Long before Alpha, Bollywood had been retelling the Ramayana in modern settings, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly.
Key Points
- With Alia Bhatt’s Alpha set to offer a modern spin on the Ramayana, Bollywood’s long history of borrowing from the epic comes into focus.
- From Tezaab and Khal Nayak to Gadar: Ek Prem Katha and Main Hoon Na, several mainstream hits have reimagined the Valmiki epic in contemporary settings.
- Some films have used these parallels subtly, while others like Raavan and Singham Again have worn their Ramayana inspirations proudly on their sleeves.
There is one amusing observation many on social media have made ever since the trailer of Alpha came out. They are claiming that 2026 is the special year when a real-life Bollywood couple are playing arguably the most revered couple in Indian mythology.
Albeit in different films.
Albeit one of them in a more symbolic manner than in a direct adaptation.
Ranbir Kapoor is playing Lord Ram in Nitesh Tiwari’s ambitious mythological two-parter Ramayana, the first instalment of which arrives during Diwali 2026. In the film, Sai Pallavi plays Sita.
His real-life partner Alia Bhatt is playing a character named Sita in the upcoming spy thriller Alpha (releasing on July 3), set in the modern era.
Alia’s Sita has little to do with the Ramayana character, except that she is named so, as revealed in the trailer, because her mother’s name is Janki, another name for Goddess Sita, and that she finds herself in the clutches of the villain until she breaks free and, hopefully, burns down his Lanka.
Also, if Bobby Deol is the ‘Raavan’ of Alpha, his older brother Sunny Deol is playing Lord Hanuman in Tiwari’s Ramayana.
Which makes us wonder whether Hrithik Roshan, who has a cameo in Alpha, will end up being the Hanuman equivalent there.
Ramayana’s Enduring Influence on Hindi Cinema
India’s great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, have inspired numerous adaptations in Indian cinema, both direct (Adipurush is one adaptation everyone wants to forget) and indirect.
When it comes to indirect adaptations, many are set in contemporary times but borrow parallels, metaphors and characterisations from these epics, with some doing so remarkably well.
Sreeju Sudhakaran picks 10 popular films that evoke the Ramayana, much like Alpha, within their modern-day narratives, sometimes subtly and sometimes, not.
Raavan (1984)
Where To Watch: YouTube
Johnny Bakshi’s Raavan revolves around a woman, played by Smita Patil, who is forcibly taken away from her village by a cruel small-time circus owner, only to be rescued by a hardened criminal and performer who calls himself Raavan (Gulshan Arora).
Experiencing freedom under him and perhaps suffering from a touch of the Stockholm Syndrome, the woman tries to reform this Raavan into a better man, though his cruelty and jealousy make that difficult.
The film, which also stars Om Puri as a benevolent station master, ends on a tragic note against the backdrop of a burning Ravana effigy during a Ram Navami celebration.
Tezaab (1988)
Where To Watch: Prime Video and MX Player
N Chandra’s classic potboiler, the film that turned Madhuri Dixit into a nationwide sensation with Ek Do Teen, borrows perhaps the most common thread from the Ramayana in this list: the abduction of the heroine and the villain’s eventual annihilation when the hero arrives to rescue her with his vaanar sena.
Here, Madhuri is the captive heroine Mohini, her ‘Ram’ is Munna, her former boyfriend-turned-criminal, played by Anil Kapoor, and the Ravana is Lotiya (Kiran Kumar), a vengeful gangster who rules from the docks.
Chunky Pandey’s Baban is the loyal and mischievous ‘Hanuman’ of the story, though unlike the immortal deity, he sadly isn’t a Chiranjeevi here.
Khal Nayak (1993)
Where To Watch: Prime Video, Z5, MX Player
From one Madhuri Dixit classic potboiler to another.
This time it is Subhash Ghai reimagining the Ramayana. The ‘Ravana’ is Ballu (Sanjay Dutt), a rowdy criminal who is more of an anti-hero, with some space for a predictable moral redemption, rather than an outright villain.
The heroine, played by Madhuri, willingly enters the antagonist’s world as part of an undercover police operation and she does to ensure the reputation of her ‘Ram’ is repaired.
Her ‘Ram’, meanwhile, is another police officer, played by Jackie Shroff, who must ensure that his ‘Sita’ remains unharmed, while Ballu slowly falls for her and becomes a better man than he used to be.
Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999)
Where To Watch: Prime Video, JioHotstar, Z5
Sooraj Barjatya’s family blockbuster may not have a Ravana, but it certainly has its own versions of Ram, Bharat, Sita, Lakshman, Dashrath, Kaikeyi and Manthara.
Make that Mantharas.
