Tag Archives: daniel day lewis

The term ‘Adivasi(Adi+vasi)’ in itself can be translated to ‘original inhabitants’. But these original inhabitants of India, that number to approx. 67.7 million currently, have been systematically exploited for centuries now. This is held as the primary reason for the Naxalite movement and is a fact accepted by our Prime Minister too. Adivasis have been living indigenously in forests for generations together but there is no dearth of parties trying to encroach on their land. Their exploitation is supposed to have begun when the British with their colonial mindset declared themselves owners of all forest land in India, turning the Adivasis into encroachers overnight. If anything, their troubles have only increased now.

Writer–director Satish Manwar had burst into the Marathi cinema scene with his extra-ordinary film Gabhricha Paus on the farmer’s suicides in Vidarbha, Maharashtra. He has again tried to deal with an unusual, but relevant and powerful subject of the exploitation of the Adivasis in the northern region of Maharashtra called Khandesh, in ‘Tuhya Dharma Koncha?’(What’s your religion?). However, he doesn’t focus on the encroachment of land by private forces, a regular occurrence in the news these days. Instead, rather interestingly, the film throws light on how the Pagan Adivasis are pulled in all four corners by dominant religious forces and even mishandled and disrespected by the government which has no understanding of their indigenous ways of life.Continue reading “‘Tuhya Dharma Koncha?'(What’s your religion?) Movie Review: A moving portrayal of an important subject”