After 20 years, biopic on social reformer Phule still to take off

Mumbai: On Tuesday, as Maharashtra celebrates the 196th birth anniversary of social reformer Jyotiba Phule, political parties with an eye on OBC voters are expected to pay fulsome tributes. However, a biopic planned on him by the government has not taken off even after 20 years.

The Congress-NCP government in 2003 had decided to bring out the biopic on the lines of the one on Dr B. R. Ambedkar. In the past two decades, all the four prominent parties in the state have been in power in different permutations and combinations but not one has taken the effort to make the movie a reality.

The Congress-NCP government had given the responsibility of the film’s production to the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) but the film could not start in 11 years till 2014, when the Congress-NCP lost power to the Shiv Sena-BJP. In 2016, the Shiv Sena-BJP government decided to take away the project from NFDC and floated tenders in 2018 to assign the task to a private production house.

The Fadnavis-led government handed over the responsibility of coordination and control of the Phule biopic project to the Directorate General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR). An expert committee was formed to monitor the historical facts and other aspects of the script and actual production. In 2019 a company called Eloquence Media Pvt Ltd was selected to produce the biopic after the due procedure. But after the assembly election at the end of 2019, there was a change of power in Maharashtra and later in early 2020 the Covid-19 lockdown was declared. Since then, the project has not moved forward.

When asked about the delay in production, DGIPR officers said that the department had expedited the process and production would soon start. “To speed up the film production process, we have recently disbursed the first instalment of remuneration to the production house,” said Jayshree Bhoj, director-general of DGIPR. “We have also sent a proposal to the government to form an expert fact-checking committee. Once it is appointed, the production will start.”

Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, who led the Congress-NCP government from 2010 to 2014, said, “All governments from 2003 till now failed to complete the movie on Mahatma Phule on time. As far as my tenure as CM is concerned, this issue was not brought before me, maybe because at that time, the project was with NFDC. But still, I think we all are guilty in this matter. At least now the state government should correct the mistake.”

BOX

HEAD: The justice-seeker

Jyotiba Phule (1827-1890) was a great social reformer from Maharashtra in the 19th century. He founded the Satyashodhak Samaj for equal rights for people from the lower castes and worked on diverse issues of justice like the eradication of untouchability and women’s education. Along with his wife, Savitribai Phule, he started the first school for girls in India (in Pune) in 1848. Later, he also opened a school for lower-caste students. He supported widow marriage and opened a home for pregnant women from the upper castes to ensure safe delivery.

Phule belonged to the Mali caste, which comes under the OBCs. He wrote a book on the exploitation of farmers and raised his voice for farmers’ rights and OBCs suppressed by the caste system. This made him an iconic figure for the OBCs.