Dehlavi

  Satyajit Ray once remarked in an interview that Indian audiences are still “unsophisticated” and “fairly backward.” Watching the film Phule yesterday, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that observation. The cinema hall was almost empty. Apart from a handful of people, there was no one else in the evening show. In a way, it felt like a private screening just for me. But the silence in the theatre was less a luxury and more a cause for sadness—sadness for the filmmakers who will likely bear the burden of commercial loss, and sadness for us as a society. What troubled me more was the deeper question: In 21st-century India, is there truly no audience for a film that tells the story of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule—their vast contributions, struggles, and dreams? Just a few months ago, a hyper-dramatised, masala-history film about a medieval Hindu king battling a foreign invader shattered box office records. But when a film grounded in real, uncomfortable history...