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Sunny Leone's new song 'Madhuban' is just another raunchy club number. Then why reference Radha, and Dilip Kumar's original?
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  • Sunny Leone's new song 'Madhuban' is just another raunchy club number. Then why reference Radha, and Dilip Kumar's original?

Sunny Leone's new song 'Madhuban' is just another raunchy club number. Then why reference Radha, and Dilip Kumar's original?

Subhash K Jha • December 28, 2021, 11:00:41 IST
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Sunny Leone’s music video has incited a storm of outrage among Hindus, specially the priests of Mathura, who have accused the song of hurting religious sentiments. This once, I have to agree that the referential arc of the song is most uncalled for.

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Sunny Leone's new song 'Madhuban' is just another raunchy club number. Then why reference Radha, and Dilip Kumar's original?

The words of Sunny Leone’s new song ‘Madhuban,’ originally written by the great poet, the “bade dinon ke bard” Shakeel Badayuni for the 1960 film Kohinoor, instantly evokes fond, reverential memories of the great Mohammed Rafi singing for the mighty  Dilip Kumar  as Kumkum danced on the elegant rhythms of maestro Naushad’s composition. I remember Kumar talking at length about this monumental musical odyssey. “I’ve done some really difficult songs on screen. I even dared to sing with  Lata (Mangeshkar ) in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Musafir (‘Lagi Nahi Chhute Rama,’ composed by Salil Chowdhary). But nothing compares with ‘Madhuban Me Radhika Nache Re.’ It  was the most difficult song I ever performed to on screen.” The difficulty eventuated mainly in the illuminating passage on the sitar, performed by Ustad Halim Jaffar Khan in the song. It was that sublime sitar passage in ‘Madhuban Me Radhika Nache Re’ that gave Kumar sleepless nights. He took sitar lessons for six months before facing the camera to perform convincingly on screen. The end result was magical. That is Dilip Kumar actually playing the sitar in ‘Madhuban Me Radhika Nache Re,’ and not faking it like his better half Saira Banu did in the Mangeshkar melody ‘Apne Piya Ki Prem Pujaran’ in the 1967 film Aman. How much did Sunny Leone rehearse before doing her own thing in ‘Madhuban?’ The video has incited a storm of outrage among Hindus, specially the priests of Mathura, who have accused the song of hurting religious sentiments. This once, I have to agree that the referential arc of the song is most uncalled for.

Why “Madhuban me Radhika nache re” when the offensive video has nothing to do with Madhuban or Radhika?

This is just a girl in a club joined by another girl as they swing together to the raunchy beats of a song that has no bearing on Radha dancing her love ecstasy the way Madhubala danced to Mangeshkar’s ‘Mohe Panghat Pe’ in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) or decades later, Manisha Koirala dancing to ‘Bansi Bajegi Radha Nachegi’ in the same iconic voice in Subhash Ghai’s Saudagar (1991). More than disrespectful, this version of ‘Madhuban Me Radhika Nache Re’ is vexing. What were Shaarib and  Toshi, known for their distasteful upbeat cover versions, and choreographer Ganesh Acharya, thinking? Why would a girl dancing in a club be singing about Radhika dancing in her Madhuban? Why not “jannat mein  Jameela?” Or “Bandra mein Sandra?”

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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BuzzPatrol Item number Buzz Patrol Lata Mangeshkar Hindus Sunny Leone Dilip Kumar Mathura item song Ganesh Acharya Item songs song religious sentiments madhuban TuneIn Tune In sunny leone dance Sunny Leone new video Madhuban Me Radha Nache Re
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Written by Subhash K Jha
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Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He's been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. see more

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