’Aligarh’ is the conflict ground between a man’s right to his sexuality and the society’s invasion of his privacy.
’Aligarh’
U/A; Drama
Director: Hansal Mehta
Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Rajkummar Rao
The film will stay with the audience for a long time. It is the first, deeply honest and a very real portrayal of a gay man on the Hindi film screen.
In Aligarh, the gay man is not a joke - as was the case with Tarun Mansukhani’s Dostana and Rohit Shetty’s offensive Bol Bachchan.
Mehta and Asrani are saying there is nothing funny about a man being gay. All those who fall under the LGBT umbrella are regular, normal people and we need to understand their feelings, their emotions and treat them just as straight people are treated in films and in life.
We can laugh with them - and Aligarh has touches of humour - but we should not laugh at them. They are not comedians. They are human beings.
Manoj Bajpayee once again shows us that he is one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema. He transforms himself and is it hard to believe that we recently saw the same actor as a brutal gangster in the coal-mining crime saga Gangs of Wasseypur.
His co-star Rajkummar Rao - a regular face in Hansal Mehta films(Rao also appeared in Shahid and Citylights) - is equally compelling as Deepu Sebastian, a journalist who first explored Siras’ story from the professor’s point-of-view.
Aligarh emphasises that gays should be protected by the law, their rights recognised by the courts.
India needs to wake up to this reality - that is the message of the film.
Aligarh is a very important film, a milestone in the history of Indian cinema that should start the much needed conversation about how India treats a visible and yet often ignored minority group. It is especially significant in the context of the gay rights activists and their struggles to remove Article 377 from the Indian Penal Code.