Written by Mithila Naik-Satam, Maharashtra
“Humko duniya ne roj dekha hai, phir bhi undekha, ye ‘jhund’ hai!” (they see us, alright, and yet they make us invisible, unseen)
As the camera pans through the basti of Gaddigodam, Nagpur, I see very familiar scenes of boys, embroiled in scuffles and kids smoking pot and bunking school—working in the space of community development and upskilling youth in bastis I am aware that these directionless and desperate youth are a product of the societies oppressive structure. The fact is: they are not criminals but victims.
The film “Jhund” is based on the real-life experience of Vijay Barse, who founded the non-governmental organization Slum Soccer. In an episode of Aamir Khan hosted “Satyameva Jayate”, Barse shared: “I realized that these kids were away from bad habits as long as they were playing on the field. What else can a teacher give?”
Barse in the early 2000s while working as a sports coach at Nagpur’s Hislop College, spotted a few kids as they were kicking around a broken bucket in the rain. Thus began the journey of “Zopadpatti Football” in 2002, which eventually became famous as “Slum Soccer”.
The film, Jhund is about a group of young kids from a slum area in Nagpur known as Gaddigodam – who catches the eye of sports coach Vijay Borade (played by Amitabh Bachchan). While these underprivileged kids have a roof over their heads, they have no clarity or goal in life.
They rob phones and gold chains to finance their drugs and alcohol addiction and are a familiar face to the local cops. The film weaves the tale of how the sport soon becomes a ray of hope, motivating the slum kids to leave behind the world of crime dreaming of a brighter future.
Casteism Is India’s Achilles Heel
With wide shots of the school and slum next to each other, the director never makes us forget the realities with cinematographer Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti.
The slum and the college playground are separated by a wall, and it is that divide—two different lives, two different worlds, two different futures—and it forms the crux of Jhund.
Caste and casteism have been India’s Achilles heel for a long time but Indian cinema often refused to acknowledge this.
Nagraj Manuje’s work has always been political, and Jhund is no exception with a bold depiction of Phule-Ambedkarite politics with characters greeting each other with “Jai Bhim” and icons of Maharashtra’s anti-caste movement seen repeatedly.
There is an indisputable victory in Manjule bringing to the Bollywood screen a scene in which coach Borade pays his respects to Dr BR Ambedkar with kids seen celebrating Ambedkar jayanti, a first in any Hindi film.
In a country dominated by majoritarian casteists, this proud declaration of Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi culture and identity need a special mention.
Right from his first venture “Pistulya”, a short film that won him a national award, where he narrated the hardships faced by a Dalit boy for education; followed by his debut Marathi feature film “Fandry”, that unfolded hardships faced by the marginalized in an upper caste-dominated village; and, “Sairat” dealt with discrimination and honour killing—Manjule’s films have told stories from the inside, humanizing the life of Dalits and depicting it in all its intricacies.
Why “Jhund” Is Unlike Other Bollywood Films
Jhund breaks the stereotype of Hindi Bollywood films not because it has a Dalit protagonist or director, but for the way, it translates social reality into cinematic imagination. What is also refreshing is that the director does not want the audience to sympathize with the characters as he shows the gory realities of slum life.
It’s only towards the interval that we get insight into the struggles and the lives of these slum children with the scene where one of the boys playing “Saare Jahan Se Accha” on a Banjo hits you like a tidal wave.
Manjule’s films always had language assertion as one of their pillars. The director, even in his previous films, has made sure to use local dialects. The film features Monica (Rinku Rajguru) as an Adivasi girl who struggles to get a passport, as she is selected to represent India to play football.
But, more importantly, this scene brings the tribal language Gondi into a mainstream Bollywood film. Previously, in an interview, the director spoke about language and its purpose:
“The language I speak is a raw version of Marathi that the upper caste speak. It’s considered ‘impure’. It took me a while to understand that any language is kept alive by the working class. Language’s purpose is expression and if whatever dialect I speak can help me express and communicate, it cannot be dismissed.”
Nagraj Manjule Is In A League Of His Own
All the three films that Manjule has directed are children’s films. In one of his recent interviews, he said that he loved working with children and also knew how to extract good work from them. Jhund has non-actors, like every Manjule film who brilliantly fit the roles and infuse rawness and realness into the film.
Ankush Gedam (in the film as “Don”, or Ankush Masram) along with characters like Priyanshu Thakur (in the film as “Babu”), and Karthik Uikey (in the film as Karthik), without a doubt, steal the show with their easy performance.
In hindsight, one of the heartwarming observations is that you do not root for one protagonist – they all manage to make space in your heart!
Two of the most powerful scenes that came towards the end stayed with me long after the movie ended. One, wherein the climax is when Ankush passes successfully through a metal detector, and second, when the slum children, sitting in a plane, fly over a wall that has a line that reads, “Crossing the wall is strictly prohibited”.
This scene celebrates the mettle of those born into oppressed communities, as these basti kids break the barriers of social oppression and deprivation. Manjule’s Jhund is a story of hope. Nudging those on the margins to open their wings and fly so high that no wall— of caste and class—can stop them!
__
The writer is a development worker from Maharashtra. Share your feedback in the comments section and by writing to features@charkha.org
Charkha Features