Finding Bhuvan: The Indian farmer onscreen

With the discourse around farmers changing over the ongoing protests, what will happen to their traditional portrayal as heroes in the movies?

There was a time, not so long ago, when farmers were lionised as icons, heroes of the nation, as summed up by the slogan Jai Kisan (Glory to Farmers). And as it was in the real world, so too in the reel world, where the mythified farmer-hero has been a mainstay of Indian cinema — a fascinating image that was consciously promoted as recently as the 2000s. But things look murkier in real life now, with the farmers’ protests having been on for more than a year. Internet showdowns have seen farmers vilified as anti-nationals, which leads us to an interesting question: going ahead, can film scripts still be drafted from a farmer’s point of view.? And if so, who will be his opponents — policymakers, private investors, big corporate players? A village crowd is seated far and wide. There’s not an iota of green anywhere in this vast rocky and barren landscape, where a rather ill-equipped cricket practice is ongoing. It’s Bhuvan the rebel farmer and his desi cricket team, in which the 11th man is namedKachra (trash) revealing blatantly his caste identity as a manual scavenger. Lagaan (2001) is perhaps the most large-scale film in recent public memory that is woven around farmers and taxation. Cricket here is an allegorical tool of resistance to the oppressive colonial government, which had imposed a crippling agricultural tax or lagaan as it was called, and Champaner village takes up an uphill challenge, trying to secure a waiver.