Mohnish Bahl plays the Ram equivalent, an obedient and well-mannered son who leaves his wealthy home with his pregnant wife (Tabu) after his stepmother (Reema Lagoo), manipulated by her vampish friends, wants her own son (Salman Khan) to inherit the family wealth.
Of course, her reticent son is more devoted to his elder brother than to any property greed.
Thankfully, like any Sooraj Barjatya film, the heroes do not have to wait 14 years and fight a war to have their happy family reunion.
Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001)
Where To Watch: Prime Video, Z5
Anil Sharma’s blockbuster gives the Ramayana a geopolitical twist.
Lanka becomes newly-partitioned Pakistan, Ravana is the heroine Sakina’s father (Amrish Puri), who keeps his own daughter captive, and Tara Singh (Sunny Deol), the Ram of this tale, doesn’t need a whole vaanar sena to bring down ‘Lanka’.
A hand pump and a dhai-kilo ka haath are enough to bring his Sita back to his ‘Ayodhya’, that is India.
The 2023 sequel goes for a hard encore but this time, Tara has to enter his ‘Lanka’ to rescue his son.
Lajja (2001)
Where To Watch: Prime Video, JioHotstar, Eros Now, MX Player
Rajkumar Santoshi’s gripping and under-rated drama names its four protagonists after various names associated with Sita: Vaidehi (Manisha Koirala), Janki (Madhuri Dixit), Maithili (Mahima Chaudhury) and Ramdulari (Rekha).
The idea is to show that despite worshipping women as goddesses, patriarchy continues to oppress them even in today’s times.
Janki’s story in particular mirrors the Ramayana the strongest, since she is an actress performing as Sita in a stage production, where real life begins to imitate mythology when her virtue is questioned by her suspicious boyfriend.
Unlike her mythological counterpart, however, this modern-day Sita refuses to let Mother Earth swallow her and fights back, albeit with tragic consequences.
Honestly, don’t think such an episode would even pass the censors today.
Main Hoon Na (2004)
Where To Watch: Netflix
In Farah Khan’s masala entertainer, both the hero and the villain carry names associated with Lord Ram.
Major Ram (Shah Rukh Khan) believes in peace even with his enemies and is aided by his estranged stepbrother Lakshman aka Lucky (Zayed Khan) in the end.
Raghavan (Sunil Shetty), meanwhile, corrupts his own sense of righteousness through vengeance, inadvertently becoming the Ravana of his story.
His loyal lieutenant, played by Murali Sharma, ultimately becomes his Vibhishana when he recognises the moral decay of his leader and betrays him.
Ra.One (2011)
Where To Watch: Eros Now
Another Shah Rukh Khan film loosely inspired by the Ramayana, so much so that it names its shape-shifting AI antagonist, Ra.One.
To drive hard the mythological metaphoring, there is also a scene where the villain, in his human form, is juxtaposed against a burning effigy of Ravana and in the climax fight, even splits himself into 10 forms.
But instead of abducting the heroine Sonia (Kareena Kapoor Khan), the artificial intelligence-generated video game villain is obsessed with killing her son, though he does hypnotise and abduct Sonia during one exciting sequence.
Raavan (2010)
Where To Watch: Prime Video
Mani Ratnam’s bilingual film is one of the most direct modern-day reinterpretations of the Ramayana, except that every major character exists in shades of grey and even the humiliation of Shurpanakha is presented in a more tragic context.
Abhishek Bachchan’s Beera, the ‘Raavan’, is a Naxalite leader who abducts Ragini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), police officer Dev (Chiyaan Vikram)’s wife.
Yet, neither is Beera an outright villain, something Ragini eventually realises, nor does Dev’s actions resemble those of his mythological counterpart.
Vikram displayed remarkable versatility by playing Dev in Hindi and Beera in Tamil, with his performance as the latter receiving greater acclaim than Bachchan’s.
Singham Again (2024)
Where To Watch: Prime Video
Rohit Shetty’s multi-starrer draws heavily from the Ramayana, even paying direct homage to it.
Kareena Kapoor Khan’s character promotes the epic to the younger generation, while Ajay Devgn’s Bajirao Singham visits locations associated with Lord Ram’s journey.
Naturally, he becomes Ram in his own life when he must rescue his wife from the clutches of the villain, played by Arjun Kapoor, with most of the action set in Sri Lanka.
He is aided in this battle by the saga’s own versions of Lakshman, Hanuman, Jatayu and Garuda, portrayed by Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Tiger Shroff and Akshay Kumar.
It is just that in trying to tie itself so closely to the Ramayana, Singham Again didn’t have anything new to say of its own.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff
