Sadgati (1981) - Why the caste system is an incurable curse
Sadgati angered me.
And while watching it, I kept thinking: maybe Satyajit Ray made this film in anger too.
My anger is directed squarely at the shallow, obnoxious, uncivilised caste system of India. Seeing something rotten persist for centuries — and still being defended, normalised, even glorified.
At the centre of Sadgati is a pot-bellied, self-aggrandising Brahmin who takes full toll of a lower-caste Dalit tanner. He speaks of virtue. Of customs. Of lineage. He even espouses the moral necessity of remarriage — not out of companionship or love, but to ensure that bloodlines continue uninterrupted.
And yet, this same man cannot summon the bare minimum empathy for a fellow human being.
He can make him toil for free till he drops dead — but cannot offer him water. Or food. Or rest. Or dignity.
That hypocrisy is not subtle in Sadgati. Ray doesn’t aestheticise it. He simply places it in front of us and steps aside.
One question kept troubling me throughout the film: why does the Dalit have to go to the Brahmin at all?
So that the Brahmin can “fix” a marriage date for his eight-year-old daughter?
Let that sink in.
An eight-year-old child being married off. A man working himself to death to pay for it. A priest who sanctifies the ritual while draining another human being of life itself.
It’s wrong at so many levels that it almost stops being shocking — and starts feeling routine. Which, perhaps, is the film's most disturbing point.
What produces rage in me is not that Sadgati depicts an ugly past.
It’s that we continue to live in a society that still follows the same norms — sometimes openly, sometimes in disguise. Perhaps worse today, because we don’t just inherit these divisions; we vote on them.
Strip it down, and I believe three things continue to hold India back:
- the misuse of religion,
- the caste system,
- and corruption.
Sadgati may be set in another time, but its moral geography hasn’t changed much. The faces change. The language softens. The cruelty remains.
And yet, amid all this bitterness, there is something else I was grateful for: watching three great actors come together.
Om Puri, Smita Patil, and Mohan Agashe — each of them brings such terrifying authenticity to their roles that the film never feels “performed.”
Sadgati is not a comfortable watch. It isn’t meant to be.
It doesn’t ask for sympathy — it demands reckoning.
And it left me angry. What did you feel?
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