Suriya’s Jai Bhim premiered on Amazon Prime Video on the 1st of November and it opened to largely positive reviews. Suriya is being lauded for picking up a subject such as this one and also producing it. However, the film is now facing stern criticism on social media for one particular scene featuring Prakash Raj. In this scene, Prakash Raj is seen slapping a person for speaking in Hindi and he then asks him to speak in Telugu/Tamil (respective language versions). In the Hindi version, Prakash Raj slaps the latter, but he doesn’t ask him to alter the language. Now, Hindi viewers and cinema analysts are finding fault with this allegedly objectionable scene.
Here are few such reactions to the scene on Twitter.
‘I am really heartbroken after watching #JaiBhim, nothing against actor or anyone but felt really bad, there is a scene in the film where a person speaks Hindi and Prakash Raj slaps him and tells him to speak in Tamil Honestly this kind of scene was not needed….Hope they cut it,’ film critic Rohit Jaiswal tweeted.
‘Actor Prakash Raj slaps a man in a scene of his new movie ‘Jai Bhim’, who was talking in Hindi saying ‘speak Tamil.’ Having pride for your mother tongue is fine, but encouraging hatred/violence against others for not speaking it is most certainly not,’a Twitter user named Kavita tweeted.
‘Actor Suriya’s hypocrisy: Releases ‘Jai Bhim’ in Hindi, features scene where Prakash Raj slaps a north-Indian for speaking Hindi.’ A netizen named Ramgee tweeted.
‘Dear Prakash Rai alias Prakash Raj, which article of the constitution provides rights to hit any individual just because he’s not speaking Hindi or any Indian language?
If that’s so, how many Kannadigas should hit u for speaking in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu in other movies?,’ A netizen named Chiru Bhat opined.
On the flipside, South Indian audiences are claiming that the Hindi audience are unnecessarily making a fuss by taking the scene out of the context.
‘In #jaibhim in This scene Prakash Raj slaps the person because he is a Tamil guy acting as Hindi speaking guy and being a fake witness in the case so he slapped him and told him to speak in tamil bu as usual bjp sanghi’s given different spin narrative,’ a Twitter user named Hariprasad said
