Sadgati


Sadgati is an 1981 Hindi television film directed by Satyajit Ray, based on a short story of same name by Munshi Premchand. Ray called this drama of a poor Dalit "a deeply angry film not the anger of an exploding bomb but of a bow stretched taut and quivering."

Plot

The film is a vicious indictment of the Indian caste system. When a poor and low caste village shoemender, Dukhiya who lives with his wife Jhuria, goes to the village Brahmin to get the date of his daughter's marriage fixed, the Brahmin in turn asks for labour without pay in exchange.The priest makes him sweep his house, cut logs of tree. Dukhi does all these work without eating food from the morning. The ensuing events turn the tables against the priest, who in the end has to forgo the lofty traditions, including that of untouchability, he held so dearly all his life as village priest.

Cast