A Critical Commentary on Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Gangubai Kathiawadi

Disclaimer: If you haven’t watched Gangubai Kathiawadi, and don’t want the plot of the film to be revealed to you, bookmark this article and don’t come back until you’ve watched it.

Before you begin reading, I want you to know that this article on Gangabai Kathiwadi isn’t about how well anyone has acted or how beautiful the sets are. Neither is it a commentary on how the plot line interweaves with the cinematography. 

Rather, this is a reflection of all the ways in which the film positions itself, ditching the evergreen hero and villain archetype format to refreshingly explore its characters as people. Here, all fronts are dropped to show the inner lives of women deemed disgraceful by society. Their constant challenges are ingrained in who they are, and within their every day interactions with each other. 

With this approach, our inner worlds are able to mirror one another’s more deeply.

How do we interact with each other? How do we perceive each other? How do we grieve? How do we use and abuse? How do we stifle and suppress the feminine in every which way in our micro and macro cultures? Why do we do what we do?

For me, it’s most chilling to note that so many of the situations, emotions, and interactions within the film are still relevant today – 60 years after the film was set.

Well before the end of the film, you’re quick to realise that the once timid, dreamy-eyed Gangubhai is perhaps the strongest female character to come out of India in a long time. In an age of fast plots and female characters that lack being fleshed out, she is well rounded – her sexuality is realistic against India’s long standing trend of hypersexualising women. 

Gangubai is not villianised or made into an overglorified, sappy and sentimental hero. Rather, she displays astonishing spirit against the media norm for how someone who has been betrayed, and traumatised by someone she dearly trusted, as well as the ways society so easily allows women to be coerced into the flesh trade, would behave. The way she handles being sex trafficked and tortured is defiant to her circumstances. She doesn’t just fight for herself to be in better conditions despite her situation. She also fights for her fellow sisters in the brothel she is trafficked into, branded by, and forced to work in.

How she quickly gets voted in as the Madame to take care of the women who work with her underlines a very important realisation: their everyday agency and lack thereof are blended to put forth a genuine expression of the human condition. These are not just glammed up women doing a job they were forced into. Their flesh being traded also transacted their invalidity in general society. Yet, they defy being outcasts; they’re a community in this together.

Gangubai is not villianised or made into an overglorified, sappy and sentimental hero. Rather, she displays astonishing spirit against the media norm for how someone who has been betrayed, and traumatised by someone she dearly trusted, as well as the ways society so easily allows women to be coerced into the flesh trade, would behave.

The film’s plot refreshingly doesn’t pit women and society against one another – but rather, weaves a very apt, accurate narrative that women are a functioning, integral part of our society, no matter the trade we are in.

Instead, the relationships we observe and experience as an audience are unique juxtapositions which explore the many burdens women take on due to patriarchy. Included in this, and perhaps the most critical relationship to note is between Gangubai and Raziabai, the President of the brothel locality, Kamathipura, and a self-identifying eunuch.

Raziabai, not fitting any of society’s gender norms, laments about how she is a hardened woman who uses weapons and bullying as her ways of communicating because she had to defy all odds to even get to where she is. We see a marginalised woman scorned who does not wish to give up her power in risk of being subjected to abuse and violence that she fought so hard to rise above through harnessing political power – and we only experience this glimpse into Raziabai’s inner world and experiences as a woman after she fiercely battles Gangubai in locality politics to ultimately lose.

The film’s relational dynamics between women is a direct mirror of how our relationships with each other as women exist today. Even in the most gruelling, heartbreaking and mind-altering circumstances, the notion of sisterhood can prevail – but it is fragile, it can also crumble easily. Women often still mistaken competition as sisterhood – misidentifying harming one another for abundance and support. Decades after the film’s setting, the film prompts us to explore how we as women continue to pit ourselves against each other.

How do we recycle our traumas onto one another? How do we build relationships only to become against one another and use each other?

We are further consumed past a life cycle stolen from us – as if the only thing that should come from us is solely the benefit and satisfaction of others.

Now is a time, more than ever, that we must come together.

Dozens of horrific, high profile rape and suicide cases of women have been gouged through the media cycle. In these cases, the perpetrators have often been given the opportunity to publicly share that they have zero remorse for their actions. Even after facing terrifying, torturous death, the existence of women is torn apart, shredded by media news. 

We are further consumed past a life cycle stolen from us – as if the only thing that should come from us is solely the benefit and satisfaction of others.

My settled home of Turtle Island, under the name of Canada is no different. Indigenous women are continuing to go missing, often sex trafficked and horrendously murdered to be met with the apathy of the RCMP and public. Indigenous women’s lives are continually threatened well past the periods of colonisation and genocide in our history textbooks – it’s still occurring today.

