Prakash Jha reacts to Karni Sena's legal notice demanding ban on web series 'Aashram: Chapter 2: The Dark Side'

Filmmaker Prakash Jha has responded to the legal notice served to him for his web series 'Aashram', by Surjeet Singh, Pradesh Sangathan Mahamantri of Karni Sena, alleging that the series has hurt Hindu sentiments.

Reacting to the notice and the group's demand to ban season 2 of the series, Jha, while speaking to Bollywood Hungama said, “Who am I to make a judgment on their demand? We had 400 million-plus views for the first season. I think viewers are the best placed to decide on ‘negative goodwill’. Shall we leave it to them?”

The legal notice was sent to the OTT platform MX Player, which streams the show, as well as producer-director Jha, on the ground of "directly targeting the ancient tradition, custom, culture of Hindu, Ashramas Dharma". The notice was sent by Surjeet Singh, Pradesh Sangathan Mahamantri of Karni Sena.

The notice reads, "At the outset, my client states that the web series named "AASHRAM- Chapter-2 the Dark Side", Official Trailer, which was released on MX player and the same was produced and directed by no. 1 Mr Prakash Jha, under Prakash Jha Production Creation and the said web series have deeply hurt the sentiments of the people at large and it is also going to spread negative goodwill about Hindu religion on future generation to come. The character`s shown in official trailer is not targeting individual personality but directly targeting the ancient tradition, custom, culture of Hindu, Ashramas Dharma which disturbs people at large."

"Further, the ashrama dharma, recognizes four ashramas in the life of a human being. They are brahmacharya (stage of studentship), grihastha (the stage of a householder), vanaprastha (stage of a forest dweller) and sanyasa (stage of renunciation). Also, the Ashram concept in India is hope, faith and belief of young aspirants, who were willing to let go of everything and pursue their education and spiritual ideals with single-minded devotion."

"Further states that, the first season of Ashram web series shown lots of objectionable scenes degrading the image of Aashram in Hindu customs and Now Aashram-2 web series official trailer continued degrading the image Aashram in Hindu religion. My client condemn such repeated attempt to degrading Hindu religion and ask you to remove official web series trailer and stop full web series release with immediate effect."

The series stars Bobby Deol, Aaditi Pohankar, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Darshan Kumaar, Anupriya Goenka, Adhyayan Suman, Tridha Choudhury, Vikram Kochhar, Tushar Pandey, Sachin Shroff, Anuritta K Jha, Rajeev Siddhartha, Parinitaa Seth, Tanmaay Ranjan, Preeti Sood, Jahangir Khan, Kanupriya Gupta and Navdeep Tomar in pivotal roles.

After a successful run of the first season recently, the second season of the show, titled Aashram: Chapter 2 The Dark Side is slated to release on November 11.