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Mainstream Indian cinema has rarely depicted the complexities of caste and its associated social problems. With Fandry (2014) and Sairat (2016), Nagraj Manjule brought caste and gender to the centre stage of fi lm-making. However, his recent Hindi fi lm Jhund fails to carry forward this legacy and adopts a time-tested Bollywood style—an upper-caste-male-saviour trope.
The life and voices of the people belonging to various marginalised communities in India have rarely been portrayed in mainstream commercial movies. The release of Sairat in 2016 and its positive reception by the Indian and international audiences was a rare phenomenon. The life and desire of a boy from a fisherfolk community were portrayed with sincerity and sensitivity, and it was appreciated by the audience with matching intensity. Sairat was unusual because it brought the issue of caste and gender to the forefront, won accolades from the masses and the critics at the same time, and was a box-office superhit. Most importantly, it narrated the story from the marginalised caste and gender standpoints.
Dharmatma (1935) and Achhut Kanya (1936) were the first few films in the history of Hindi cinema to invoke the issue of caste, followed by Sujata (1959) in the early years of newly independent India. These were followed by a handful of films in the genre that came to be called “parallel cinema” and commercial films where caste sometimes appeared in intersection with gender. Otherwise, mainstream Hindi cinema has only occasionally, and that too superficially, brought in caste. For instance, let us take the mega-blockbuster and iconic Sholay as a case in point. The film portrays a vengeful Thakur (a politically powerful and landed Kshatriya caste of North India) who hires two criminals to avenge the massacre of the members of his joint family by the dacoit Gabbar Singh and his men. Except for Thakur, castes of all other characters—the hired criminals, the dacoit and his men, and the villagers—remain invisible. Thus, caste is present in Indian cinema selectively without the power dynamics and complex relationships that underlie the caste system. This “silence” about caste need not indicate that caste is not crucial in Indian life. One may understand it as “cultural censorship,” similar to what Sherriff (2000) describes in the context of racism in Brazil. In India, it is typical of the upper-caste, middle-class people to claim to be “casteless” even as they continue to enjoy all the power and privileges associated with their social locations. The film industry dominated by the upper-caste elite does not want to talk about the realities of castes.
Therefore, it is not surprising that in Hindi cinema—which mainly revolves around romantic relationships between the lead actors—an inter-caste love affair is hardly portrayed. Depiction of violent opposition to inter-caste love affairs that is so endemic to Indian society is rare in Indian cinema (Deshpande 2007: 97). Particularly, pratiloma (hypogamous) unions, which pose a severe threat to the caste order and are thus dreaded by the custodians of this system, are virtually non-existent in Indian cinema. Pratiloma unions involve the man from a lower-caste and the woman from an upper-caste. In contrast, anuloma (hypergamous) unions might not obey the usual endogamous rule of caste, but it does not disturb the overall caste order as per the Brahminical-patriarchal ideology. Therefore, this kind of union is somewhat acceptable to the Brahminical caste order. The inter-caste unions depicted in Achhut Kanya (1935) and Sujata (1959) are hypergamous—they revolved around the characters of untouchable women in love with Brahmin men; thus, they were palatable. Otherwise, when Hindi cinema depicts opposition to love affairs, it is due to class/regional differences. For instance, in Dhadak (2018), the Hindi remake of Sairat, caste is only limited to the female lead and her father. Everyone else is casteless. Caste as a social structure is absent (Jyoti 2018). So much aversion for depicting an upper-caste girl in love with a lower-caste boy!
Nagraj Manjule made a forceful entry into the Indian film world with Fandry (2014) and later Sairat (2016) with his unique way of narrating the lived realities of caste and giving importance to the voices from below. Instead of romanticising or paying tokenistic references to caste, he keeps caste at the centre of this story to drive home the ugly realities of caste and its associated physical and symbolic violence. He uses cinema as an art to speak truth to power. Many found his films as important political statements to break the silence over caste in the film world and challenge the hegemonic presence of castelessness in the elite cultural world. As Theodor Adorno (1991: 100) puts it, the authentic culture (art) is that which “raised a protest against the petrified relations under which they lived.” Film as an art has the power to question many petrified relations such as caste and gender in Indian society, but the logic of the culture industry will not let that happen. Casteist and patriarchal forces that control the film industry will not simply allow low-caste voices to become that of the main protagonists of the films, lest it challenges the hegemony of the caste elite. Fandry and Sairat not only defied the logic of the film culture industry but also firmly established itself as “political cinema” marked by a strong sense of the politics of justice (Kumar 2021: 366).
