— ✍️ Dr. Vikrant Kishore
Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound is a film that insists we look carefully at how inequality works in ordinary life. It does not rely on spectacle or loud melodrama. Instead, it pays attention to small conversations, casual insults, administrative procedures, family decisions and quiet forms of care. Through the friendship of a Dalit man and a Muslim man, and through three Dalit women placed at different points in the family structure, the film asks what it means to survive and to hope in an India that claims progress while carrying forward older hierarchies in new forms.
Adapted from Basharat Peer’s New York Times report, “A Friendship, a Pandemic and a Death Beside the Highway” (July 2020), Homebound grows out of journalism. That origin is important. The film carries a sense of responsibility towards real lives. Ghaywan does not invent suffering for effect. He works with conditions that are already there, whether it is caste discrimination, anti-Muslim prejudice, or the abandonment of migrant workers during the COVID-19 lockdown.
What emerges is not a story from the edge of the nation. It is a story that speaks directly to the question of what kind of country India has become for Dalits, Muslims and the working poor.
Chandan, played by Vishal Jethwa, is the lens through which the film looks at caste in contemporary India. He is capable, ambitious and willing to work hard. He wants a better life, not only for himself but also for his family. Yet almost every decision he makes is shaped by anticipation of what will happen once people know who he is.
From the beginning, we see a young man who measures his words and movements carefully. His fear is not exaggerated. It is based on what he has seen and heard, and on the stories that circulate quietly among Dalit families. One wrong disclosure, the wrong person learning his surname, a careless mention of background, and suddenly opportunities can shrink. Homebound shows this not through long explanations but through hesitation, deflection and silence. Chandan’s body knows what his mouth tries to avoid saying.
His relationship with reservation is at the centre of this tension. In principle, reservation exists as a constitutional guarantee to address historic exclusion. In practice, it has been turned into a weapon against Dalits. If they use it, they are branded as undeserving. If they refuse it, they are still not free of stigma. Chandan’s decision not to apply for a police post through reservation is a response to this climate. He wants to be judged as capable on his own terms, yet he knows that the moment his caste is known, his work will no longer be seen as “neutral” in any case. The refusal is not about rejecting Ambedkarite politics. It is about trying to escape a label that others will use to define him.
His dream of joining the police carries its own irony. Chandan does not long for a uniform in order to dominate others. He wants safety. He wants a position where people will think twice before insulting or assaulting him. He wants to belong to an institution that, in theory, promises protection. At the same time, he knows the stories of Dalit policemen who are still given “dirty” work, cleaning toilets, cooking, washing, rather than regular constable duties. The old division of labour follows them into the station. This knowledge sits quietly behind his aspiration.
Chandan’s anxiety about exposure does not stay confined to the public world. It enters his relationship with Sudha Bharti. Where Sudha speaks from a place of clarity about who she is, Chandan remains caught between desire for recognition and fear of consequences. He loves her, he respects her, yet he hesitates to stand firmly in his own identity in the way she expects. His silence is a form of self-protection, but it also produces distance.
Inside the family, he is placed in a position of priority that is both privilege and burden. The family cannot afford to educate both siblings through higher studies, and the choice is made that the son will continue and the daughter will step back. Chandan's sister Vaishali works as a carer in a school, with limited growth opportunity due to lack of education. Yet,she earns, she saves, and she contributes heavily to the dream of building a house. Chandan carries this knowledge with him, even when he does not speak of it.
When he complains of the resistance he faces as a Dalit man trying to move ahead, Vaishali cuts through his self-image with a sharp reminder. She tells him that the real struggle is being carried by their parents and by her. They are the ones who wake early, work long hours, and have given up their own chances so that he can study. He is the only one in the family who has been allowed a degree of choice. It is he who must make that choice count. This scene shifts the axis of struggle away from his individual hurt and towards a shared sacrifice held mostly by the women.
Later, when Chandan and Shoaib end up working as migrant labourers in a cloth mill in Gujarat, Chandan’s earlier aspirations feel far away. He has gone from preparing for a police exam to doing gruelling factory work. The COVID-19 lockdown then arrives as a second blow. Once the government announces an abrupt shutdown, with little time or support to prepare, workers like Chandan are left stranded. With no income, no transport and no social security, they begin to walk home.
On the road, caste does not disappear. It continues to structure risk, even in the face of common suffering. When the police stop and beat them during their attempt to return to their town, Chandan makes a fast yet extremely significant decision. He chooses to hide his Dalit identity. Once he realises that Shoaib’s Muslim identity has attracted focused violence, he calculates that declaring himself as Dalit in that moment will only place him in a worse position. This does not mean that anti-Muslim violence is minor. It means that he understands how caste hierarchy operates even inside state violence. The calculation is brutal, but it is also rational inside an irrational system.
Chandan’s story makes clear that Dalit existence in contemporary India involves constant preparation for possible harm. His life is shaped not only by what happens to him, but by what might happen if he speaks or names himself too openly. Fear reorganises his ambition, slows his steps, and affects his relationships. Ghaywan does not turn him into a hero or a victim alone. He remains a young man trying to carry the weight of history and family expectation while still searching for a path that feels safe.
