Jai Bhim Comrade
Anand Patwardhan
•
2h 48m
Directed by Anand Patwardhan • Documentary • 2012 • 168 minutes
For thousands of years India’s Dalits were abhorred as “untouchables,” denied education and treated as bonded labour. By 1923 Bhimrao Ambedkar broke the taboo, won doctorates abroad and fought for the emancipation of his people. He drafted India’s Constitution, led his followers to discard Hinduism for Buddhism. His legend still spreads through poetry and song. In 1997 a statue of Dr. Ambedkar in a Dalit colony in Mumbai was desecrated with footwear. As angry residents gathered, police opened fire killing 10. Vilas Ghogre, a leftist poet, hung himself in protest. Jai Bhim Comrade shot over 14 years, follows the poetry and music of people like Vilas and marks a subaltern tradition of reason that, from the days of the Buddha, has fought superstition and religious bigotry.
Up Next in Anand Patwardhan
-
War and Peace
Directed by Anand Patwardhan • Documentary • 2002 • 135 minutes
Filmed over four tumultuous years in India, Pakistan, Japan and the USA following nuclear tests in the Indian sub-continent, War and Peace is a documentary journey of peace activism in the face of global militarism and war. The film...
-
Father, Son and Holy War: Trial by Fire
Directed by Anand Patwardhan • Documentary • 1995 • 120 minutes
FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR explores in two parts the possibility that the psychology of violence against “the other” may lie in male insecurity, itself an inevitable product of the very construction of “manhood.”
Part 1: TRIAL BY FIR...
-
Father, Son and Holy War: Hero Pharmacy
Directed by Anand Patwardhan • Documentary • 1995 • 121 minutes
FATHER, SON AND HOLY WAR explores in two parts the possibility that the psychology of violence against “the other” may lie in male insecurity, itself an inevitable product of the very construction of “manhood.”
Part 2: HERO PHARMAC...