Manjule drew critical attention for his film Fandry (Pig), which depicted the life and desire of a “lower-caste” schoolboy who falls in love with an “upper-caste” girl. The lived world of the Kaikadis, a pig-rearing ex-criminal/Dalit community, and its contrast with that of the upper castes were poignantly captured through the camera. However, it was not a commercial success. Many might have preferred to categorise it as an “art film.” Manjule’s next film Sairat portrayed the love life and the concomitant struggle of a college-going boy from a fishing community, and it was a box-office superhit.
Rural life is either highly oversimplified and/or romanticised in Indian films. The specifics of caste, class, and gender configurations are usually erased, deflated, or even misrepresented, thanks to the directors, producers, and actors being far removed from the real-life experiences of the people they are depicting on the screen. Sairat was a film where Manjule, drawing upon his lived experiences of rural Paschim Maharashtra, narrates the cinematic story (Manjule and Wagle 2016).1 He was a “native director.”
In this film, Parshya is from a low-income family belonging to the local fishing caste community. He is in love with Archi, the daughter of a rich and powerful Maratha patriarch and politician from Parshya’s village. She goes to college, often riding her brother’s Royal Enfield bike. She is the darling of her father to the extent that she has the freedom to play tabla on his head with a childlike playfulness. She readily reciprocates Parshya’s love for her and boldly displays it. For instance, she keeps staring at him during a lecture in the college classroom. After Parshya declares his love for her, she makes the first move to meet him and gives him directions about where to meet while driving a farm tractor. However, she is naively oblivious that the freedom that she enjoys—mainly due to her powerful dominant-caste family—is limited by the boundaries of her caste. In the climax of the film, the murder of Archi and Parshya by the former’s brother and other kinsfolk tells us that the social order of caste is so central to the upper-caste lived world that the couple’s escape into the city of Hyderabad and the lapse of time does not dissolve that ideology. Sairat is, thus, one of those rare films that do not feed the audience with a happily-ever-after fantasy. Instead, it shakes them and wakes them up to the realities of caste in contemporary Indian society.
In addition to the content of the narration, the skilful movement of the camera and the powerful music, Manjule also chose raw and organic actors—all from the rural Pashchim Maharashtra and Marathwada. They were true to the rural, lower caste/dominant caste, class, gender, socio-economic and cultural milieu that the film depicts. One enjoys this movie more as one does not have to struggle to dissociate oneself from the larger-than-life images that established actors inadvertently bring in onto the screen. Not having a known face on the screen is like an unmediated experience of listening to a poignant story of love and violence in everyday life. Similarly, Jai Bhim tells a powerful story about caste-based atrocities, but the film allows less space for subaltern voices as it adopts a typical upper-caste-man-saviour trope.
Jai Bhim (2021), directed by Tamil director T J Gnanavel, boldly takes up the issue of caste discrimination. This is remarkable given the near absence of depicting caste atrocities in Indian cinema. The film raises important political questions and seeks justice for the subaltern, yet it uses the Indian version of the White-man-saviour trope. Famous Hollywood films such as Avatar, The Matrix, and To Kill a Mockingbird require a White man to save the non-Whites from a crisis. In India, an “upper-caste” man replaces the White man. Article 15 is an example; the “upper-caste” police officer fights to deliver justice to the Dalits of rural Bihar.
