Social Change in Indian Film Heritage: Lessons from ‘Manthan’ and ‘Maya Miriga’

There is no shortage of film output from the Indian sub-continent, whose immense catalog exhibits the diversity of language and culture one would expect from a country of over 1.4 billion people. However, the restoration of pre-digital Indian movies lags significantly behind Western equivalents. In 2014, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur launched the Film Heritage Foundation, a project that consolidates independent preservation efforts across India and the greater South Asian region into a collaborative, resource-sharing venture. Dungarpur visited Colombo, Sri Lanka this past weekend to raise awareness about local film heritage, drawing an auditorium full of curious cinephiles to his masterclass on archival process and progress. 

Then came the time to view the fruits of FHF’s time-consuming labor: supported by the French Embassy and Sri Lankan National Film Corporation, the weekend-long FISCH (France India Sri Lanka Cine Heritage) film festival screened six retrospectives. Its highlights, with the notable exceptions of already-lauded French masterpieces by François Truffaut and Agnès Varda, were no doubt its day one offerings. First up, Manthan.

“This country is in dire need of idealists.”

Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (aka The Churning) (1976), Dungarpur informed, has a very unique funding backstory. “500,000 farmers of Gujarat” is not, in fact, the quirky name of a production company, but the literal source of the film’s financing. Putting all subsequent crowd-sourcing efforts to shame, the film, a fictionalized version of a real story about a milk co-operative in rural Gujarat, managed to sustain itself solely through the support of the people it cinematically portrays (more on the film’s history here). This should indicate the quality of its politics, if not the idyll of the region it captures; in that regard, I can safely say that this is one of the most visually pleasing films I’ve had the chance to view on the big screen.

The film follows Dr. Rao (Girish Karnad), a high-minded veterinarian whose visit to a village to test household milk quality coincides with an aspiration to help the locals get a better deal for their dairy. Presently, they are at the whim of a monopolistic and megalomaniac Mr. Mishra (Amrish Puri), a man whose magnificent mustache and snide sneer befit a classic predatory villain. However, Dr. Rao, in spite of his modesty and charm, is faced with some hostility upon arrival, particularly from abandoned mother Bindu (Smita Patil). As he stops by her home to sample her cow’s milk, she decries that the family planning people have already come by the village – a nod to India’s then-ongoing population control efforts during its Emergency – and when he takes the milk without her consent, she federates antipathy toward him with the other Dalit-caste villagers. 

This openly-acknowledged caste conflict ends up playing a major role in Dr. Rao’s attempt to develop a democratic union in the locale, which is a key reason the film is considered revolutionary for its time. Add in the clashing forces of a vain headsman, a tortured rogue and Dr. Rao’s beautiful-yet-bigoted bride, and you have yourself all the elements of a genuinely intriguing political drama. In case you’re nervous that it may be too serious, rest assured that it contains a segment wherein an urban man struggles in vain to find privacy while trying to poop in a bucket. There is truly something for the whole family.

“Get rid of one devil, another appears.”

The verbalization of this sentiment in Manthan is vital. Although Mr. Mishra is borderline cartoonish, the movie is quick to correct the record that any single replacement for him will be perfectly suitable. It does not shy away from realities of domestic abuse and disjointed power dynamics for women, either. Whereas other pieces depicting provincial communities and their response to outsider-enforced modernity tend to fall on the hard side of poverty porn, Manthan strikes a deft balance between its social criticisms, granting each instance of “educated” condescension its localized exculpation.

Its long runtime is quite typical of Indian cinema, but it should go without saying that the film’s meaningful plot developments generate complexity enough to warrant each and every minute. It’s been a while since I have experienced an ending as unexpectedly satisfying as Manthan’s; beyond trusting its viewers to imagine their own outcomes, there is no ‘single savior’ in sight. All the better for validating its socialized thematics.

If you need any other reason to watch this movie, I am embedding its title song, whose lyrics were apparently written by a then-14-year-old named Niti Sagar. Beautiful and haunting, this track plays over a subtle arc of flirtation between Dr. Rao and Bindu. However, the dynamic never crosses the line into melodrama, yet another reason the film feels fresh 50 years later. We are lucky to have Manthan, and I am on a mission to spread the word. Catch its restoration at one of its international festival screenings, or perhaps embrace the spirit of open source community. 

