It was March 24, 2020. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had driven the entire nation into a sudden, harsh and complete lockdown for 21 days in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country subsequently witnessed gut-wrenching visuals of clueless, poor informal sector contract workers and interstate migrant workers setting out on foot towards bus terminuses.
The event may have now faded from popular public imagination in 2025 with the growing institutional talks of Vikshit Bharat of PM Modi. But to only surprise us, director Neeraj Ghaywan evokes those images with his film Homebound.
The politics of naming has truly justified the title of the film. Homebound is loosely based on a field report by senior journalist Basharat Peer, published in The New York Times in 2020.
Fraternity in times of hostility
The first scene of the film is set in a railway station named Mapur, crammed with job aspirants for a railway police recruitment examination. A Dalit youth, Chandan (Vishal Jethwa), and Mohammed Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter) arrive at the station only to be devastated by the number of candidates waiting to catch the train for very limited vacancies.
Chandan and Shoib grew up together in the village that truly epitomises the constitutional vision of fraternity, while they lived similar lives of social deprivations. Throughout the first half of Homebound, Shoaib and Chandan try hard for economic mobility.
It’s when Shoib gets a private sector job as a spot boy that he immediately starts experiencing communalism from his dominant caste Hindu bosses.
Though Chandan isn’t in a private sector job, Ghaywan shows how casteist brutalism against Dalits is unbounded. A desperate Chandan goes to the railway office to enquire about the recruitment results and ends up facing the casteist taunting by a railway clerk.
The story of private sector discriminations is less known due to dominant caste gatekeeping. Ghaywan busts the myth that casteism isn’t rampant in the public sector.
Caste and religion, the twin forces of brutalism
Homebound must be appreciated for its representation of how the cruelty of caste supremacy constantly suppresses Dalit and Muslim identities in the public sphere.
A good example is how Chandan is shown to repeatedly tick the general category box on job applications to escape caste-based stereotypes and degradation. Ghaywan exposes the incessant delays in public sector recruitments due to the ruling elites’ non-committal attitudes.
Another critical example of casteism in the public sector workplace is how dominant caste parents force Chandan’s mother out of her job as a school cook.
What comes as a soothing interlude for progressive audiences is a supporting character’s Buddhist wedding, where pictures of Buddha and Dr BR Ambedkar are spotlighted.
The pandemic of caste
Homebound’s second half is teary, as both Chandan and Shoaib unite at a garment factory in Surat. Their lives take a 120-degree turn when the COVID-19 pandemic hits. Garment factories suddenly close down due to strict lockdown protocols. Both friends are quickly faced with deep uncertainties and decide to go back to their villages.
While they’re crammed on a truck’s rooftop, Chandan contracts COVID-19. Despite having opportunities to do so, Shoib doesn’t abandon Chandan. Exposing India’s stark social realities, they get off the truck and walk on the empty highway in search of a hospital. Ghaywan reveals how healthcare facilities in India are unequally spread and mostly centred near urban areas.
Towards the end, Chandan lies dying on Shoib’s lap on the highway. Shoib discovers a small photograph of Ambedkar in Chandan’s wallet and his job application with the Scheduled Caste (SC) checkbox ticked. This, to me, is the most powerful visual in Homebound. It proclaims how Ambedkar creates hopes among India’s most oppressed.
After Shazia Iqbal’s Dhadak 2, Ghaywan’s Homebound has created renewed anticipations from Bollywood producers and directors, as they have finally started telling the audience the most politely kept secret of India—caste hierarchy. The severe cuts imposed on both films by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) show the shrinking space for freedom of speech in a right-wing political landscape.
Nonetheless, Homebound lays bare how socioeconomic marginalities are associated with caste and religion. Needless to say, the film deserves to be India’s entry for the Academy Awards. However, Bollywood needs to nurture more Dalit actors and directors to tell such stories in gripping ways.
Subhajit Naskar is a political scientist and teaches at the Department of International Relations at Jadavpur University. Views expressed here are the author’s own.