In Jai Bhim, an “upper-caste,” urban male lawyer Chandru, played by Suriya, is the chief protagonist. Suriya is one of the highest paid actors in the Tamil film industry and the producer of this film. Thus, the character he plays gets a larger-than-life aura, and he firmly occupies the central space in the narrative. Sengeni (played by Lijomol), the pregnant wife of Rajakannu and mother of a five-year-old daughter, and Rajakannu (played by Manikandan), the Irula man falsely implicated by the police (who dies due to police torture while in custody), need to be saved because they are the Irulas, an ex-criminal tribe. Sengeni’s perseverance, determination, and struggle against all odds are not enough to make her the chief protagonist. It is a story of the marginalised told from the perspective of the privileged, a perfect example of the saviour trope. Though this film may be classified as “political cinema” that seeks justice for the oppressed, it could have been imagined better by giving space and voice to the victims themselves. Jhund falls into the same trap as well.2
The Power of the Culture Industry
Jhund (can be roughly translated as “The Herd”) is Manjule’s latest film, released in theatres in India on 4 March 2022. It has garnered much praise in social and mainstream electronic and print media, though it also received criticism. It depicts the transformation of a jhund, an unruly low-class gang of teenagers from Gaddi Godam, a slum locality in Nagpur, into a team of talented and skilful football players. Amitabh Bachchan has played the role of its chief protagonist Vijay Borade, a character based on a Nagpur-based retired sports teacher and social worker Vijay Barse who started the non-governmental organisation named “Slum Soccer.” Borade works with these teenagers and brings about this transformation. The other main character is the football team captain Ankush Masram, played by Ankush Gedam; it is based on Akhilesh Paul who hails from a slum locality of Nagpur. Paul was trained under Barse. However, Paul is away from the limelight; the media does not seem interested in him, at least not as much as Barse.
The Hindi and Marathi film fraternity and the regional and national media have praised and hailed the film as a masterpiece, though the film has not been successful at the box office. For us, the film raises several questions, the most crucial one being: Does it carry forward the legacy of Fandry and Sairat in terms of making the marginalised visible and audible as the main protagonists of the film, thereby giving the agency to the subaltern players that is usually absent in Hindi films? In other words, it is essential to observe how the film performs in terms of its commitment to the politics of social justice.
Through Fandry and Sairat, Manjule had established himself as a master storyteller. During the first half of Jhund, he lives up to that reputation. A fine story captured masterfully. The vivid cinematography is rich in details, astute, and leaves one with the feeling that if one blinked, they would miss out on something. The movie itself starts with the depiction of the slum located beside a railway track, after which the camera zooms into the everyday lives of the characters. We see them involved in stealing bikes, changing their number plates, and stealing coal from running trains. They manoeuvre the stolen bikes skilfully through the alleys of the slum settlement and the lanes of upper-middle-class localities; and snatch peoples’ mobiles, gold chains, and wallets.
We see women sitting in front of their tin-shed houses making fire with dung cakes and coal. The entire area is laden with smoke and dust, and a clear divide is shown between the rest of the city and the slum, separated by a wall. Cheap liquor is sold next to the same wall and dumping yard. Apart from being involved in illegal means of income, the characters are also involved in gambling, selling stolen mobile phones, and consuming every kind of cheap intoxicant. They get into violent clashes with rival gangs and are often rounded up by the police.
Manjule was exceptional in portraying the habitus of the other characters, including the captain of the football team—the slum boy Ankush (alias Don). Right from his entry quite early in the film, he strikes a chord with the audience and grows on them as the film progresses and convinces us that he should have been the main protagonist, not Borade. A quick search on the internet and social media returns several articles and interviews of real-life character Paul, which show that his journey from a life of crime to the life of a talented football player and coach has been received by people as a miracle of sorts. Unfortunately, Jhund follows the path of Jai Bhim as it embodies the upper-caste-man-saviour complex. Why did Manjule decide to sideline the character of Paul by keeping only Barse at the centre? Why did he erase the caste and religious identity of Barse and reduce him to a “casteless” middle-class character? We understand that Adorno (1963) neatly captures this problem as he explains the political implications of mass production of art through the “culture industry.” The cinema production industry—controlled by the dominant sections of society—produces art that maintains the hegemonic order and eliminates the voices with a subversive potential. In the case of Jhund, it seems Manjule could not resist the power of the Hindi film industry.
