Those 21 days of nationwide silence, when everything was at a standstill, took many back in the time
of partition. Even Anubhav Sinha’s ‘Bheed’ had mentioned it in the ‘uncensored’ trailer. Bheed (crowd)
is pegged on the migrant worker’s crisis during the time of Corona lockdown of 2020. After watching
the movie, one would feel that a lot has not come on the platter as a product of Censor Board’s
scissors. The movie has been shot in black and white with many gray areas that haven’t been
covered out of the ‘ban’ fear. Rather than totally concentrating on the plight of migrants, the movie
very smartly overpowers casteism which has become convenient and acceptable by many over a
period of time.
Bheed’s story is by Sinha, with the script and discourses credited to Sinha, Saumya Tiwari, and Sonali
Jain. The film is set at the very launch of the lockdown when workers had just begun an en masse
return to their villages and indeed the rich were floundering to come to terms with the unknown
restrictions. In Bheed, we meet Surya Kumar Singh (Rajkummar Rao), an ambitious policeman who
belongs to an oppressed caste and is in love with a medical professional called Renu Sharma, played
by Bhumi Pednekar. Surya doesn’t use his caste title – when he reveals it, the responses he attracts
suggest that he is Dalit. Renu is Brahmin. Surya’s coworker, Ram Singh (Aditya Srivastava), becomes
resentful when their master, Inspector Yadav (Ashutosh Rana), places the young man in charge of a
police post at a state border that has been sealed. Among the people who arrive at the spot guarded
by Surya and his platoon is a rich woman called Geetanjali (Dia Mirza) who’s in a hurry to pick up her
daughter from the hostel. Geetanjali fears that if her estranged hubby gets there first, his early
appearance might hamper the ongoing custody. She’s accompanied by her driver Kanhaiya (Sushil
Pandey). Also, there’s a busload of workers and their families, led by Balram Trivedi (Pankaj Kapoor)
and Dubey( Virendra Saxena). A dutiful young woman (Aditi Subedi) is trying to get her drunk father
(Omkar Das Manikpuri) home. And a journalist (Kritika Kamra) does ground reporting.
The movie constantly talks about fake news and reporting during the time of the pandemic through
media channels and WhatsApp. The movie’s central theme trickily digresses to religious bigotry
(merely touching it in the name of Tablaghi Jamat) and caste oppression. The writers do not see
Surya and Renu as individuals but they scan them through the lens of the caste that they belong to.
There is no dire need to point out somebody’s caste consciously all the time. Surya’s line to Renu,
“न्याय हमेशा शक्तिशाली के हाथ में है, शर्माजी। यदि शक्तिहीन ने न्याय किया होता, तो न्याय अलग होता ”
hits you hard. He is hurt like many others who belong to that caste group. It serves as an interesting
juxtaposition where he is humiliating the harsh fact despite being in the position of authority,
though his alliance with ‘Trivedi’ later seems to be unconvincing.
“यहाँ हमारे औकात का बाउंड्री लाइन सेट कर दिया गया है। ज़मीन पर बिस्तर दाल दिया गया है, जहां पर हमारी
मां और बाबूजी दोनो अपना अपना कोरोना ले कर लेटेंगे। बच गए तो हमारे, नहीं बचे तो प्लास्टिक में लपेट कर
फूंक दिए जाएंगे” says Inspector Yadav who is struggling to get beds for his parents in spite of being
an ‘inspector’. Imagine if someone privileged like him couldn’t use the ‘privilege’ what would the
labourers do. This was the grim reality of corona lockdown. Not just this, few young girls were using
newspapers in place of sanitary napkins (as that was too much to ask for and was unaffordable at
the time of complete shutdown).
Finally when Surya says, “हमको भी हीरो बनना है।” he is not just representing himself, but becoming the voice of the entire caste group that he belongs to. Unfortunately, the shows for such movies
would hardly have any takers which show how such issues have always taken backstage and will fail
to get a place in the mainstream industry. Bheed definitely shines cinematically, but only a few
would understand its non- compliance against the repressive regime.
-Gopi Shah
