Newsmaker | The return of ‘Ram’: No better time to be Arun Govil than now

Since he played the lead role in the television series Ramayan nearly four decades ago, Arun Govil, 72, has been the face of Lord Ram.

However, what is perhaps lesser known among fans who would light incense during Ramanand Sagar’s widely popular tele-serial in the late 1980s is that Govil was initially rejected for the role of the epic hero. Or that the actor’s family members and friends had dissuaded him from acting in a religious show as it would hurt his prospects in commercial cinema. Or that Govil realised the role of Lord Ram as his true calling before approaching Sagar.

“After I was rejected, Ramanand ji’s sons urged me to play Bharat or Lakshman and said that these were strong roles. But, my deep desire was to play the role of Lord Ram,” Govil told The Indian Express in 2019. He credits destiny for helping him and eventually played the “maryada purushottam” as a relatable young man with an affable smile.

On Sunday, the ruling BJP named Govil as its candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Meerut, the actor’s birthplace, in the electorally-crucial western Uttar Pradesh region, which accounts for about 19 seats out of the state’s 80. This will be his electoral debut.

The BJP gave ticket to Govil by dropping its sitting MP Rajendra Agrawal, who has won from the Meerut seat for consecutive three terms since 2009.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Agrawal beat the BSP’s Haji Yaqoob Qureshi with a narrow margin of 4,729 votes. His winning margin was, however, over 2.32 lakh votes in the 2014 polls when he defeated the BSP’s Mohammad Shahid Akhlak.

For the upcoming polls, the BJP has also tied up with the Jayant Chaudhary-led RLD, a key western UP player which left the Opposition INDIA bloc to cross over to the BJP-led