The Erasure of Caste Identity
All the on-screen characters in Jhund, except Borade, have social identities as low class, “low caste” or from other marginalised social groups. As off-screen individuals, they have the lived experience and the physical attributes to suit the profile. These characters remain mofussil with their caste and social identities intact. Most of them are first-time and/or significantly lesser-known actors. On the contrary, Manjule chose Bachchan to play the lead protagonist Borade based on the real-life character of Barse, the sports teacher and coach of the slum soccer team. What disappoints is how Manjule has erased the caste and religious identities of Barse, who was a Dalit (ex-Mahar) converted into Christianity in real life. First, the surname “Barse” is changed to “Borade.” “Borade” makes the caste identity ambiguous to a large extent because it is a Maharashtrian surname common in many non-Brahmin castes—both “touchable” and “untouchable” ones. What is sure is that it is not an upper-caste surname. On the other hand, Barse is a surname exclusive to the ex-Mahars (Dalits), especially in Nagpur. By removing Barse and replacing it with Borade, the Dalit caste identity of the main protagonist is erased and made ambiguous.
Second, in addition to an ambiguous surname, Borade carries a casteless identity in every other possible way. It is not very surprising as, in this country, only the upper castes can afford and pretend to be casteless. Throughout the movie, he never identifies with the slum-dwellers of Gaddi Godam, either through caste or class; and always refers to the kids as “them” or “they.” The real-life Barse’s early life experiences as a low-class Dalit individual have not been brought before the audience. Rather, his caste and religious identities are carefully hidden. Manjule remembers to bring in a Sikh character onto the celebration scene of Ambedkar Jayanti but forgets to tell us that Barse was a Christian!
One wonders why Manjule had to do this? Was it a conscious choice? Or were there certain compulsions? If yes, what does that tell us about the politics of justice that a film of this sort is expected to incorporate? Here are two hypotheses. First, “Bollywood”—the Hindi film “culture industry”—is dominated by Hindu upper castes. Most actors, producers, and directors prefer to remain “casteless.” This film industry is also known for hardly taking any progressive political stands, such as raising voices against casteism, communal violence, or gender inequality, and producing status-qouist films.
With regards to Jhund, the producers and the lead actor are influential members of this upper-caste-dominated Bollywood film industry, and they might have chosen to erase the caste identity of the main protagonist. The case of Dhadak, that replaced caste with class, may further illustrate our point.
A corollary to the first hypothesis, Manjule might have succumbed to the pressure of Bollywood and compromised with the political sharpness of his art. Readiness to discard the voices of the marginalised in favour of a dominant trope might have made him acceptable within “upper-caste”-dominated Bollywood. The dream of working with a megastar must have been so intense that one would not have minded compromising on this aspect.3 It is plausible that, for Manjule, working with Bachchan would bring recognition as a Bollywood director and not remain just a “regional” “Marathi film-maker.” If true, then it explains the power of the “culture industry” that successfully contains the radical and transformative power of Manjule’s art as a rebel storyteller and reduces him to an average film-maker. Would Manjule have liked to erase the caste of Barse had he chosen a non-descript, raw and organic actor like all other actors? All these possibilities point to the multifarious ways in which caste hegemony operates. We also want to underscore that the art of film-making is wrought by the politics of caste, financial considerations, and personal aspirations of life. In this context, the boundaries between a choice and a compulsion are not always easy to discern.
The Saviour Complex in Jhund
On one rainy day, Borade—a local college teacher—finds teenagers playing with a plastic container as a football while passing through the slum locality called Gaddi Godam. These are the same lot whom he has earlier watched getting into skirmishes with other rival gangs from the same slum. He recognises their talent and comes up with the idea of engaging them in the game of football. The next day, he convinces “the jhund” to play football in return for `500. They develop a liking for the game and soon stop caring whether they get the `500 or not. Money or not, they want to play the game. Borade now trains them in football.
