Ayushmann Khurrana plays a ‘Brahmin saviour’: Decoding why Article 15 is so dicey – PROSOLL LAW

Even today, I still remember the caste system so eloquently outlined in our Civics textbook — Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.

I also vaguely recall the Preamble to the Indian Constitution… that we are a ‘Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic’. But then, this was just jargon to a 12-year-old and frankly, a bunch of overused words strung together that did not really evoke any kind of feeling.

The castes, or varnas, on the other hand, piqued my interest. Maybe because it was something we could relate to even at that age — your grandmother calling the sweepers ‘jamadaar’ or your brothers using ‘cham**’ as an alternative to ‘stupid’ or your friend sadly confiding in you that her crush had ticked the SC/ST box in the admission forms and hence, this ‘love’ must end.

That’s how deep the caste system runs in India — you are casually practising it without really knowing it, and if we urban dwellers are dabbling in it, think about the situation in rural India.

This is where Article 15 comes in.

Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha’s movie is said to be inspired by ‘shocking true events’. Hazarding a guess, the movie seems inspired by the Badaun gangrape of 2014 with Ayushmann Khurrana playing a top cop and Sayani Gupta, a Dalit villager. The trailer itself sent chills through everyone — and why not? We are all guilty of playing the caste game at some point in our life.

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