In early April, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had asked filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan to make some modifications in his film titled Phule, initially set to release on 11 April.
The film is based on the lives of anti-caste activists Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, the Maharashtrian couple who founded the first school for girls in India in the mid-19th century. They are also regarded as the fountainhead of the Dalit rights movement in India. The life of the couple can be summed up as one of indomitable struggle against Brahminical oppression of the 'untouchables'. Naturally, a film themed on the Phules has to portray the picture of casteist oppression and their relentless struggles against it.
But the CBFC seemingly wanted the portrayal to be toned down.
They suggested dropping caste-specific references such as ‘Mang’ and ‘Mahar’, two of the most oppressed castes, changing a line about “3,000 years of slavery” to “many years of slavery” and dropping reference of “Manu’s system of caste” from the dialogues. The term ‘Peshwai’, which refers to the Peshwa rule of the Maratha empire, was also asked to be removed.
Censoring or Silencing? Not All Films Face the Axe
An 1855 essay titled Mang Maharnchya Dukhvisatha (Of the Sorrows of the Mahars and the Mangs) by Mukta Salve, a 14-year-old Dalit student of a school run by the Phules, tells us how the rule of Peshwa Baji Rao II was a hotbed of casteist oppression on the Mang and Mahars.
“Did they (Brahmins) not consider us even lower than donkeys during the rule of Baji Rao Peshwa?...Under Baji Rao’s rule, if any Mang or Mahar happened to pass in front of a gymnasium, they would cut his head off… when any Mang or Mahar would somehow learn to read or write, and if Baji Rao came to know about this, he would say, education of a Mang or Mahar amounts to taking away a Brahmin’s job.”Mukta Salve,
Phule had, in reality, blasted ‘Manu’s caste system’, the Peshwa rule and Brahmanic oppression with far stronger words.
In the words of Mahadevan, they received “five or six recommendations” from the censor board, following which they “tweaked those moments.”
He felt the CBFC wanted to “soften something” and “take a softer stand towards society.” The film's team replaced ‘Mang’ and ‘Mahar’ with “softer” terms like “downtrodden and oppressed people.” This may have got the content “a little diluted,” but the impact will not go away, the director hoped.
The director evidently did not want himself or his film to get into any controversy that might affect its fortune. They delayed the release to allow the controversy to die down. He downplayed the CBFC’s interference.
However, film critics and socio-political commentators could not miss the point that the CBFC’s concerns regarding the portrayal of societal conflicts reflect its double standards. Recently released films widely accused of stoking communal hatred towards Muslims, India’s largest minority group, have not faced such intervention from the CBFC. They highlight that films like Chaava, Kashmir Files, and Kerala Story, which wre accused of spreading communal propaganda and distorted history, faced little censoring.
The Hindutva Agenda: Distortion of History
There is a reason why the censor board got concerned about the portrayal of caste. Erasing the history of caste-based oppression is part of the Hindu nationalist agenda being carried out by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliated organisations, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They have always been too sensitive to allow historical documentation, not only in India but also abroad, especially in the US.
In 2019, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) removed a chapter on caste conflict, titled ‘India and the Contemporary World–I’, from its history textbook for class IX students as part of a ‘curriculum rationalisation exercise’.
The chapter concerned illustrated southern India’s historic ‘Upper Cloth Revolt’, when women from the Shanar (later known as Nadar) community protested the upper-caste-imposed prohibition on them on covering the upper part of their bodies.
The chapter stated, “In May 1822, women of the Shanar caste were attacked by Nairs in public places in the southern princely state of Travancore, for wearing a cloth across their upper bodies. Over subsequent decades, a violent conflict over dress codes ensued.”
In 2022, an Indian Express investigation found that the fresh cuts in the syllabus included several examples of discrimination faced by lower castes and minorities, which were incorporated into the textbook in 2007 to “build a sense of a just society”.
During these purges, the following sentence was deleted:
“Caste rules were set which did not allow the so-called ‘untouchables’ to take on work, other than what they were meant to do. For example, some groups were forced to pick garbage and remove dead animals from the village. But they were not allowed to enter the homes of the upper castes or take water from the village well, or even enter temples. Their children could not sit next to children of other castes in school…”
Another deleted sentence was the following: “Caste-based discrimination is not only limited to preventing Dalits from undertaking certain economic activities, but it also denies them the respect and dignity given to others”.
