Nagraj Manjule: The Troubadour of Our Times

Nagraj Manjule is not afraid of getting his hands deep into his craft. During the lockdown when he was looking for an actor to play the part of a funeral worker in his short film Vaikunth for Amazon Prime Video’s anthologyUnpaused: Naya Safar, his friends suggested he do it. He did. Much like Chankya, the bicycle mechanic in his debut feature film, Fandry (2013), who sees himself in the young boy who yearns for the upper-caste girl, the personal is always political for Manjule. He is a storyteller who speaks from his own experience, who says it like it is, even if it hurts.

His heroes are not victims. They may be ‘rejects’ of society, just like the centre­piece of his new film, Jhund, a slum built on waste, but they are not pitiful charac­ters who demand our sympathy. They are young men and sometimes young women, trying to live the best lives they know how. The trouble is the world won’t let them, condemning them to sniffing glue and petty thievery. But when they do get an opportunity, they come into their own, playing football their way, shoeless, gearless, but with a passion that is unique.

With Fandry, Sairat (2016), and now Jhund, Manjule, 44, has established him­self as a troubadour of our times, one who will not let society look away from caste. But he does it with such matter-of-fact humility that it is easy to forget his star status. When Sairat made `100 crore at the box office, the first Marathi film to do so, it did something special for both Marathi cinema and Manjule. It made people realise there was an audience for these stories, told simply, with authenticity and ambition. That it was all right to show the reality—that happily ever after is not always possible especially when it comes to two people of two castes trying to find love. As Manjule said recently, it doesn’t matter to him who the jailer is. All he knows is that he is in jail, and has been in one, metaphorically, for over 10,000 years.

With such clarity of thought, window-dressing is not necessary. It is the same in Jhund, where Amitabh Bachchan plays Vijay Borade, based on the real-life character of Vijay Barse, a retired school teacher who created a football team out of slum boys and girls in Gaddi Godam, adjacent to his school in Nagpur. When Manjule had to choose actors to play the characters in his film, he had to send his brother Bhushan to do the auditions, because he is so well known now, especially after his stint as the host of Kaun Banega Crorepati in Marathi (2019). They auditioned over 400 children to finally choose the cast of 25 who played the children in the film. Manjule then did workshops with them for about nine months before they could get comforta­ble, with him standing in for Bachchan. When Bachchan joined the cast, it took the children just a few days to adjust to him as a co-star. “Mr Bachchan would also talk to them as equals in between takes. It made a big difference,” says Manjule. The film was shot between December 2018 and March 2019 over 70 days and would have released earlier if the pandemic hadn’t intervened.

But he wanted the film to be released in theatres. “There is nothing like watching a film in a samuh (collective),” he says. Bhushan Kumar of T-Series and independent producer Savita Hiremath brought Vijay Barse’s story to him and said they wanted to make the film with Bachchan. “I did the research and understood the subject. I wrote it in ten months, narrated it to him, he liked it, and we were on,” he says.

His movies are hard hitting, but there is also a lot of joy in them. The stolen moments between the lovers in Sairat as they dream of a house by the river with a garden, or in Fandry where the boy imagines he will sprinkle love potion on his beloved and she will be his, or in Jhund when Ankush Gedam as Ankush Masram wants to live an addiction-free life. There is dancing and celebrating, a full-on living of life, where even Bachchan bows before a statue of BR Ambedkar. There is a quiet intersec­tionality of the peripherals here, as in his short film Vaikunth, where a young Muslim boy asks the funeral worker’s son to play with him. “It is not good if we oppress each other. If Covid-19 has taught us anything it is that the only way we can resolve our troubles is together,” he says. He underplays his importance as a filmmaker: “I haven’t reached the moon. Every slum you look at in India, what do you see? A statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar, blue walls. I am merely showing you what you turn away from,” he adds.

IN DOING THAT, he has become an inspiration for many. Akash Thosar, the young protagonist he cast in Sairat who also appears in Jhund, says, “He is a mentor, a philosopher to me. He is the pride of Marathi cinema but he does not belong only to Marathi cinema or Marathi people. He is the voice of com­mon people from every corner of the world. He is the voice of common people who are struggling for their basic rights and identity.” And he inspires them to craft their own narratives.