The saviour complex becomes visible here. The educated, upper-middle-class, upper-caste(less) college teacher cum social worker Borade’s jhopadpatti team defeats his college’s well-trained, well-equipped team. His house (a bungalow), his family, and his son who aspires for education abroad and dislikes Borade’s “social work” and “squandering” of money on such an undeserving lot as “the jhund,” underscores his middle-classness. As mentioned earlier, his caste and religious identities are entirely erased. The audience is led to believe that he belongs to an upper caste. Kumar has called the middle class in Indian cinema “a convenient reincarnation of the upper caste” (Kumar 2021: 377), and this description fits the character of Borade very well. In Jhund, the casteless speaks on behalf of the marginalised castes, reforms them, and takes them along a path of glory. The latter are mere followers devoid of any agency of their own.
The post-interval part seems overstretched, preachy, and fails to hold the audience’s attention. The saviour complex assumes gigantic proportions with the caste identity camouflaged under the middle-class identity. Borade, the saviour who single-handedly motivates the youngsters from Gaddi Godam, is the architect of their victory against the college team. He is the organiser of a national tournament of soccer teams from slums and villages and is the mobiliser of resources and players hailing from slums and villages for an international tournament. Post interval, the struggles of several players are subplots that run parallel to the main plot, and Borade remains the hero in the main plot as well as in the subplots. He helps all the team members to overcome their difficulties and make it to the airport for the international tournament.
Jhund is also the story of the struggle of “Don,” alias Ankush, based on the real-life persona of Paul, a Roman Catholic Christian originally from Tamil Nadu. In the film, his struggle stands out for many reasons. Don is the uncrowned leader of the “jhund.” His family consists of a mother who works as domestic help and an alcoholic father. Several instances subtly show Don’s fair sense of judgment—he takes his mother’s side when his alcoholic father fights with her for money to buy liquor. Ankush fights Razia’s (a young Muslim woman from the slum who later makes it to the national team) husband, who bullies her for giving birth to three daughters. He collects contributions for B R Ambedkar’s birth anniversary but does not push the shopkeeper who criticises them for squandering the funds on the disc jockey and late-night dancing. He also makes space for the ambulance to pass through during the disc jockey dance during the Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations.
In the tele serial Satyamev Jayate, the interview of Paul by Aamir Khan tells us that though Barse did play an essential role in his transformation, Paul’s journey was his own endeavour (Paul and Khan 2014). We feel that the agency of Ankush in the film should not have been compromised and lodged into the persona of Borade. Manjule could have created the space for Ankush to speak rather than drown him out through the voice of his “master” Borade.4
Let us explain this in some detail. Siraj Syed (2022) mentions details about the legal battle between Manjule and Nandi Chinni Kumar (a film-maker from Telangana) which continues over the copyrights for Akhilesh’s life story.5 According to Syed, the production houses that funded Jhund claimed that the film would be shot in such a way that there would be no Akhilesh Paul. He also told us during an interview that he had tried to negotiate with the production team to give him space that was due. “I had told them (if you do not want) do not include (my character) in the film, but if you want to include, then treat me at par with the chief protagonist. Involve me in the interviews; give me space on your blogs.” However, his requests have been ignored. By marginalising his storyline, Manjule squandered an opportunity to bring to light the heroic everyday struggles of the subaltern class. Probably that is why the film lost its soul and meaningfulness. The making of this film is an apt example to showcase that the logic of the culture industry does not accommodate dissent but rather extracts conformity to the existing social order.
Ankush often gets into a fight with a rival gang led by Sambhya. In one such encounter where Sambhya ambushes Ankush, he commands Ankush to ask forgiveness by touching his feet. Ankush refuses, bashes a glass bottle against Sambhya’s head, and manages to escape. Other men from the gang follow him, and Ankush injures his attackers with a blade and escapes. Subsequently, Borade chastises Ankush and tells him—pair chhoo bhi leta toh kya ho jata, gidgida ke maafi mang leta (what was the big deal if you had touched his [Sambhya’s] feet, you could have begged for mercy).
