locker” remains safe and a
character announces it by saying like, “only this Godrej locker has remained safe”. The
other brand, ABP News is shamelessly promoted with full screen real-like displays of ABP
News logo and channel’s live look-alike feed. Of course you were not promoting Godrej
and ABP News as an “Act of Charity”. If you claim so, I will ask, “Why only Godrej? Why
only ABP News”? No loss to the plot had happened if you didn't mention those brand names on the screen. Of course you wanted to earn money and even employed such marketing gimmicks to make that "extra" buck. Then why go on telling lies to everyone that you didn’t
make the movie for earning money? Is it an atheist's license?
Complaint#3: You
were unfair in choosing to attack Hinduism alone by and large, and showed Hindu
spiritual gurus in a biased and disgraceful manner:
Even the poster of your movie shows [Link1] that
you chose to attack Hinduism to the maximum extent possible and all posters
highlighted your choosing Hinduism as the uniquely identified religion your main
character was attacking in the movie. To "demonize" Hindu riligious figures, you chose actor Govind Namdeo as
Siddeshwar Maharaj while Govind Namdeo always plays negative and villains'
characters in the movies. For Leeladhar swami, you chose Mithun Chakraborty but
gave him a female-like behavior with weird hand movements which generate
irritation in the minds of viewers. You made his hair, white costumes and getup
to give resemblance to Sri Sri Ravishankar and it was very corrupt and manipulating.
The Bhagawat Geeta shown in your movie had clear resemblance towards the ones published by ISKCON and most of the saints and religious figures in the movie had a unique tilak mark on their forehead which made them appear like ISKCON members. Perhaps you chose ISKCON because it is very popular outside India and people identify it with Hindu group at many places. (On the other hand, you tried your best to make your main protagonist Kanjibhai gain public sympathy. If a well educated young man criticized Hinduism while wearing shirt-pant, may be public would have shrugged him off for being immature, so you made him a rather old man wearing dhoti-kurta, gave him a look of beard, made him cough and show frail health, all gaining public sympathy which could be used to your advantage later on.) The character of female spiritual
Guru was after Shri
Radhe Maa who is shown doing nothing wrong in the movie but still has
been projected as a vamp.
What was most revealing was that your movie chose to make fun of almost
everything related to Hinduism and Hinduism alone. Be it when Kanjibhai called Shivalingam as “kala pathhar”, made
mockery of rebirth and reincarnation theory and also of the practice of keeping
fasts, or even threw a stone at Lord
Krishna’s idol (though he misses it, he threw it with full hatred), and in the
last scene, Kanjibhai broke the head of an idol which was supposed to be of
Lord Vishnu’s incarnation as Kanjibhai. After the idol’s head was broken down,
the remaining of the idol was exactly like Lord Vishnu’s and it was a
horrifying scene for any God loving person to see an idol in such a state. I
felt sad and angry and cursed you for showing such crude scenes. What else could
I do? May be you would suggest me going to the court to file a case against you?
Though in the later part of the movie you showed representatives
from other religions namely Islam and Christianity also, your characters in the
movie never insulted, harmed or ridiculed the basic elements of their faith,
like you made him do against Hindu gods and symbols. I felt it was unfair to choose
only Hinduism as target for such a movie.Your movie could have been neutral and subtle when it attacks God
and religion, like in Bruce Almighty or its Indian remake God Tussi Great Ho,
and in that case I won’t have felt bad about it. But you chose to “name” the
God as Lord Krishna, "name" the religion as "Hinduism" by and large and you made the religious organizations pretty evidently
identifiable with real-life Hindu spiritual masters.
General observations and review:
You were so busy ridiculing and making fun of Hindu
spiritual Gurus and symbols that you forgot some basic structure of the story.
For example, the movie didn’t throw any light on why Kanjibhai was an atheist. From
the beginning, he is shown as a skeptic person with no sense of humor but only
an everlasting contempt with any thing religious. The man is basically a fraud
and a drunkard. He is in the business of selling idols of gods, and cheats his
customers by telling false stories about the idols. His customers are devotees of God and hence perhaps he enjoys cheating them shamelessly. He drinks wine at his home in the presence
of his wife and kids – and even distributes wine to a group of devotees going
on a pilgrimage. He is a bad father; when his son was about to break dahi-handi
after reaching till the top, he makes an announcement to stop the festival, as if
those 2 minutes saved will make his son stand first in the examination! He
could have waited for some moments and would not his
son have gotten down after breaking the handi? He is a bad husband also, and harasses his own wife by ridiculing and doing unaccepted things to mock her religion. The spiritual gurus are not shown doing anything wrong or
illegal, except one of them being friends with a politician and helping him win
elections. The irony is that while all minorities like Muslims and Christians
in India vote on the basis of religion with their religious gurus and priests
making open declarations of their choice of candidates or parties, OMG has
chosen to show as if Hindus vote on the basis of religion. These are the
elements far from truth which makes us be sure that the producers of this movie
had something very rotten and biased in their minds while making OMG!
When it comes to “logic” in the arguments presented by the
main protagonist, the movie again fails miserably. Kanjibhai keeps chanting “God
is not inside temples”, “Don’t donate any money to temples but give that to the
poor”. Who Hindu priests say that God is “only in the temples” and not outside?
Who Hindu spiritual Gurus ask all to donate “only in the temples” and “not to
the poor”? Hindu spiritual gurus are shown to be wearing Rolex watches and
moving in BMW cars and it is shown as if living comfortably is a sin. Hindus are
shown as starting to worship Kanjibhai as an avatar of Lord Vishnu with many
idols of his installed in a temple, while this practice is unprecedented
in reality. It is told in crudest and insulting manner that the practice of
offering milk on a Shivalingam is a “waste” of milk, and the milk should
instead be given to the poor. Hinduism doesn’t ask its followers not to donate
milk to the poor. Anyone is free to donate milk to the poor, and why it should
be like one should only donate to the poor "the milk" one was going to offer at the temple? Why can’t I donate one glass of milk to a poor person and one glass
in the temple? Or may be one glass to the poor every day and one glass to God every Monday? No one is stopping me from doing charity along with being religious. But Kanjibhai, the protagonist of the
movie, and hence the producers of the movie try hard to ridicule and insult
each of the practices of Hinduism and show their own thinking as the “right
thing to do” and Hinduism’s traditions as “wrong thing which should be given up”. I find
such inclinations of the producers to be very bad.
As explained before, Kanjibhai is basically a fraud, a drunkard, bad parent and a loser and still he goes on to teach others lessons about life and religion and the movie projects him as a sort of champion. This is neither very logical nor justifiable. Every one wants to change the world to suit his/her own way of things and the applicable philosophy here is "before you go out to change the world, first change yourself." At least you should have shown a person with a good character trying to clean the system. But I know that you were so closed-eyed (which copy-cats do) while copying it from The Man Who Sued God, that you forgot to make the changes. The protagonist in The Man Who Sued God is also a loser with a troubled life and hence you made Kanjibhai a loser too. Because The Man Who Sued God caught the phrase "Act of God" to pit it against God, you copied the same thing here also. Logically, most insurance companies do mention what is understood by the phrase "Act of God" by listing the natural disasters.
The movie does feature Lord Krishna appearing on earth in
the form of a man (played by Akshay Kumar), but the God’s character is like a fence
sitter who almost does nothing and the story would have remained exactly the
same even without God’s role. In one scene, the protagonist tells God about how
he had “thrown” away Bhagawat Geeta. I strongly feel such direct insults
towards the sentiments of Hindus could have been avoided without any loss to
the plot or the argument. A basic empathy and sensitivity is missing from the
dialogue writer all across. Also,
as if all the attacks were not enough, you chose Janmashtami to launch
the trailer of the movie. In all promotions, you made it appear as if
Akshay Kumar and his role as God is the main character in the movie, but
actually it appears only just before the interval and has limited role.
Your movie doesn't glorify Lord Krishna but sends insults his way
(Akshay Kumar as God is shown saying that he has 16,000 wives; dahi-handi is
shown to be deserted and abandoned; a stone is thrown at Krishna's
idol; Vishnu's idol (with Kanjibhai's face) is beheaded and broken.
I know that sky is not going to fall down just because such
a corrupt and insulting movie has been made against Hinduism and its traditions.
But I worry about the long prevailing trend of choosing only Hinduism for such kinds
of “social reformation”. No movie makers dare to challenge Islam’s or
Christianity’s basic faith elements equally, like they do with Hinduism.
Somehow, I don’t find the situation fair.
The audiences in the movie theater laughed at the Hindu
spiritual gurus shown in this movie. The audiences also didn’t show signs of
any discomfort when Hindu symbols were clearly being insulted. Perhaps no one
shifted even on seeing Paresh Rawal throwing a stone at Lord Krishna’s idol
with a gulel, or breaking the head of
an idol and destroying the cash donation box kept in front of the temple. I
know this shows very high tolerance levels amongst Hindus. But I think if we
keep allowing them to insult and ridicule each of our religious practices and symbol
like this, one day our children and grandchildren will be “brain washed” enough
to feel uncomfortable with their religion and culture.
With these thoughts and feelings, I protest against your movie “OMG! Oh My God!”’s cruel, insulting, biased and unfair treatment
towards Hinduism.
- Rahul Tiwary
![[Link1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OMG%21_Oh_My_God_poster.jpg){kind=link}