Opinion Caste, religion and hate: The questions ‘Homebound’ makes us face

The film feels urgent in a time when even friendship seems fragile, and caste- and religion-based subjugation continue, often invisibly. During the pandemic, the inequalities we thought were fading only deepened. The most vulnerable — Dalits, Muslims — became more exposed, more expendable. In Homebound, Neeraj Ghaywan does something rare: He forces mainstream Indian cinema to confront what it usually avoids — systemic injustice.

Ghaywan has walked this path before. With Masaan (2015), he began an inquiry into Indian society’s hidden hierarchies. Homebound continues that journey, showing that even in “normal” times, caste is a chronic affliction. But when a calamity like Covid strikes, Dalits and minorities face not only the virus, but the added infection of neglect and institutional cruelty. Consider IPS officer Y Puran Kumar, who died by suicide after alleged caste-based harassment. Even those who climb the system’s highest rungs cannot shed the identity society weaponises against them. In Homebound, Chandan Kumar Valmiki and Mohammed Shoaib Ali share the same dream. That once they wear the police uniform, humiliation will end. In reality, as in the film, that dream is fragile.

Another case: IPS officer Sunil Kumar Dhanwanta of Rajasthan, a Dalit, who had to marry under heavy police protection in 2022. Achievement, it seems, does not insulate one from bias or fear. Chandan dreams beyond survival. He sees education as his ladder out. But ladders built on hope often crack. Even as we celebrate Dalits in positions of power, reminders of fragility persist — a Dalit Chief Justice of India attacked with a shoe by an “upper-caste” lawyer. If even justice can’t escape caste contempt, what hope remains for the street?

What makes Ghaywan distinct is his balance of conviction and craft. He strips away melodrama, but the emotion never dulls. One scene says everything: Chandan’s mother is appointed as a cook in a village school’s mid-day-meal scheme. The villagers protest. The camera doesn’t move; it watches the hostility gather. It feels lived, not staged. In another thread, Shoaib’s Muslim identity becomes a wound he must constantly defend — his patriotism questioned, his belonging tested, echoing the CAA-NRC anxieties that still hover. Chandan, meanwhile, hides his Valmiki surname in applications, hoping anonymity might equal safety. The fear is real, the silence heavier.

Then comes a luminous moment: A Buddhist marriage ceremony, rooted in Ambedkarite assertion. Soft chants, saffron robes, portraits of Babasaheb and Buddha — the frame breathes dignity. It’s more than ritual; it’s rebellion. By embracing Buddhism, the characters reclaim agency and align personal love with political defiance. Ghaywan shoots it without spectacle, only stillness and grace; a cultural awakening rendered through restraint.

Cinema that unsettles

Technically, Homebound is spare yet vivid. The cinematography captures dust, heat, and stillness, the uneasy calm of lockdown villages. Empty roads, half-lit faces, the weight of waiting. The soundscape stays minimal: Footsteps on dry soil, distant sermons, the whir of a ceiling fan. Editing alternates between airless interiors and open landscapes, reminding us that confinement isn’t just physical, it’s social, psychological. The pacing is patient; silences linger until they sting. Nothing feels ornamental.

Plotwise, Homebound resists closure. Lives cross, falter, and dissolve without catharsis. No neat redemptions, no tidy justice — just residue. Ghaywan trusts the viewer to sit with discomfort, to feel complicit. That’s what real cinema does, it unsettles.

It’s heartening that Dalit filmmakers are finally shaping the language of Indian cinema. Homebound being chosen as India’s entry to the 98th Academy Awards for Best International Feature, and its nine-minute standing ovation at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, are not victories of glamour but of recognition. The world is beginning to listen to voices India long silenced. And yet, there’s melancholy in that triumph. The fact that we still need a film like Homebound in 2025 is a quiet indictment of our progress. We shouldn’t need art to keep reminding us of empathy — but we do.

Homebound makes a searing point. Uniforms, degrees, and laws democratise in form, not in essence, unless the soil beneath them changes. Friendship, in Ghaywan’s world, is a fragile act of rebellion — a hope that despite our divisions, we can still belong to one another. But if the fabric itself is torn by caste and communal bias, friendship can’t hold. We need more films like Homebound. Films that don’t flinch from caste, faith, or inequality; that speak plainly but think deeply; that trust viewers to feel, reckon, and change. Because cinema isn’t escape. It’s confrontation. It’s empathy, made visible. And Homebound — in this hate-filled moment — reminds us that the fight for dignity must be lived on every frame.

The writer is a UK-based researcher specialising in caste and cinema