Manoj Muntashir has spent three years apologising for Adipurush. He is not prepared to apologise for its songs.
The lyricist and dialogue writer posted a pointed defence on X on October 28, 2026, after a television report asked whether Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana was repeating his “stunt.” The report centred on Mangal Rang, the wedding track from Ramayana: Part 1, composed by A.R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer, which released on October 25 and drew immediate complaints about its qawwali-style arrangement.
Muntashir’s response was not a defence of the film. It was a defence of a specific body of work inside a film he has already condemned.
“Adipurush was a very bad film, the dialogues were even worse, but the songs—every child in the country sings them,” he wrote in Hindi. “Go to Shri Ayodhya sometime, and you’ll hear nothing but Adipurush songs playing in every alley.”
He then drew the line that has defined his public posture since the film’s collapse. “The mistake I made, I’ve apologised to the Ram devotees for it countless times, and forgiveness was granted, but don’t challenge the songs. There was no lack of devotion, dedication, or poetry in them. I didn’t write nursery rhymes for Ram, nor qawwalis.”
The timing is not accidental. Muntashir had shared Tu Hai Sheetal Dhara, a track from Adipurush, on X on October 25 — the same day Mangal Rang dropped. That move invited the comparison he then rejected, and it fed a suspicion among his critics that he is using the Ramayana publicity cycle to remind audiences of his own devotional writing.
Why the Songs Are a Separate Argument
Adipurush, released in 2023, was directed by Om Raut and starred Prabhas, Kriti Sanon and Saif Ali Khan. It carried a reported budget of ₹550 crore and ended its run more than ₹200 crore short of breaking even. It is widely described as Bollywood’s biggest box-office bomb.
The dialogue drew the loudest anger. Phrases in the film were criticised as crude and tonally wrong for an adaptation of the Ramayana. Muntashir apologised publicly in December 2023 and again in July 2026, when he called the project “the biggest mistake of my life” and said he was ashamed of the lines he wrote.
The music, composed by Ajay-Atul, had a different reception. Songs such as Jai Shri Ram and Tu Hai Sheetal Dhara travelled independently of the film’s reputation, particularly in Ayodhya, where they became staple temple-town playlist material. Muntashir is factually on solid ground when he says the soundtrack outlived the film’s infamy.
That distinction matters in an industry where writers are usually forced to either defend a failed project wholesale or disown it entirely. Muntashir is attempting a third position: accepting the verdict on his dialogue while refusing to let that verdict contaminate his lyrics. Whether the audience accepts that split is another question.
The Ramayana Comparison Is Not Going Away
Mangal Rang features Ranbir Kapoor as Ram and Sai Pallavi as Sita in a wedding sequence. Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal sing the track. Almost immediately, listeners on X compared its arrangement to Kun Faya Kun from Rockstar and questioned whether Sufi and qawwali cadences belonged in a Valmiki Ramayana adaptation. Some also flagged a staging choice — Sita watching Ram during a pre-wedding ritual — as culturally inaccurate.
Rahman has responded to the backlash with visible fatigue, saying he has done his work sincerely and has little energy left to track online feedback.
Nitesh Tiwari’s two-part Ramayana is a different commercial animal from Adipurush. It opens on November 5, 2026, with advance bookings that began on Dussehra and pre-sales in the U.S. crossing $100,000 within days. The budget and scale are comparable, but the pre-release mood is not. Where Adipurush arrived with scepticism, Ramayana arrives with the kind of advance-booking heat that usually insulates a film from early online noise.
That contrast is precisely why Muntashir’s October 25 post looked like counter-programming. If Ramayana succeeds, his argument that Adipurush‘s songs were the one part worth salvaging becomes easier to sell. If Ramayana‘s music keeps drawing qawwali complaints, his “I wish my stunt had been repeated” line reads less like bitterness and more like a writer protecting his record.
What He Said in August
Muntashir has been consistent about the comparison, even before the Mangal Rang fight. Speaking to reporters in Mumbai in August 2026, he said it was “better not to compare Ramayana with Adipurush” and repeated that Adipurush was “a failed attempt.” He also praised Yash’s casting as Ravana and said he hoped Ramayana‘s music would match and exceed what Adipurush achieved.
That version of Muntashir — gracious, self-deprecating, willing to wish a rival well — is the same man who wrote the October 28 post. The difference is provocation. A news report framing Ramayana‘s music as a repeat of his “stunt” turned a measured position into a fight, and Muntashir took it.
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The trolling that followed was predictable. Replies accused him of self-obsession and of quietly hoping Ramayana fails so his soundtrack looks better by comparison. Some of that criticism is fair. The October 25 post was not a neutral act. But the substantive claim — that a film’s dialogue and its songs are separate works with separate authors and separate afterlives — is not unreasonable, and it is the only part of the Adipurush wreckage Muntashir still controls.
He has apologised for the rest. He will not apologise for this.
Also Read: Toxic Box Office Verdict: Is Yash’s ₹500 Crore Film a Bigger Flop Than Adipurush? Full Breakdown
This is the rare Bollywood defence that asks audiences to review the evidence rather than the defendant — and Muntashir’s lyrics, unlike his dialogue, still make a case.
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