{"id":11913,"date":"2006-11-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/11\/18\/thai-government-censors-ramayana-opera\/"},"modified":"2006-11-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-18T12:00:00","slug":"thai-government-censors-ramayana-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/11\/18\/thai-government-censors-ramayana-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"Thai Government Censors Ramayana Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nola.com\/newsflash\/entertainment\/index.ssf?\/base\/entertainment-9\/1163854451129670.xml&#038;storylist=\">www.nola.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">BANGKOK, Thailand, November 17 (AP) &#8212; Thailand&#8217;s new military-appointed government has threatened to shut down an operatic version of the Hindu epic Ramayana, ostensibly over fears one of its scenes may bring bad luck. &#8220;Ayodhya&#8221; premiered Thursday night and is scheduled for repeat performances on Saturday and Sunday, albeit with the &#8216;offensive&#8217; scene toned down under pressure from Culture Ministry officials.<\/p>\n<p>The matter is sensitive because Thailand&#8217;s interim government faces criticism for not lifting curbs on freedom of the press and other civil liberties. Composer Somtow Sucharitkul said Friday that ministry officials approached him a few days before the show&#8217;s opening to complain about a scene involving the on-stage death of a key character, the demon-king, Thotsakan. The officials, whom Somtow did not identify, said that portraying Thotsakan&#8217;s death on stage was taboo in Thai culture and would be a &#8220;bad omen.&#8221; Somtow &#8212; who also maintains a home in Los Angeles &#8212; said the officials told him that &#8220;if anything happened to anyone in power in Thailand, it would be blamed on this production.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.nola.com BANGKOK, Thailand, November 17 (AP) &#8212; Thailand&#8217;s new military-appointed government has threatened to shut down an operatic version of,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}