Patna,(BiharTimes): Denying that he has insulted the erstwhile royal family of Dumraon in his latest book, “Half Girlfriend”, author Chetan Bhagat, said in a function in Kolkata on Thursday that he does not need any controversy to become popular.

 
He said that his latest book is a fiction and it just happened that one of the characters, Madhav Jha, a boy, belonged to a royal family.

The erstwhile royal family, includes 88-year-old Maharaja Bahadur Kamal Singh and his son ‘Yuvraj’ Chandra Vijay Singh.Bhagat said apparently, there are some old kings of Dumraon but he is being accused of insulting the Kingdom of Dumaron.The novelist claimed that the Kingdom of Dumaron did not exist anymore and the characters in the book were all fictional.

He conceded that he had received a letter from the old kings and that he had politely replied saying that someone has instigated the royal family.He explained that “Half Girlfriend” is a love story of a rural boy and an urban girl. Last month Buxar MP Ashwini Kumar Choubey strongly criticized Bhagat for ‘hurting’ Dumraon royal family and threatened to raise the issue in Parliament. Dumraon falls in Buxar district. 

The MP had then said that the royal family had been depicted in poor light in “Half Girlfriend”. He alleged that Bhagat had made some derogatory and false observations in his novel and that he had also insulted the people of Bihar. Both the author and publisher should be punished.A few weeks back the BJP leader also met the former Maharaja of Dumraon and his son.

The royal family had already sent a legal notice to Bhagat and his publisher, seeking an unconditional public apology.The notice refers to a statement uttered by the protagonist on page 22 of the said book. “My ancestors were landlords and from the royal family of Dumraon, the oldest princely state in British India. My great grand uncles squandered their money, especially since they all felt they could gamble 
better than anyone else in the world. Several near-bankruptcies later, the women of the house took charge as the men had all turned into alcoholics.”

“I am wondering how he can write a book without visiting the place and without taking prior permission from the royal family. He has declared my father dead in the book and also called him an alcoholic. The writer does not even know the distance from Patna to Buxar. We are the only royal family of Dumraon. There is nobody else. We fought against the Mughals, to an extent against the British as well. Chetan Bhagat has tried to defame the name of the family and insulted us. We have sent him a legal notice and are expecting relief in the stipulated timeframe,” royal family scion ‘Yuvraj’ Chandra Vijay Singh, was quoted in the Telegraph a few weeks back.