Ashutosh Gowariker may pride himself as a director with an astute knowledge of history, but just the first posters of his new period love story, Mohenjo Daro, were enough for a Twitter user to point out some grave errors.
While Gowariker has said in interviews that we worked with a team of archaeologists to be as historically accurate as possible, it seems that the Jodha Akbar director should have run his posters by them, before dropping them online.
Ruchika Sharma, an aspiring archeologist and an M.Phil student at JNU with a specialisation in Medieval Indian history, had this to say about the latest Mohenjo Daro poster that introduced the film's leading lady, Pooja Hegde.
Boss, what sick orientalism is this? Who told them that Harappans had these feathers in their hair? pic.twitter.com/PY8SmdlPnE
— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016
I'm really done with Bollywood depicting tribal/clannish societies in such stereotypical terms, feathers in their hair, paint on their faces
— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016
I mean, there are literally hundreds of terracotta figurines depicting Harappan women. Take a cue?
— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016
Also, in all probability the Harappans were dark complexioned. Yeh kya fair and lovely bias hai?
— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016
Everyone knows the the (migrating) Aryans had a fair complexion.Not the Harappans. But fair is all that works for BTown.Thoroughly disgusted
— Ruchika Sharma (@tishasaroyan) June 16, 2016
Well, if the poster itself is so full of such wild missteps, how much of history is going to go down the drains in the film?
Also See On HuffPost:
