To believe entertainment floats above the filmmaker’s worldview is like thinking a pomegranate won’t stain white linen—it’s naive. A political film’s sacred anatomy rarely makes it out intact under the scalpel of the censor board. Yet, political films aren’t always made with the intent to tell stories of the oppressed; they’re often custom-written to flatter power, ideology, and the right kind of applause. That is not to say there’s a dearth of filmmakers who kept their ethos intact to still make earnest films about the marginalised: Nagraj Manjule, Vetrimaaran, Pa Ranjith and Neeraj Ghaywan remain a few of those greats. The cost of making films in a country that censors its own struggles remains steep and unforgiving. Sandhya Suri’s Santosh (2024) and Honey Trehan’s Punjab 95 (2025) dare to expose misogyny, casteism, Islamophobia, and police brutality and yet, the CBFC stands as a corrupt watchdog, filtering content pandering to the government and silencing dissent alike.
For a film like Ghaywan’s Masaan (2015) to exist a decade ago felt hopeful, even joyous. It signalled that stories around caste could be told with conviction and immense care. As Vicky Kaushal’s debut, it offered a promise of the actor he would become, marking an intent in choosing films that speak with purpose. Ghaywan and Kaushal both trace their roots back to assisting Anurag Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), whom they also credit as their mentor. But this is the spine of filmmaking—it rarely begins with strangers. It sprouts with those you’ve shared sets, sleepless nights, and a relentless obsession for cinema with, including the difficult, often unglamorous parts. Their early alliance held the weight of something seismic.
As Ghaywan’s second feature after a decade, Homebound (2025), earns critical acclaim, Kaushal has travelled far from where he began. Individual journeys aren’t always supposed to align. But the lanes here have certainly shifted. Kaushal paved his way through imaginatively charged films like Manmarziyaan (2018) and Raazi (2018), yet his more recent choices like Chhaava (2025), Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) or Sam Bahadur (2023) reveal a visible tilt. His acting remains sharp and his skill is indisputable. Yet, the pivot from a quietly searing Masaan to overt jingoistic and army-glorifying cinema lands uneasily. This isn’t a call for actors to wear their politics or to hold onto a single artistic line. That would be unfair and far too simplistic to expect. But Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) changed everything. It was his first blockbuster and since then, he hasn’t turned back.
Increasingly, filmmakers confront a tension between their storytelling vision and the biases that quietly shape it. But that responsibility is lost amid the clamour of commercial triumph. Ghaywan and Varun Grover, however, clearly seem to have grounded Masaan in lived detail, without filtering small towns through an outsider’s urban gaze and telling the story from within, not above. It reveals like a preserved slice of reality—still unfolding in the now, yet unmistakably echoing the late 2000s. Even Avinash Arun’s cinematography resists postcard Varanasi. It places characters before geography and fixates intimately and intently upon their inner worlds more. The harsh truth is, not all embrace this burden. It lies in answering whether the film pierces beyond the lens, production, and every barrier between the film and its audience?
In a 2015 Scroll interview, Ghaywan expressed cautious optimism, noting that the year’s successes were script-driven. He warned that despite this, screenplay writing remains undervalued, while an unhealthy obsession with box-office figures has seeped into audiences themselves. That holds true even a decade on, as Bollywood in the post-pandemic era is churning endless content, while exploiting writers, actors, and crews alike. The industry hopes that amid this vast output, something will finally resonate with audiences. Despite Masaan earning global praise, Ghaywan waited ten years to release another feature. In the meantime, he expanded his scope to short films like Juice (2017) or Geeli Pucchi (2021) and Netflix episodes in Made In Heaven (2023). Ghaywan has long spoken about caste, though he resists being boxed into a storyteller with a singular priority. There is an unmistakable urgency to tell richer stories, to explore diverse experiences. This mindset of learning and experimentation can carry a filmmaker beyond the safety of past successes, which can quickly grow stale.
Caste is central to Masaan, but what sets it apart is how it weaves together the personal and the social, showing how neither can be separated from the cost of grief. Masaan makes its first statement within the initial minute itself. A rushed Devi (Richa Chadha) packs to leave, ready to walk out without a second thought, until instinct pulls her back. She grabs her dupatta and drapes it over her shoulder. In that split-second pause lives the weight of maryada etched into Indian womanhood. Even in urgency, it cannot be left behind. Kaushal embodies Deepak Choudhary, a Dalit man grappling with his identity. The screenplay’s genius lies in the fact that it is not merely about a Dalit man’s life; it intertwines his coexistence with that of the Savarnas in a digital age that connects everyone with a single click.
In an internet cafe, Deepak and his friends help him locate Shaalu Gupta (Shweta Tripathi) on Facebook after he exchanges brief words with her at a pani-puri stall. The power to hide behind a screen and make the first move—especially in a caste-entrenched India—would be unthinkable in a generation before. Even in the film’s opening, Devi’s private moment watching porn before meeting Piyush, reveals a quiet liberation carved out by internet access. Shaalu and Deepak’s love is achingly sweet and impatient, needing a medium (Facebook) to become “friends” first before anything else. At a time when digital breadcrumbs pass for intimacy, their love germinates from music, shayari & shy glances. Devi Pathak (Richa Chadha) and Piyush Agarwal (Saurabh Chaudhary), like them, are young lovers brimming with curiosity. They check into a shady motel to make love, as their private moment is invaded by the police, exposing the state’s reach into even the most intimate spaces. Devi’s sexuality is turned against her, as the police threatens to frame her for abetment to suicide. Her father reads it as a stain on their caste and her womanhood. Masaan leads its viewers through a journey of resurrecting normalcy, surrounded by the most heinous of circumstances. It recognises a resistance to freeing sex from shame and to women owning their desire. On OTT, this scene doesn’t exist anymore. Ten years later, the film still remains acutely relevant, exposing the cost of consensual love in an India that can’t protect it, even in fiction.
The most compelling arc that still mirrors modern India and its semi-urban realities, is Vidhyadhar Pathak’s (Sanjay Mishra). A man caught on the slope of liberalism, his progress is still anchored by religion, caste and inherited social structures. When Devi’s maryada is at stake, he tells Inspector Mishra (Bhagwan Tiwari) that he’s “Pathak, Vidhyadhar Pathak.” The Brahmin surname precedes the first name in an attempt to save her honour. Yet, corruption here, in all its irony, sees no caste. When Jhonta (Nikhil Sahni) nearly drowns after a reckless bet, Pathak breaks—not just from fear, but the guilt of dragging a child into failures and dangers of his own making. The stoic, caste-bound man finally collapses, stripped of dignity after being blackmailed, judged and cornered. He still stands for a generation of Indian parents caught between deep-rooted conditioning and the autonomy of those they raise. Some manage to say “Jaa Simran, jee le apni zindagi” while others stay locked in the same loop until the very end.
It isn’t new to read Masaan as an allegory for the cyclical nature of life, death and closure, though it reaches far beyond that. It lays bare the human toll of surviving in a world already rigged—steeped in surveillance, shame, corruption, misogyny and caste. The river is as political as it is personal and communal. When Shaalu’s bus plunges into the Ganges, the river swallows her whole—the same river that once witnessed their first kiss. Piyush too, ends up being cremated on the same Ganga ghats, as Devi is denied grief even in death and expected to mourn from afar. The screenplay sharpens this struggle by situating it in Varanasi, India’s spiritual capital, where moksha or liberation from rebirth is said to be granted to those who die there. Yet Deepak and Devi are the only ones who are able to break free from this illusion.
Masaan recognises that Deepak’s grief and Devi’s reckoning drive the film, more than her defiance or his caste. Their individual catharsis matters more than the labels it might invite. The fire from the pyre also fuels another’s stove. Every flame carries its own fate, so does each person. Allahabad is both a destination and beginning for Deepak and Devi. The Triveni Sangam—where Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati meet—holds this collision. Devi perhaps represents freedom; Deepak, renewal, and the third, which lingers blurrily, is an illusive hope. The philosophy of three also reflects in its album by Indian Ocean in Tu Kisi Rail Si (the insurgence of thrill), Mann Kasturi Re (ache of loss & incompleteness) and finally, Bhor (a quiet release).
Partnering with Karan Johar, as he had long hoped to, for this project, Ghaywan adapted Basharat Peer’s essay ‘Taking Amrit Home’ with Homebound (2025), earning a nine-minute ovation at Cannes. Ghaywan once again anchors his work in caste and religion, but the storytelling doesn’t lean on the relevancy of social evils to be triumphant. It unfolds from a place of narrative instinct, where the conflict is lived, not positioned. To be free from the performativeness of representation politics in films, while still holding space for identities rooted in truth—that is where Ghaywan’s real authorship lies, which he has proven even in Masaan.
So how does it feel to rewatch Masaan after a decade? A bittersweet mourning lingers—for rooted storytelling, stolen glances and the quiet inevitability of tragedies. As Devi, Piyush, Deepak and Shaalu’s lives cross through fate, Shaalu’s submerged ring brings luck to Vidyadhar while Devi’s gift floats away, perhaps waiting to be found by someone else. These remnants are markers of a cycle that won’t end, unless someone dares to rise from the rubble and run toward a life of their own design.
