‘Ramayan’s Dipika Chikhlia and Sunil Lahri react to Doordarshan’s false claim of it being the most watched show

‘Ramayan’ was re-telecast on Doordarshan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. On April 30, DD National announced on its Twitter handle that the epic show has made a ‘world record’ with 7.7 crore viewers.

The tweet read: “WORLD RECORD!! Rebroadcast of #Ramayana on #Doordarshan smashes viewership records worldwide, the show becomes most watched entertainment show in the world with 7.7 crore viewers on 16th of April”(sic). 

Later, a Mint Lounge story quashed the claim and stated that the finale of the American TV show ‘M*A*S*H’ has the record for being the most-watched television series with 106 million viewers.

HuffPost India asked the cast of ‘Ramayan’-Deepika Chikhlia, Sunil Lahri and Prem Sagar (son of Ramanand Sagar) about the claim made by DD.

To which Dipika said she had ‘no clue’ about it. Prem Sagar said that the numbers were ‘divine’ led by the ‘hand of God’.

Sagar also said, “At a time when you’ve Netflix, Amazon, this is big. The idea is to bring it (the show) to this generation and teach them. To really bring them back into the fold of ideal living.”

Sunil Lahri said that ‘M*A*S*H’s record was a combination of ‘Netflix and Amazon’ all put together. “So in that sense ‘Ramayan’ has created a bigger impact. It’s a world record in spite of so many options,” he said.

For more such updates, stay tuned to this space.

Also Read: Doordarshan’s ‘Ramayan’ DID NOT break any world records; Here’s the show which actually had the highest viewership!