Phule

A pitch-perfect Pratik Gandhi performance underwires the intrinsic authenticity of Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s Phule. But more than anything else, it is the abiding pertinence of the film’s theme that sets it apart from anything that Bollywood has delivered, or is likely to produce, this year. Phule has its share of dramatic flourishes, but it lets nothing deflect it from its resolve to bring to the big screen an essential story that is still as relevant as ever, notwithstanding a card at the end of the film (obviously at the behest of those with the power to decide what we can and cannot watch), proclaiming that the caste system is a thing of the past.

Bollywood seldom tells stories of Dalit assertion. It mostly sees the marginalised as victims who need the compassion and cover of an upper caste saviour. Perhaps, that’s why the inspirational story of Jyotirao (Pratik Gandhi) and Savitribai Phule (Patralekhaa) remained off the radar of commercial filmmakers. Known to pick up challenging subjects, this week, writer-director Ananth Mahadevan turns his lens on the intrepid Maharashtrian couple that challenged the prevailing social order and the upper caste hegemony in the 19th century through education and progressive values, and started a mission against caste and gender discrimination. Unlike last week, when Kesari fictionalised the story of C. Sankaran Nair beyond recognition to cash on some chest-thumping moments, Mahadevan is sedate, largely sticks to the recorded history, and doesn’t lend his work an overtly agitative tone.

In a dark, bleak world, somebody lights a lamp. In the dock this time are not the British atrocities of the 19th century. It’s a centuries old slavery that Indians have practised against their own. Writer-director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan and dialogue writer Muazzam Beg paint a weary, dystopic India where no one smiles. Brahmins like Vinayak Deshpande (Joy Sengupta) and the Head Priest (Amit Behl) are always wound up and angry – the streets belong to them during the day, how dare the lower castes walk the same path as them and defile the area? English-educated Jyotiba Phule (Pratik Gandhi) whose father Govindrao (Vinay Pathak) got land from the British is moneyed. But every day is a confrontation with the upper caste.

In this day and age, the Hindi historical biopic is a loaded genre. The stories of kings, Gods, warriors, soldiers, politicians and revolutionaries are often (re)told to divide and incite modern society. So the very act of choosing a story of 19th-century social reformers in a colonised India is a refreshing one. Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha star as Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, the spirited Maharashtrian couple who spent their lives fighting for the rights of oppressed castes and women. The film covers a span of 50 years till the late 1890s: from the early days of their activism for girls’ education to the anti-caste institution they became as pioneers of equality and progressive values.