Some legacies announce themselves loudly. Others surface up , years later, when you least expect them. The Kapoor family’s connection to Lord Ram is very much the latter kind.

With the first glimpse of Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Ram in Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana unveiled on Hanuman Jayanti this year, the internet understandably erupted. But underneath all the excitement about the visuals, the scale, and the star cast lay a piece of history that deserved far more attention than it received. Ranbir is not the first Kapoor to have carried the weight of that role on screen. His great-grandfather, the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor, did it 93 years ago in a film that, by any reasonable measure, changed the course of Indian cinema.

In 1933, director Debaki Bose brought the story of the Ramayana to the screen with Seeta, produced by the East India Film Company. It was a landmark Bengali talkie that went on to achieve recognition far beyond its borders. Based on the Uttar Kand of the Ramayana, the film was among the first Bengali talkies and later enjoyed a Hindi release as well, becoming one of the earliest major Indian films to cross language barriers.

At the centre of it was a 28-year-old Prithviraj Kapoor as Lord Ram. By this time, he had already achieved fame with Alam Ara and cemented his status as one of the top stars of the period. Opposite him, actress Durga Khote played Sita, in what was her entry into Hindi cinema after working exclusively in Marathi films. She would later become a prominent character artiste in films such as Mughal-e-Azam, Bobby, Karz, and Abhimaan.

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Gul Hamid played Laxman, while Prithviraj’s younger brother Trilok Kapoor appeared as Luv, Lord Ram’s son, in one of his early film roles. The two brothers were the first members of the Kapoor family to enter the film industry.

Coinciding with Hanuman Jayanti 2026, the makers of the new Ramayana unveiled a glimpse of Ranbir Kapoor stepping into the revered role. The film also features Sai Pallavi as Sita, Yash as Ravana, and Sunny Deol as Hanuman. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari and produced by Namit Malhotra, it is being mounted on a scale that Prithviraj Kapoor could not have imagined when he walked onto Debaki Bose’s set in 1933. The technology, the scale, the global reach, the expectations, all of it is different. But the role itself remains unchanged. And so, in a quiet but unmistakable way, does the family asked to carry it.