The police are on the lookout, and Ankush is on the run. As the movie further progresses, one starts to feel the anguish of Ankush. The scene where he hides in an abandoned storehouse while on the run from the police is raw and stirring. Borade wants him to surrender before the police. Ankush pleads that the police are ruthless with poor people like him. Finally, on Borade’s advice, he surrenders. However, real-life Ankush (Paul) tells us in the interview with Aamir Khan that he brought a lawyer and got bail (Paul and Khan 2014). It was the lawyer who explained to him that this was the right way to go about it. There is no mention of Barse there (Paul and Khan 2014). In another interview, Akhilesh similarly narrates how he realised that he had to leave this life of a criminal and pleaded with his mother to get a lawyer. With the support of his mother, family members, and the lawyer, he managed to leave the life of a criminal (Paul and Shukla 2019). Paul also confirmed this fact in the telephonic interview with us. One may argue that such changes in the details in the narration may be allowed in artistic recreations. Still, we would like to mark that this is a change that undermines the agency of Ankush and reproduces the upper-caste-man-saviour trope.
Further, in the film, Ankush is no more on the run but is declared a tadipar (outlaw) and has to report to the police every day. In the meantime, he gets selected in the national team for the international slum soccer tournament, but it appears that he will not be able to make it because the police refuse to clear the criminal charges against him, and he cannot get a passport. The actor has displayed acting at its finest when he cries and makes this poignant statement, main sudharana chahata hoon toh ye log sudharne kyun nahi de rahe (I want to change for good, then why are these people not letting me?). Finally, he approaches the court where Bachchan gives a long “sermon” to the judge, in typical Bollywood style, about how not just Ankush but all other team members deserve to be given a chance to go for the international tournament. On the contrary, Paul told us, in real life, it was his lawyer who had pleaded and convinced the court to clear the passport of Ankush. Once again, this “cinematic change” was brought in to valorise Borade’s character by undermining the agency of the subaltern hero.
Later in the film, as Ankush is on his way to join the national team, he is again intercepted by the same rival gang. This time, Ankush tries to maintain his calm, touches his rival’s feet and begs for mercy. The rival gang goes a step forward and asks him to rub his nose against the gang leader’s feet. Ankush obliges, abiding by the advice of Borade. It appears as if the dreams of the lower castes have a chance of fulfilment only if they compromise and endure humiliation, and this is what Borade preaches to Ankush in the scene described earlier. This contrasts with another scene, where Borade is allowed to maintain his “dignity.” He and his son meet a minister to fund air tickets. Borade refuses to put up with the minister’s high-handedness and says, hum bhikh nahi mangenge (we will not beg). Casteless “upper-caste” heroes are celebrated because they refuse to bow down to anyone. The heroes from the “lower caste” are marked when they bear all the humiliation as if it is expected from them.
For Adorno, real art is a form of protest. It has the power to offer alternatives to the existing social order. However, the culture industry follows the logic of a capitalist order to maintain the established hegemony. Mass-produced art, instead of interrogating, strengthens the vested interests of social elites. Mainstream Indian cinema fits this proposition perfectly.
Manjule’s Fandry and Sairat demonstrate the power of film as a form of protest, which Adorno points at. By depicting the life of two “lower-caste” protagonists earnestly and sincerely, these films critique a society of caste-based discrimination and violence. On the contrary, Jhund disappoints as it resembles a typical product of the culture industry of Bollywood. The director is forced to follow the line that the industry would not find out of sync. Adorno (1991: 105) observes that
the concoctions of the culture industry are neither guides for a blissful life, nor a new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line behind which stand the most powerful interests. The consensus which it propagates strengthens blind, opaque authority.
Such products of the culture industry impede “the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves;” they deceive the masses and “fetter their consciousness” (Adorno 1991: 105). The celebration around Jhund, as it centres around slum life, Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations, etc, is more deceiving, as ultimately, it propagates an upper-caste-saviour model by sacrificing the voice of the subaltern. Gedam’s struggle was his struggle and was more heartwrenching and gruelling than any of the other characters. By marginalising his character and voice, the movie promotes a “casteless” middle-class character as the main protagonist who saves the pitiable lowly beings.
