Couple's pioneering efforts captured

IN 1888, five years before young lawyer Mohandas Gandhi arrived in South Africa to start his path to becoming the Mahatma that he is known as today, there was another man bestowed with that title for his unrelenting social reform for women and the untouchable caste, known as the Shudras.

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That man was British-trained Jyotirao Phule, also known as Jyotiba Phule, whose life and that of his wife Savitribai is what this biopic is about.

Though slow-moving, the film captures a relevant part of India’s history during British colonial times, when the Brahmin caste considered the Shudra caste as so inferior that they would not even walk where the latter cast their shadows.