Rang Rasiya is an adaptation of the biographical novel Raja Ravi Varma authored by the Marathi writer Ranjit Desai. Incidentally both these movies were based on a subject from the 19th century. Mehta came across a relatively minor (and frivolous) court case which had been brought against Ravi Varma for allegedly depicting a Hindu deity irreverent in one of his paintings, and used this to develop a suitable script.Īfter his last commercial production Mangal Pandey: The Rising (2005), Mehta chose to make a film on the 19th-century painter, Raja Ravi Varma's life. Movies require a narrative, as also a certain amount of drama and sensuality, and the script was developed to meet these needs. Also, a simple, lineal depiction of Ravi Varma's life and career would have given the film the look and feel of a documentary, which is what had happened with his previous film, Sardar.
In the present era, Ketan Mehta dealt with a similar environment in India, and this informed the choices he made while developing the script of this film. Even at that time, art appreciation in the west was in the grip of a progressivist mafia who cherished radicalism and disdained traditional norms. Very few of his works venture into the realms of semi-nudity, and these few forays seem to have been calculated, highly reluctant efforts on his part to appeal to a western audience. In fact, Ravi Varma was himself of conservative outlook whose paintings indicate that he had a strong preference for decently clad, soft-featured, ladylike gentlewomen and a distaste for brazen hussies. Given that many of Ravi Varma's paintings are actually used as icons of worship in Hindu homes, this positioning represents a major stretch of the imagination, a major effort at fictionalization. He felt that this positioning would help the film achieve more traction with the intelligentsia, and ease the path to awards and honours.
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He moulded and recast the script to project Ravi Varma as a radical painter, a strident advocate of the artistic license to depict nudity, and as a victim of conservative society. After reading Desai's novel, Mehta felt inspired to make a film based on the life and times of Ravi Varma, and set about formulating the story of his new film. He was fascinated with Ravi Varma right from his days at Film and Television Institute of India. Mehta thought that Varma was the most fascinating artist of that era and his character, persona and paintings.
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