I haven’t reached the moon. Every slum you look at in India, what do you see? A statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar, blue walls. I am merely showing you what you turn away from, says Nagraj Manjule, filmmaker

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Manjule grew up in Jeur village in the Solapur district of Maharashtra. He belongs to the traditionally nomadic Waddar community, and like many— but not all—before him, has used education to empower himself, doing a Masters of Arts in Marathi literature from the University of Pune and then a MA in communication studies from New Arts, Science and Commerce College, Ahmednagar. “I didn’t even know I could make films, or that anyone would want to watch them,” he says.

Sonia Ghalian, an academic, has stud­ied Manjule’s cinema and his critique of caste and class, especially in light of the experiences of those from marginal backgrounds. She says, “His personal experiences are reflected in his work, the themes he chooses for his films, and the manner he portrays Dalit conscious­ness.” He has also given other filmmak­ers the freedom to own their identities with pride. Neeraj Ghaywan, who made Masaan (2015) and Geeli Pucchi (2021), says his ability to “combine astute life observation, stories of the subaltern, with a keen eye on mainstream appeal, is truly an inspiration. And to do all that without compromising his vision is a mark of genius.”

Due to Sairat’s immense popularity, two additional shows—one at midnight and one at 3 am—were introduced at Rahimatpur in Satara district. It has since been remade in various languag­es—Channa Mereya (2017) in Punjabi, Manasu Mallige (2017) in Kannada, Laila O Laila (2017) in Odia, Noor Jahaan (2018) in Bengali, Dhadak (2018) in Hindi. Out of these, only the Kannada remake retains the caste politics, whereas all the other “versions” translate it to the class differential.

He believes films can have an impact, at least he hopes so. “The other day someone called saying he’d like to help four youngsters achieve their dreams after he saw Jhund, it’s wonderful,” he says. Manjule is acting in a new film with Thosar and Sayaji Shinde called Ghar Banduk Biryani, which he calls an “alag (different)” kind of film. He is writing too, but it’s far too early to say what.

Marathi cinema has not had a colossal star since the time, perhaps, of Dada Kondke though there has been a resurgence of the cinema in the new multiplex-dominated millennium. As film scholar Akshaya Kumar of Indian Institute of Technology, Indore writes, “Kondke’s figure rose at a time when Marathi films’ distribution was restricted to small-town theatres, and rural jatras were hosting touring talkies.” Kumar notes that Kondke’s movies usually featured the sexualised heroine of tamasha, felicity with sexual innuendos, and song-dance sequences invoking rural Maharashtra. Since then, the most celebrated stars of the Marathi film industry, particularly Nana Patekar, Atul Kulkarni and Riteish Deshmukh, have all held long stints in the middle-rung of Hindi films, and are better known for that.

Manjule has displaced that misplaced ribaldry and the second-hand fame with his quiet though seething anger. He has the ability to see the reality of Bharat and India, which makes him the star that Marathi cinema has long looked for. His perspective comes to the fore in moments such as—the stone that Jabya throws at the end of Fandry at the village that is heckling him for his Dalit status; the hacking to death of Archie, the upper-caste Maratha girl, at the end of Sairat because of her transgressive love for Parshya who belongs to the “outcaste” fishing community; and the plane that takes off at the end of Jhund even as a pub­lic notice on the ground says, “Crossing the walls is strictly prohibited. Offenders will be prosecuted”. As the song ‘Laat Maar’ in Jhund says, “Aisa karnama karde/ jhande gaad de/aaye raaste mein tere/jo bhi faad de (Do something to plant your flag there, just destroy anyone who stands in your way).” There is nothing apologetic or wimpish about Manjule’s statement of intent: he wants you to look at reality, face the truth, and see society’s oppres­sions eye to eye.

‘Laat Maar’ reminds us, “Zamaane ki nazar mein tu bhale hi bhangaar hai/Tere bhi seene mein kahin toh angaar hai (You may be penniless in the eyes of the world, but the fire burns in your heart, too).” Similarly, the fire in Manjule’s heart and films burns deep and strong.

About The Author

Kaveree Bamzai

Kaveree Bamzai is an author and a contributing writer with Open

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