Celluloid Phule, Lifts Lid off Caste Bias

In a country where the silver screen has long idolised emperors, warriors, and freedom fighters, the quieter revolutions led by thinkers and reformers often remain sidelined. 

The biopic Phule, centered on Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule — two of India’s most radical 19th-century reformers — attempts to set the record straight. But even before its release, the film stirred controversy. 

It wasn’t unexpected. Because to remember the Phules is to remember everything mainstream history often omits: caste hierarchies, patriarchal traditions, and the moral courage required to challenge both. Jyotiba Phule was born in 1827 to a family of gardeners, part of the Shudra caste — a background that set the course for his life of rebellion. 

His disillusionment began early, triggered by the insult of being thrown out of a Brahmin friend’s wedding. That moment opened his eyes to the religious and social structures that legitimised exclusion. 

Together with his wife Savitribai — who began as his first student and went on to become India’s first woman teacher — he laid the foundation for a revolution that put education at the heart of equality. Their schools for girls and lower-caste children were not just classrooms; they were sites of defiance. 

The couple faced relentless backlash, from verbal threats to being pelted with stones and cow dung. In one instance, it was a young Brahmin boy who threw cow dung at Savitribai — a real event now recreated in Phule, and predictably, a flashpoint for today’s protests.

The resistance they encountered in their lifetime echoes eerily in the present. In the film’s case, objections from Brahmin groups over historically accurate caste references — terms like Mahar, Mang, or Peshwai — led to the Central Board of Film Certification demanding changes. 

This pattern isn’t new. Indian society, particularly when seen through the lens of mass entertainment, has often struggled to deal with narratives that don’t flatter its majoritarian ideals. 

Phule touches a nerve because it remembers what many have been taught to forget: that the foundations of modern India were built not just by freedom fighters with slogans, but by rebels with books and ideas that dismantled the caste order from within.

The Phules were not just educators — they were revolutionaries in every sense. They opened shelters for abandoned Brahmin widows and raised the children born from caste-based shame. 

They rejected the Manusmriti, challenged upper-caste dominance, and introduced the term Dalit as a political identity for the oppressed long before it entered popular discourse. 

Their work laid the intellectual groundwork for later giants like Dr BR Ambedkar. But despite this legacy, the Phules remain curiously under-represented in the national imagination — and even more so in cinema.

Hindi films have always had a complicated relationship with caste. Occasionally, a filmmaker will scratch the surface — think Sadgati, Ankur, or Masaan — but few are willing to engage with the institution itself in full, unsparing detail. 

Stories of caste resistance are often softened, recast through upper-caste protagonists, or framed as metaphors to avoid discomfort. Even in films like Article 15, caste becomes something an outsider must uncover rather than a lived experience told from within. This makes Phule a rare entry — it doesn’t just show caste as a backdrop but confronts it head-on, refusing to filter the past for easier viewing.

The controversy surrounding Phule has followed a familiar script. Director Ananth Mahadevan has defended the film as a faithful retelling based on documented history. Actor Pratik Gandhi, who plays Jyotiba, has called the censorship demands a stark reminder of the same resistance the Phules themselves faced. Anurag Kashyap chipped in too, criticising the hypocrisy of denying caste discrimination while censoring its representation. Yet the film's release was delayed, its language toned down, and its narrative made more “palatable” — a telling compromise that highlights the limits of cinematic courage in the face of institutional sensitivities.

But perhaps the larger question is this: why did it take so long for Indian cinema to tell their story at all? While revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh or spiritual leaders like Gandhi have seen multiple screen adaptations, the Phules barely register in public memory outside Maharashtra. Their names aren’t part of school textbooks in most states. Their statues don’t dot our city squares. 

That a biopic had to wait this long to get made — and then fight to be heard — says more about the discomfort with their legacy than their relevance. Because when power is used not just to rule but to rewrite memory, remembering becomes a radical act.

Phule isn’t just a film about two forgotten heroes. It is a story about how societies choose what to remember and what to suppress. The backlash to the film isn’t about whether the events it portrays are true — they are. It’s about whether that truth is welcome.

 For a nation that prides itself on “unity in diversity,” acknowledging the divisive history of caste still feels threatened. But uncomfortable histories don’t stop being real just because they go unspoken. And perhaps that’s what makes Phule so necessary. Not because it completes history, but because it insists on remembering what was buried — and who paid the price for progress.