In 2024, the textbook, titled “Exploring Society India and Beyond”, faced a similar fate. The existing version had the following: “Some priests divided people into four groups called varnas.... Shudras could not perform any rituals. Often, women were grouped with Shudras. Both women and Shudras were not allowed to study the Vedas.”
The new version only states, “Many professions are mentioned in the Vedic texts, such as agriculturist, weaver, potter, builder, carpenter, healer, dancer, barber, priest, etc.”
Caste was simply replaced with professions, without referring to its imposed hierarchical, hegemonic and hereditary nature.
Caste Erasure Not Limited to India
This agenda to dilute or erase the history of caste-based oppression has also been reflected in the activities of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), an advocacy group for Hindus in the US that has been widely seen as linked to the RSS.
They attempted to modify the history of the caste system in California’s textbooks in 2006 and again in 2016-17.
The HAF rejected “the framing that the treatment of socially disadvantaged groups in India is somehow unique to Hindu society” and demanded that “caste and caste-based discrimination must be taught as a social phenomenon, not as a religious one.”
While they highlighted how Dalit communities and the caste identities are found among all faith groups in South Asia, including Islam and Sikhism, they conveniently skipped the fact that the Sikhs and a large section of India’s Christians, Muslims and Buddhists are converts from the Hindu society.
It is in everyone’s knowledge that the caste system is part and parcel of the Vedic Hindu society, a fact that the Phule couple and twentieth-century anti-caste crusaders like EVR Periyar and BR Ambedkar repeatedly highlighted.
The HAF also fought against Bills criminalising caste-based discrimination in different US states, starting with California. The caste-based discrimination was outlawed in California “to ensure organisations and companies do not entrench caste discrimination in their practices or policies” and “to make it plainly clear that discrimination based on caste is against the law.”
The Dalit rights organisation, Ambedkar Association of North America (AANA), celebrated the passage of the Bill, calling the event “a landmark,” “historic” and “unprecedented”. They called the legislation “groundbreaking,” where caste discrimination, a “deeply entrenched issue affecting countless lives, finds itself squarely addressed.”
However, the HAF criticised its passage, calling the bill ‘racist.’ “California has reawakened its racist past in passing legislation that demonizes and targets South Asians and Hindus,” they said, adding that the Bill was pushed with “the intent of targeting an ethnic community.”
Due to such roles over the depiction of caste discrimination, the HAF has been accused of using “civil rights language around ‘Hinduphobia’ to fight policies such as banning caste discrimination.
Saffronising Caste
As a staunch critic of Brahminical supremacy, Phule constructed the concept of 'Bali Raj' or rule of king Bali, as an epitome of good governance as a subaltern alternative to the 'Ram Raj' propagated by the Hindu brigade. He publicly critiqued Vedic Aryanism zealously promoted by the RSS.
Caste-based discrimination is one of the greatest discomforts the Hindutva camp struggles with. They talk of Hindu unity, but the Hindu society has been inherently split for two millennia by the caste-based, hierarchical, and hereditary segregation of the society.
It is not easy for them to denounce the caste system and the discrimination, exploitation and atrocities it facilitated because that would anger the upper caste, who form the core support base of the Hindutva ideology.
This is why the RSS and organisations linked to it always try to downplay caste-based segregation, not only in terms of its role in modern times but also in ancient and medieval societies. As the ideological parent of the BJP, it is not a long-off comment to state that the government's education policy and even its attitude to films and art are being driven by RSS-linked organisations. The RSS has, on several occasions, reiterated its reluctance against protective discrimination. In 2017, the organisation's "propaganda chief" Manmohan Vaidya called for an end to caste-based reservations in jobs and educational institutions. Senior saffron functionaries have repeatedly called for discussions to end caste-based reservation but later changed the strategy so that the BJP does not suffer electoral setbacks by losing the numerically dominant caste votes in a particular seat.
The censor board’s noticeable sensitivity towards the caste references in the Phule movie invariably reflects this very anxiety.
(Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is a journalist who writes on politics, history, culture, environment and climate change. He has authored books on leftwing insurgency and Hindu nationalism. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)