In a world defined by fault lines, the enduring relevance of Ritwik Ghatak

RItwik Ghatak made his endure take in 1974; he died in 1976. That the BJP’s early days backstage in due west Bengal wanted to use clips from his films in their campaign video in late 2019 speaks of his relevance even today, even in that most everyday affair: electoral politics.That Ritwik’s surviving family members protested against such use, spoke of it too. BJP leader Samik Bhattacharya responded with: “One family cannot be the custodian of a film-maker like Ghatak, whose work appeals to a vast section of people. We have every right to use a dialogue from his film.”Out of nowhere almost, the long forgotten—and forgiven—Ritwik, an undesirable drunk when he was around, was back in the discussion. Like, again, after the 2024 ‘Bangladesh Spring’, when headlines screamed “Ritwik Ghatak’s ancestral home in Rajshahi demolished”.I am being a bit facetious, of course, though these are not laughing matters. And these are hardly the true markers of Ritwik’s relevance. Still, it is a fact that, in this, the year of his birth centenary, Ritwik is all the talk.Every other day for these 365 days leading up to November 4, there have been centenary events in the cities and towns and villages of West Bengal. Sanjay Mukhopadhyay, the film historian and author, has been difficult to pin down. Because he has been travelling to these stops on the railway network to speak about Ritwik.Mukhopadhyay and the film-maker Goutam Ghose are collaborating on a volume of essays on Ritwik, to be brought out by the West Bengal government. There are events in many other parts of the country too. As an organiser of a programme in Kerala told me, the anniversary is a good way to “talk about the ultimate film-maker, the greatest this country has ever seen”.Ritwik continues to be relevant today “because he obsessed about the human search for identity, home and nation,” Ghose says. “The world today is rife with instances of forced migration. The Rohingyas’ wail for help, the destruction of the homes and lives of thousands of people in Gaza; people everywhere looking for the corpses of those once closest to them; they are walking, as though in a silent procession, to find new lives and livelihoods.”Back in the 1950s and 1960s, and even in the 1970s, when Ritwik was making the eight full-length films he managed to complete (there were documentaries and short films too), the threads that connected all his work were these: homelessness, the search for identity and dignity.If his first film, Nagarik (The Citizen, 1952), was about a young man seeking a job in the metropolis of Calcutta and his Partition-displaced family’s search for a home they could call their own; his third, Bari Theke Paliye (The Runaway, 1958)—adapted from a story for children—was about a young boy leaving home to find his El Dorado (i.e. Calcutta), learning about the ugliness of the real world, and scooting back home. In between came Ajantrik (The Unmechanical, 1958), which was about a man’s life with his battered old jalopy: his family, his ‘home’, if you will. What is family if not home, after all?Then came what is referred to as the Partition Trilogy, Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star, 1960), Komal Gandhar (E-Flat, 1961) and Subarnarekha (The Golden Thread, 1963). Stories about displaced people trying to find their place in the world. His penultimate film, Titas Ekti Nodir Naam (A River Called Titas, 1973), was about a tribe living on the banks of a river, how climate change destroys their lives, and their search for a new home. Climate change—in the early 1970s!Jukti, Tokko aar Goppo (Reason, Debate and a Story, 1974), the last, doesn’t fall into the boxes above. It was more autobiographical, almost like the auteur’s take on the world. His famous last words.These were gritty, dark, real films, about real people, and their real stories. Yet, even when there was a tragic climax, his films ended with a chime of hope. That things would change. That life will go on. The Rohingyas, the people of Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Ladakh, indeed in the subcontinent and around the world—what else do we have to look forward to except change, the chime of hope?Sadly, in the most primitive and fathomless and profound ways, the world hasn’t changed. People still lose their homes, humans show indecipherable greed, and the need to control and to dominate. “That’s why his films are being talked about now; some of his films have been restored by people in the US and in England. People are discussing his films, writing dissertations about him and his films,” the film-maker Jahnu Barua says, adding: “Now, fifty years after his death, observers can still learn from his films,”.Learn to say truth to power. Even at the cost of life, even at the risk of ruin. “Ritwikda knew all aspects of film-making—camera, music, drama… it was all at his Fingertips”; the leading lady from Meghe Dhaka Tara and Komal Gandhar and one of the icons of Bengali cinema, Supriya Choudhury says. “I think many of his contemporaries were scared of his genius. Maybe that’s why there was always an attempt to sideline him.”“His originality lay in how he transformed melodrama into high art. He held extreme, even extremist, views on politics. He was an iconoclast in his approach to cinema as well,” film-maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan says.He was irrelevant, in a way, when he lived and worked. “Superfluous to society,” as the writer and poet Nabarun Bhattacharya sarcastically put it in a lecture in the early 2000s. But he is as unsuperfluous as ever today. And why wouldn’t he be? He spoke about the human condition, after all. And that’s not changed.Shamya Dasgupta is the editor of Unmechanical—Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Essays (Westland Books, 2025).