From the interview, one of the observations of Paul is worth mentioning here. Having spoken about the politics of film-making, he took a pause and then suddenly quipped, “the movie should not have been made.” When requested to explain, he responded, “they have not shown the truth. They do not have the guts to show the truth.” Paul’s remarks were poignant and disturbing but neatly summarised what we have argued in the article. What is more disappointing is that the making of this film also betrays the fear of telling another truth—that the on-screen main protagonist, even if it is Borade, was a Dalit Christian, not an “upper-caste” Hindu!
1 Suraj Yengde and Akshaya Kumar in their articles on the film Sairat identify both Nagraj Manjule and the male lead in Sairat as Dalits (ex-untouchables) (Yengde 2018; Kumar 2021). Kumar (2021: 378) claims that the male lead of Sairat belongs to an “outcaste” fishing community. These claims are factually incorrect. Manjule belongs to a denotified tribe called the Vadar (stone-crushers listed as a criminal tribe by the colonial government and who were denotified by the government of independent India). The male lead in Sairat belongs to a fishing community that is a lower caste but not an outcaste. While both Yengde and Kumar provide an insightful analysis of this landmark film, they have got some basic facts about the caste status of the film-maker and the protagonists wrong. The same is true about Manjule’s Fandry where the boy belongs to the Kaikadi community who have a variable caste-status in Maharashtra. In certain parts, they are classified as a Scheduled Caste, and as a denotified tribe in others.
2 Another recently released film RRR (2022) has also followed the same path with the upper-caste protagonist appearing as the saviour and the Gond Adivasi protagonist is subordinated and dehumanised (Poyam 2022).
3 In one of his interviews, Manjule admits that that working with Amitabh Bachchan was a dream come true for him (Mumbai Mirror 2017).
4 During his interview, Akhilesh also had similar observations that his life has not been given due importance in the story of Jhund.
5 The latest development is that Nandi Chinni Kumar has approached the Telangana High Court seeking a stay on the release of Jhund in OTT platforms and satellite streaming (Siasat Daily 2022).
Adorno, Theodor (1991): Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, London: Routledge.
Deshpande, Anirudh (2007): “Indian Cinema and the Bourgeois Nation-State,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 42, No 50, pp 95–101.
Jyoti, Dhrubo (2018): “Dhadak Differs from Sairat, in Gaze Not Caste,” https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/dhadak-differs-from-sairat- in-gaze-not-caste/story-VBYJicOIDHAv7AN0nvDt1M.html.
Kumar, Akshaya (2021): “Re-visioning Caste in Indian Cinema,” Soundings, Vol 104, No 4, pp 362–91.
Manjule, Nagraj and Nikhil Wagle (2016): “Nagraj Manjule Part 1: An interview with Nagraj Manjule by Nikhil Wagle for Maharashtra 1,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6XDCRIrE&t=1443s.
Mumbai Mirror (2017): “Nagraj Manjule Reveals Why Working with Amitabh Bachchan Is a Dream Come True,” viewed on 15 April 2022, https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/nagraj-manjule-reveals-why-working-with-amitabh-bachchan-is-a-dream-come-true/articleshow/60022595.cms.
Paul, Akhilesh and Aamir Khan (2014): Satyamev Jayate Season 3, Episode 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R3JVVlPPMA.
Paul, Akhilesh and Shubh Shukla (2019): “ भाऊ से भाई तक का सफर , A Ball Can Change Life—Akhilesh Paul (Part-1),” https://www.facebook.com/akhilesh.paul.
Poyam, A (2022): “Identity Theft: The Dehumanizing Portrayal of the Gond community,” Caravan.
Sherriff, Robin (2000): “Exposing Silence as Cultural Censorship: A Brazilian Case,” American Anthropologist, Vol 103, No 1, pp 114–32.
Siasat Daily (2022): “Telangana HC Orders Status Quo in ‘Jhund’ Case,” https://www.siasat.com/telangana-hc-orders-status-quo-in-jhund-case-2318557/.
Syed, Siraj (2022): “Jhund, Review: Every Jhunderdog Has His Day,” https://www.filmfestivals.com/blog/siraj_syed/jhund_review_every_jhunderdog_has_his_day.
Yengde, Suraj (2018): “Dalit Cinema,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol 42, No 3, pp 503–18.
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