Son of the state's former maharaja has threatened to sue the novelist

Residents of Dumraon, an erstwhile small princely state in the Buxar district of Bihar, are up in arms over the allegedly disparaging presentation of their home town in celebrated writer Chetan Bhagat’s latest best-seller, Half Girlfriend.

Angry people took to the streets on Monday protesting against Bhagat for the ‘offensive’ portrayal of Dumraon, including its royal family.

They also burnt effigies of Bhagat, alleging that he had insulted Biharis by portraying them as lacking adequate conversational skills in English.

Protesters in Dumraon burn effigies of Chetan Bhagat to express anger overthe writer’s portrayal of Biharis being bad in English in his latest book Half Girlfriend.

Author Chetan Bhagat had earlier drawn flak from actress Neetu Chandra over his novel, Half Girlfriend

Taking exception to the portrayal of Dumraon on page 25 of the novel in particular, the protesters said that Bhagat was under an impression that people from Bihar do not know English.

“This is an affront on the self-esteem of all Biharis,” Shivji Pathak, a protester, said.

He added: “Bhagat has taken recourse to stereotyping people from the state without bothering to cross-check the facts regarding Bihar.”

The protagonist in Half Girlfriend is a Bihari lad from Dumraon who lacks conversational skills in English.

But his depiction by the author, famous for best-sellers such as Five Point Someone and One night @ Call Centre, has raised the hackles of people, including the descendants of the erstwhile royal Dumraon Raj family.

Chandra Vijay Singh, son of the erstwhile maharaja and two-term MP Kamal Singh, also hit out at Bhagat, saying that the writer had presented an untrue picture of Dumraon in his novel.

Threatening to sue the novelist, he said that Bhagat had written the book basically to insult Biharis.

Shivang Vijay Singh, grandson of the former maharaja, said that the depiction of Dumraon in Bhagat's novel was far from reality.