Alia Bhatt starrer ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ receives flak, Mumbais Kamathipura residents protest against movie

The upcoming movie of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ that stars Alia Bhatt in the titular role, has been receiving mixed reactions from the audience and critics ever since the teaser has been released. The residents of Mumbai’s Kamathipura are, where the brothel queen Gangubai Kathiwadi had lived during the 1960s, are protesting against the movie, and have called it a ‘blatant misrepresentation’, as per media reports. 

The movie has been termed as an “attempt to malign the 200 years of the actual history of the region” by the residents, reports say. 

Gangubai was born in the village of Kathiawad in Gujarat, in the 1940s. She had initially begun as a sex worker in Mumbai’s Kamathipura and went on to own and manage several brothels in the area. 

Also Read | Who was Gangubai Kathiawadi: Brothel madam played by Alia Bhatt in her next

In a statement issued by the residents of the Kamathipura area, they have called the movie “defamatory” and “shameful.”

People had taken efforts to “erase the social stigma attached to the name of Kamathipura” area, the statement said, adding, that the Alia-starrer movie is “extremely damaging” to the current and the future generations of the region. 

The resident warned that they won’t “choose to suffer in silent and hundreds of them, including women and children, will protest against the movie. The statement said that they will gather at the centre of “Kamathipura to protest against the release of Gangubai Kathiawadi,” reports say.

The movie is slated to release on July 30.