The drama, thanks to the unintended publicity provided by the unthinking DMK cadre, became a huge hit, and Cho sensing an opportunity to reprise the success on celluloid, announced a movie version of the same. The spoof is sharp and the swipes at contemporary politics were on fleek.Įven as a drama, Muhammad bin Tughluq faced several hurdles when it was staged, and it was not uncommon to see it being performed to the accompaniment of ruckus created by the DMK men. They lay all kinds of Tughluqian rules and make a mockery of the governance.
The story is about two college students, who pose themselves as Mughal ruler Muhammad bin Tughluq and Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta (they make people believe that they had survived in their tombs after eating a magic herb), end up as the Prime Minister and his advisor. The drama was hugely popular, and, of course, controversial, too, as it took pot-shots at Karunanidhi's politics at the state level and Indira Gandhi's at the Centre. The movie's original was a drama of the same name, which too was helmed by Cho and his troupe. The film was Muhammad bin Tughluq - now celebrated in the annals of Tamil movie history as a biting political satire that was ahead of the times.
It took all the innate intelligence and adroit manoeuvering of Cho Ramaswamy, the well-known journalist, MP and film personality, to scuttle DMk leader M Karunanidhi's cheap plans. But luckily it is only an ad film and, hopefully, the hullabaloo, after running the outrage cycle, will die in a day or two.īut some 48 years back, a Tamil film ran into rough weather over some similarly motivated politicking by the DMK in Tamil Nadu, which it (the DMK) tried to paint as being anti-Muslim. But the Hindu right-wingers seem touchy and are unhappy with how the ad unfolds. The ad, in the opinion of this writer, has nothing problematic, and if anything, it is cute and cuddly with all those cherubs around. The ad showed a young Hindu girl saving a Muslim boy's, clad in a white dress, from being daubed with Holi colours because he had a namaz prayer session to attend. The recent Surf Excel ad has created a typical, pointless commotion on social media platforms with right-wingers taking exception over an assumed slight to the Hindu festival of Holi.
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