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

A house once full must eventually empty. This contrived law of domesticity, while commonplace in nuclear households of the West, is not necessarily the case for traditional intergenerational homes of India. There, many marriages result in an increase in original household occupants. After the wife moves in, children are born and raised. Some children may head to boarding school, others may work abroad, but there is likely to be at least one representative of each generation around. After the old tend to the young, eventually the tides turn to the young caring for the old. It’s filial piety at work – and oftentimes the brunt of the labor falls on the women of the house.

When is one’s breaking point for challenging the unpleasantries of tradition? We see this conflict play out in Nirad Mahapatra’s Orissa-set Maya Miriga (aka The Mirage) (1983), an Odia-language production about the evolution of a house as contemporaneity seeps into its floorboards. The cult film, which was in very bad condition when discovered, took three years to restore. This effort was more than worth it for the 1980s time capsule the film provides. 

The Kishore family has a matriarch, a patriarch, a matriarch forebear and five children, some of whom have already married their spouses. There is a baby on the way. We are introduced to them in their ancestral open-air house as Tutu, the second child, returns from university in New Delhi. Tutu is scruffily bearded – a grooming choice he holds himself to until exams – and a bit hoity-toity. He comes bearing gifts from the capital city, including a ridiculous painting of a white-skinned toddler, which he opts to hang in the kitchen.

Under Bollywood star pin-ups on peeling bedroom walls, he tries to motivate his troubled brother Bulu to “give up his inferiority complex” and figure out what he’s passionate about. Meanwhile, his eldest brother’s pregnant wife, Prabha, grumbles with the burden of constant chores. Though Tutu likes his family, he quickly grows agitated by the close quarters; his mother admits that the environment is not great for studying. The vignettes of home and its gradual transformation thus begin.

“Anyone who goes to America stays there.” 

By no means a rigorously structured odyssey, the film finds a leisurely pace akin to the style of a Jane Austen adaptation – familiar faces, coming and going, their jobs and marriages proving influential for reflection by parallel Kishore clan members on their own life choices. Against the backdrop of neoliberal governance and increased globalization, moving outside the country has become more realistic, and with that, so does the possibility of no return.

By providing the new generation with more opportunities, do parents forfeit their claim on the children’s performance of reverent duties? Does the advent of technology mean that elders do not require as much youth-driven labor as in the decades before? Why does Prabha have to become a slave to the house while other future in-laws are free to do as they wish? These questions manifest during rooftop chats and endless cups of tea. Though Prabha feels like the soul of the film, there is no single protagonist. Each family member contributes their own thread of strain to the tense knot that amasses in the center of the house (naturally, the kitchen). Though they have their happier moments – along with a euphoric soundtrack to back that energy – the Kishores are due for a reckoning. In the presence of all this passive aggression, a house is cursed to decay a little bit faster. 

Maya Miriga’s funding woes happen to be just as story-worthy as Manthan’s: shortly after Mahapatra received his check to make the movie, it was abruptly eaten by a cow, and because Indian tradition did not permit killing the cow to prove the unlikely anecdote, the filmmaker had to fight it out in the courts. While there are no cows featured in Mahapatra’s movie, Manthan and Maya Miriga do relate in the way that they depict conflicts within communities, albeit at differing scales. With the arrival of “modernity” comes sacrifice – some for the better, some for the worse. Disrupting time-honored social structures may usher in positive change, but there will undoubtedly be those who feel victimized when they do not receive what they believe to be their long-awaited social dues. 

While Manthan’s appeals to the radical political imagination of the post-independence citizenry may be a little more overt, Maya Miriga demonstrates how geographical and economic mobility have challenged dependable divisions of labor in the domestic sphere. Each restoration offers insight into the rapid changes undergone by Indian society leading up to the turn of the century. Thank you to the Film Heritage Foundation for making these films more accessible.

All imagery courtesy of the Heritage Film Foundation website.

-Lydia