The grand success of these films is likely to encourage filmmakers to explore this populist genre further. However, such narratives may ultimately serve the interests of the current political elites, bewitch the general audience and obscure the real struggles and crises faced by agrarian communities.
The grand state-sponsored celebrations of his legacy (like erecting big statues and national memorials) risk reducing Ambedkar to a symbolic figure. This distracts from pressing issues such as caste-based violence, economic marginalisation, and systemic exclusion of Dalits and Adivasis from positions of power.
By making sympathetic gestures towards perpetrators of caste atrocities, by clamping down on Dalit-Bahujan assertion, proponents of Hindutva seek to retain the ideology’s traditional support base
