Jana Aranya (1975): Satyajit Ray and the Making of a Corrupt India
By the time Satyajit Ray made Jana Aranya, he seemed done with anger. This is the final film in his Calcutta Trilogy—after Pratidwandi and Seemabaddha—and it feels like the point where outrage gives way to resignation.
If Pratidwandi was about frustration and Seemabaddha about compromise, Jana Aranya (The Middleman) is about acceptance.
Ray appears to have seen what was coming. Not just corruption as a problem, but corruption as a way of life. Something that would slowly seep into everything, until it no longer feels shocking. Just the reality.
The story of Somnath is how Ray shows us this shift.
Somnath (Pradip Mukherji) starts out where many Ray characters do—educated, idealistic, broke. He wants to be honest, but honesty keeps him poor. Step by step, he moves away from that world. Not with a bang, but with small, almost reasonable decisions. Corruption, in this film, is not temptation. It is a tool. Something you use if you want to get ahead.
I see Somnath as Ray’s image of a changing India.
Opposite him stands his father, Satya. The name is no accident. Satya represents an older India—upright, ethical, and increasingly irrelevant. He is disturbed by what he sees around him, but he doesn’t fight it. He only wants his son to succeed. There is something deeply tragic in that quiet surrender.
It is the elder son, Deepankar, who spells things out. He tells his father that sex, violence, and corruption are not new. They have always existed. What has changed is that no one pretends otherwise anymore. This is the world now. Deal with it.
Ray makes it clear right from the opening scene. The film begins with blatant cheating during an exam. No buildup. No moral hesitation. This is the starting point. Corruption isn’t the destination—it’s the foundation.
What makes Jana Aranya especially disturbing is how calmly everything unfolds. Rabi Ghosh (Ray's muse as the suave Mr. Mitter) plays a “PR consultant,” but he is essentially a pimp. Housewives are reduced to business arrangements. Human trafficking is folded neatly into networking. No one raises their voice. No one looks particularly guilty. This is how business is done.
And then there are the small, almost ironic details. Mr Goenka gives up smoking—perhaps for the first time in a Ray film, a character abandons a vice. It’s a sign of change, yes, but not necessarily progress. Old habits are dropped, new ones quietly take their place.
Seen alongside Pratidwandi and Seemabaddha, Jana Aranya feels like the end of a journey. The anger of youth is gone. The corporate ambition has been absorbed. What remains is a society that has learned to live with its compromises.
Ray doesn’t judge Somnath harshly. That might be the most unsettling part. The film doesn’t ask, “Is this wrong?” It asks something more uncomfortable: what choice does he really have?
By the end, Jana Aranya doesn’t feel like a warning anymore. It feels like a diagnosis. One that India, over the decades, has sadly grown into. One side of me wants to tell Ray - why didn't yoy make Somnath resist or fight the system? And I get the answer right away. You can't. Either you cope with it, or you die.
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