In an obscure village in Amravati in Maharashtra, a twentieth-century saint-poet found ingenious ways to combine spiritual goals with a social cause by organising religious activities that would encourage people of different castes to eat, drink and live together. Although he sowed the seeds of revolutionary progress, the saint died an ignominious death, his voice and name obscured in the chaotic jungle of historical narratives.
Now, almost a century later, this voice resonates in Arvind Joshi’s Ajaat. The Marathi documentary chronicles the work of Hari Maharaj Babhutkar, popularly known as Ganpati Maharaj, who began a religious sect aimed at ending caste discrimination. In the 124-minute film, Joshi pieces together facts and anecdotes gathered from Ganpati Maharaj’s devotees, academicians and journalists, to arrive at a woeful conclusion: although Ganpati Maharaj began a revolution that had tremendous potential, his followers have been unable to sustain the fervour.
The documentary has been screened in several cities, including Pune, Mumbai and Auckland, and has won Special Mention awards at the Indian World Film Festival in Hyderabad and the Impact Docs Film Festival in the United States of America, among others.
Ajaat establishes the insidiousness of caste discrimination by documenting the ways in which it insinuates itself in the Warkari movement, a space that has been traditionally deemed free of such hegemonies. The disciples of Ganapati Maharaj, a Warkari who identified these problems and began a new sect, are now ironically facing many of the same complexities.
Since they were encouraged to renounce their caste, Ganapati Maharaj’s followers declared themselves “ajaat” or “casteless” in government documents. Denied a formal legal status, the progeny of the first inter-caste marriages organised by the saint are currently caught in a double bind. They are denied both the material benefits that the government offers to the underprivileged, and the privileges that society offer to higher castes.
As Ajaat traces how this conundrum has eroded the social and religious movement started by Ganpati Maharaj, it establishes the idea that adopting an ostensibly casteless label does not obliterate centuries of institutionalised prejudice and oppression.
“They will not be able to grow without self-criticism, and find out what they are doing wrong by introspecting,” Joshi told Scroll.in. “Once they even know what’s going wrong, the way forward is going to be fraught with difficulties, because they are not a vote bank, they have no social place. Revolution is not meant to be convenient. It takes several generations.”
It is difficult enough to carve out an ideological and socio-political space containing subversive ideas. But the saint also endangered his life to develop a physical space for his casteless followers – a village where they could live undisturbed by Brahmin atrocities. Even as it allows writers and academicians to voice their opinions, the documentary gives voice to Dalits and people of underprivileged castes who speak of their gratitude for a man who dug wells and made homes for them when no one would acknowledge their existence.
Despite Ganpati Maharaj’s following, very little information is available about the man himself, which posed a significant challenge for the director. Although Joshi was raised in the same region as Ganpati Maharaj, he hadn’t heard about the saint until he chanced upon a newspaper article describing his work. “We Indians, actually South Asians in general, never retain visual proofs of anything that goes beyond our social norms,” Joshi said. “We simply obliterate anything that is radical.”
For instance, Joshi could not find the birth and death years of several saints whom he quotes in the documentary. In the case of Chokhamela, one of the few Dalit saints in India, he was unable to even locate a middle or last name.
“Since the means of documentation are owned by the people of a certain caste, the achievements of other people, no matter how large they might be, are written off as irrelevant, and gradually obliterated,” Joshi said. “So my research was geared towards reading as much as I could and meeting people so that I could bring out as many neglected facts as possible.”
The anecdotes and experiences shared in Ajaat offer an important alternative to conventional historical narratives. By incorporating the diverse and often contradictory voices of Ganpati Maharaj’s followers, Joshi hopes to highlight the need for systematic record keeping.
“Anecdotes make facts murky,” he said. “Oral narratives can only go so far in challenging a larger historical retelling. It is my opinion that ultimately, these stories need to be documented and fact-checked. I don’t personally have a lot of faith in anecdotes.”
The only music Ajaat employs are the voices of men and women raised in songs that are religious but also often gleefully subversive. The rich poetry of these Marathi songs, most of which are written by Ganpati Maharaj, enrich the sonic palette of the film. But the subtle nuances in the original writing are lost in the translated subtitles. Although the latter half of the documentary repeats its core insights and could do with some trimming, Ajaat segues smoothly from describing one facet of the movement to another, which keeps it from seeming disconnected or tedious in its length.
As Ajaat concludes with Ganpati Maharaj’s couplet emphatically pronouncing the end of discrimination, the irony is inescapable. While the movement struggles to stay relevant, caste discrimination has continued to manifest itself in new forms.
“With Ajaat, I simply wanted to show what happens to a tradition, or a sect, over time when there is insufficient documentation and support,” Joshi said. “To me, it’s a tragedy. I hope that audiences are able to recognise this problem, and mitigate such tragedies in the future.”
