The film Kantara directed by Rishab Shetty is a blockbuster at the box-office in almost all languages it has been dubbed into. The movie’s plot has two significant elements pitched at two different levels. One part of the story consists of the struggles of a community of forest dwellers in protecting their land from the dora, the landlord, and from the state that is operating through the forest department. The other part is about the spirituality and religion of outcastes, in this case the worship of the gods Panjurli and Guliga, powerful spirits that speak through the dance art form of Bhootha Kola. This religious element plays a vital role in the story in protecting the lands of the forest dwellers from the dora.
The opening scene of the film is set in 1847, a 100 years before the formation of India. This period refers to the power of the autocrats over both the forest and agricultural lands. However the ‘good’ king who was in search of peace ends up meeting the god Panjurli – worshipped in the form of a stone – in the middle of the forest. When he attempts to take the god along with him to the palace, Panjurli’s spirit speaks through the member of an Adivasi community and demands that the king grant the Adivasis right over the land around their habitat. Panjurli also warns the king that he is always associated with the more ferocious spirit of the god Guliga, who doesn’t tolerate any injustice.
In the 1970s, the king’s inheritor who emerges as a landlord wants to ‘take back’ the land his ancestors allegedly donated to the Adivasi community. However, Panjurli again speaks through the Bhootha Kola artist and warns the landlord to drop his vicious intentions. The Bhootha Kola performer disappears mystically into the darkness of the forest to prove his divinity. The inheritor dies on the steps leading to the courtroom before he can fight his case in the court of law as foretold by Panjurli.