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Article 15: Hard hitting, Compelling & a Reminder of the Rigid Stratifications in our Society



What if you were declared guilty of being born with criminal tendencies, separated from your parents  for no real reason or whether it was just because of India’s hidden apartheid. The entire film revolves around aukaat (Status) and jaat (Caste) of Article 15. 

This film brings to light the provision in the Indian Constitution which has been ignored – Article 15 that prohibits discrimination based on the grounds of religion, race, caste or place of birth. Unlocking the stark reality of India’s caste system, this Bollywood movie’s trailer was watched by more than 8 million viewers on Youtube! 

 However, is it really true – in today’s society over 50 years post Independence?  In a country of 38,598 villages (as per the 2018 consensus); which consists of 68.84 % of our population. This is our rural to urban distribution, yet it boasts of being the world’s largest democracy!  Solanki and Sinha are very meticulous at portraying the unjust discrimination and internalisation of disenfranchising themselves. The film is based in rural India and is narrated from the eyes of urban India. 



“Farq bahut kar liya, ab farq laayenge” (We discriminated, now we will bring about a change): the tagline of the film which is so bold and yet so evocative of the Indian society is precisely what Director, Anubhav Sinha and Co-Writers  Gaurav Solanki (and Anubhav Sinha) wanted to portray through recent crime-action thriller Article 15. The film which was produced by Anubhav Sinha and Zee Studios.  Anubhav and cinematographer Ewan Mulligan have created a very strong sense of foreboding which looms over Lalgaon, as if you can anticipate violence and darkness at each and every nook and corner. 

Kabhi hum harijan bane, kabhi bahujan, kabhi jan nahin ban sake (sometimes we have become Harijan, sometimes Bahujan, but never citizens). Harijan and Bahujan  were two different identities of Dalits and Bahujan heralded the Silent Revolution India's Silent Revolution is a sympathetic account of the rise of lower castes in North India.

The film highlights how ignorant our society has been in abiding by the barriers of the society and not breaking the barriers of the lower caste and the upper caste. There is not only caste system and segregation but a hierarchy even within the lower sub-castes! 




With Ayushman Khurana playing the lead as Ayan Ranjan as a young IPS officer he is seen representing the educated, urban India – progressive, idealistic, woke but uninformed when it happens to be about the ‘serious’ issues about the country – the side of India that he hasn't seen before. He can be seen proving his efforts to prove that his faith in the Constitution arent misplaced. 



Having a new post in rural India he is posted in an area where majority of the people living here belong to the Pasi community  (one of the untouchable communities or Dalits).  



With the rest of the cast including Isha Talwar as Aditi – Ayan’s wife, Manoj Pahwa as Bhramdutt playing an upper-caste cop and Kumud Mishra as Jatav also as a cop, M. Nissar as Panikar and CBI; and Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub as a Dalit leader and activist – Nishad and Sayani Gupta as Gaura –Nishaad’s love interest. . In one scene Aditi insists bas aise log chahiye jo hero ka wait na kare (we only need people who won't wait for a hero to get things done)".

The fear yet determination depicted through Nishad’s facial expressions were extremely convincing.  What  felt was the most heart-wrenching was the love story he shared with Gaura (Sayani Gupta).  His  monologues like “Main aur tum inhe dikhayi nahi dete, inka kachra saaf karo, kheto me kam karo, bachhe sambhalo, gandagi saaf karo. Insaaf ki bhikh mat mango bas, jo bhi kaam karte ho band kar do” (We are practically invisible to these people; work for them, do all their ‘menial’ jobs, just don’t beg your basic rights), will remain engraved in our minds for a long time.


   
Most of the people living belong to the Pasi community  (one of the untouchable communities or Dalits). These people (now known as Scheduled Casted, Scheduled Tribes OBC (other backward classes) were considered outside of the Hindu ritual ranking system of castes which was known as varna.

 He then finds out that three young girls had disappeared from the fictional village of Lalgaon in Uttar Pradesh. Two of these girls were found dead hanging from a tree; gang raped, but there is no trace of the third! He wants to know where she is and he is determined to find her no matter what! This is not just a shot but a hauntingly macabre shot done by cinematographer Ewan Mulligan and Ranjan (an idealistic Delhi cop) on the scene! 

These events were inspired by true events – the horrific Baduan case from 27th May, 2014,  where two teenage girls were gangraped in the Katra district of Buduan district, Uttar Pradesh. Ayushmann’s riveting performance as a sincere and determined police officer has you gripped to your seats in his intense and gripping act.   

There are various horrifying and glarring scenes that can send you in a shattering state of beleaguerment. One of the scenes depects the public flogging of Dalits for skinning a dead cow – which is their ‘tradition vocation.’ This scene was such a brutal scene just to watch – it could drive anyone to tears.  In fact this incidence was a resemblance to the infamous Una incident of July 2016 in Gujarat where 7 Dalits had been publicly assualted in the pretext of cow protection in Una in Gujarat –India.   

In another scene you can see female factory workers demanding for a increase in pay of just three rupees  for which they were beaten up by an entitled bully. After being questioned by him for beating them up, all he says in a nonchalant manner is “Unhe unki aukaat dikhane ke liye”. What is Aukaat? “Aukaat wohi hai jo hum dete hain.”

 Other disturbing scenes include an image of a worker – a manual scavenger emerging from a filthy, open sewer which extricates lumps of waste which clog up the drain. You can see how filthy and dirty his face and body is, covered in sludge as he goes back in just seconds after appearing to complete the job. Of course this is condemned to be virtue of ‘jaat’! One of the best scene from the film is when Ayan asks his junior officials to tell him what caste  do they belong to to which he blasts out “What the hell is going on!” 

The film has neatly incorporated music beginning with a song – Kahab toh lag jaayi dhak se
 Enacted by Sayani Gupta.  She sings of India's glaring rich-poor divide and the deprivation of her people. This is immediately followed by a song by Bob Dylan Blowin in the Wind placing the plight of this country's poverty-stricken, cast-out masses in the universal context of exploitation of the poor and defenceless. "How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man," Dylan had asked in one of his iconic songs. The movie even ends on the instrumental rendering of Mahatma Gandhi's favourite bhajan, Vaishnav Jana To Tene Kahiye.It even has a song at the interval point too – Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Vande Mataram fine-tuned by Tagore. 

It even has a song at the interval point too – Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Vande Mataram fine-tuned by Tagore. At a time when Bollywood has really discovered the ‘safety in silence’ formula this film reminds us that we cannot tun a blind eye to the violence and injustice of our country. By using the song 'Blowin in the Wind' by popular artist Bob Dylan it is not enough to just hum songs to ourselves. 
  
Whether it has been the dead animal’s shelter, the filth outside the Dalit village, the overflowing gutter, when Ayaan brings a print out of the first two clauses of Article 15 of the Constitution of India and pins it on the thana notice board for his team and for us, the audience, to read there is something in almost every scene for us to reflect back upon and think about.


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