How do we come out of the mentality that we own other women? That, even as women, we can attack, spread rumours, gossip about, malign and steal from other women? What makes us think we can have ownership over one another too?

We don’t have to face the battles in our lives alone. But sometimes, we force each other to.

Gangubai’s outward, public persona of a tireless advocate for her community is starkly different from the loneliness and pain she feels, as well as the trauma and isolation she constantly works through on all fronts. The battles never end for her. And before she can process and grieve all she has lost, she is plunged into a new heartbreaking situation that life throws at her. And yet, she proudly, authentically and responsibly shows face every time she needs to. Even if she does cry alone, behind a veil.

This hasn’t changed. In my own experience of interviewing women about their trials and tribulations, they’ve often had to put on a brave face for the world as they plunged into violence and uncertainty within their own lives – a common theme for women everywhere throughout time.

Ultimately, the film sees Gangubai lobby for the rights of sex workers all the way until she meets the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru to continue her advocacy work. Well before the time countries such as the Netherlands and Canada adopted an abolitionist approach to sex work, Gangubai fought for the same cause – for buying sex from a sex worker to be illegal, not sex work in and of itself, so women in the flesh trade are not criminalised for their bread and butter.

Nehru doesn’t allow Kamathipura to be run down – because Gangubai doesn’t.

The male characters within the film allow the audience to explore the film in more than just a gender or occupational binary, but rather, based off their own values. Rahim Lal’s role is more than just Gangubhai’s brother – his relationship with her is formed based on his values of justice and equality, even though he himself is a part of the underworld. Afsaan, Gangubai’s companion and friend is a raw, innocent young man exploring the fine lines between love and lust while also caring for and seeing Ganguhai as a person with her own traumas. Mr. Fezi is a stark contrast of a male who mercilessly brutalised Gangubai under the guise of a client, Shaukhat Khan – Fezi is clear headed, fair, just, and provides Gangubai with opportunities to amplify her story through his trade. Indeed — the writing profession is powerful. Just as powerful as access to education.

But, you also see that women are not free of men even after death. Specifically, we see this when Gangubai’s best friend Kamli dies post childbirth, and her body is lovingly taken care of by her housemates in the brothel. Here, we see the women she lived with doting her body with a mother’s caress and a father’s protection while surrounding her body and decorating it. They reminisce while doing so, but are abruptly stopped by Gangubai, who tells them to tie Kamli’s legs tightly together “because there is no telling of the nature of men, they will desecrate a woman’s dead body to fulfill their sexual urges.” This dialogue, and the coldness in Gangubai’s eyes as she says it reminds me of Mukesh Singh, the man who stole the life of Jyoti, internationally known as India’s daughter. “While being raped, they shouldn’t fight back,” he said. Closed legs, a subject of endless discussion to blame women for being sexually assaulted. Today, in this context, they are a symbol of defiance.

As I explore the different personalities of the male characters, in this film, something dawns on me. Values define who we are. No matter our trade, no matter our gender. If our principles do not reflect respecting one another’s bodies, intellect, intelligence, emotions and life experiences, we cannot truly be allies of one another. It always starts with self.

The main takeaway?

Women are powerful. Despite being censored, policed, undervalued, overworked, overburdened, and subjected to fixing the world’s problems, we are anything but weak or meek. We have been fighting an uphill battle for millenia – with glimpses of light before being plunged back into darkness. But, we have work to do. We cannot claim to be part of a larger sisterhood when we are also hurting one another – yes, patriarchy has hurt us, but if we are unable to be true to ourselves around each other, to harness strength in one another’s vulnerability, respect each other’s boundaries, we cannot truly advocate for each other or ourselves.

And to those who work against us

You can try to censor us while you worship us. You can try to control us while we nurture you. You can try to take control of our bodies through unjust abortion law overturns (I’m looking at your mistakes overturning Roe v. Wade, America – and your recent decision to disqualify sexual assault under the influence of alcohol, Canada). You can do all you can to dim our voices.

We will roar louder. We will survive against all of the ways in which you try to box us in. Somewhere, we may be crying or laughing behind veils. One day, I pray we will be laughing and crying in meadows together – as sisters walking this life. But, today – everyday and always – we will not let ourselves exist in the shadows of society.

If you haven’t caught Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi yet, you can stream it on Netflix. If you don’t understand Hindi, there is an English dub option, as well as subtitles in English. It stars Alia Bhatt, Shantanu Maheshwari, Vijay Raaz, Jim Sarbh, Varun Kapoor, Seema Pahwa, Indira Tiwari, Ajay Devgn and Huma Qureshi.