If Chandan’s story shows how caste shapes aspiration, Mohammed Shoaib Ali’s experience demonstrates how religious identity can distort everyday life in subtle yet relentless ways. Ishaan Khatter plays Shoaib as a person who begins with faith in ordinary processes, who believes that hard work and sincerity will be enough, and who gradually learns that this is not the case when one is a Muslim man in contemporary India.
Shoaib’s world is defined by constant scrutiny. He is not dragged to a police station or shouted at on the street. His discrimination takes place in an office, in an apparently middle-class environment where people speak English, handle paperwork, and attend house parties. This is where hatred and suspicion find new forms that can be denied easily, since they often hide behind “jokes” and “procedures”.
At the centre of this harassment stands Mr Mishra. Mishra’s hostility is not hidden. It is carried through, first of all, in small acts that signal contamination. He tells Shoaib not to bring him water, not because he is independent, but because he does not want to be touched by the hand of a Muslim.
The connection to older caste practices is unmistakable. Where Dalits were historically treated as polluting bodies, Shoaib experiences that logic now directed at his religious identity.
This single act sets the tone for Shoaib’s time in the office. No one seriously challenges Mishra. The environment allows his behaviour to stand, which means it is accepted in practice, if not on paper. The workplace as a whole becomes a space where prejudice is tolerated, and where Shoaib’s dignity can be chipped away slowly.
Mishra then turns to bureaucratic manipulation. When Shoaib asks for his employment letter, which should simply be generated and handed over, Mishra delays it. He makes Shoaib plead. This is power for its own sake. The letter itself is not the problem. The problem is that Shoaib must be reminded of his dependence.
The question of police verification becomes even more revealing. Shoaib is told to provide verification for himself, which is standard, but then is also instructed to get police verification for his parents. This additional demand has no formal basis. It suggests that Shoaib’s family might not be legitimate citizens, that their presence needs further confirmation, that they may be “from somewhere else”. This echoes a central theme in current Indian politics, where the figure of the “illegal immigrant” is deployed frequently, and where Muslims are often drawn into suspicion. Through this demand, Shoaib is positioned not simply as an employee, but as a person whose right to be in the country is quietly questioned.
The most direct expression of this suspicion unfolds at his boss’s house during an India–Pakistan cricket match gathering. On the surface, Shoaib appears socially included as part of the office team. In reality, this inclusion becomes another site of degradation. When Pakistan loses, Mishra and even senior colleagues comment that Shoaib must be upset because “his team” has lost. The statement is not casual. It places Shoaib outside the nation, positioning his Muslim identity as incompatible with unquestioned Indian belonging. Cricket here becomes a test of loyalty, where national allegiance is measured, assigned, and judged.
The remarks continue. Shoaib is asked how long he will “mourn,” told that he must like Lahore, and informed that he likely knows the city better than they do. These statements draw from a long-standing practice of marking Muslims as outsiders, as people whose presence in India is conditional and whose citizenship remains under suspicion. The force of the scene lies in its location. This is not a street confrontation or a political rally; it is a workplace gathering among educated professionals. Ghaywan’s choice of cricket is deliberate. Within Indian public culture, cricket has long been used to assess loyalty, while debates around merit and reservation have repeatedly discredited those from marginalised backgrounds. In the film, Mushtaq’s dropped catch triggers immediate scrutiny of his Muslim identity. When India eventually wins, that identity becomes invisible, folded into a nationalist claim of secular unity. In loss, he is Muslim and suspect; in victory, he is acceptable only when his difference disappears.
For a long time, Shoaib absorbs this humiliation. He is used to managing discomfort with politeness. At a certain point, however, the pressure becomes too much. When Mishra pushes again, Shoaib finally asks him to stop. His anger is controlled, but clear. He then says he is resigning. For him, this is not a victory. It is a line that he can no longer cross silently.
Vikas Tripathy, his senior, who has often appeared friendly and supportive, tries to smooth the situation over. He says they were only joking, that people were drunk, that Shoaib should not take it so seriously. This reaction is crucial. It shows how discrimination is often defended as humour, and how those who suffer it are told to adjust their feelings. The problem is shifted from the aggressor to the person who is hurt.
Shoaib refuses to accept this. He asks why he has to be the butt of the joke every time. Why remarks about his loyalty, belonging and identity should be treated as harmless fun. His decision to leave is both a loss and a clear statement. He chooses self-respect over continued exposure to casual cruelty.
Through Shoaib, Homebound captures the atmosphere in which many Muslims in India are now forced to live. It is not only about direct violence. It is about jokes that question loyalty, documents that imply illegitimacy, and colleagues who treat one’s existence as a matter of suspicion. Ghaywan shows how these constant small cuts can be as damaging as one large wound.
If Chandan and Shoaib allow the film to think about caste and religion among young men, the three key Dalit women in Homebound make visible another crucial field of struggle. Through Sudha Bharti, Chandan’s mother Phool, and his sister Vaishali, the film traces how Dalit families are held together through women’s labour, sacrifice and quiet assertion, while also showing how these women face specific forms of discrimination.
Sudha Bharti, played by Janhvi Kapoor, represents a new generation of Dalit women shaped by education, ambition and political awareness. She is thoughtful, articulate and self-possessed. In her relationship with Chandan, she is loving but not blindly supportive. She sees his fear and understands its roots, yet she does not accept endless hiding as the only possible response. For her, dignity involves standing in one’s identity, not running away from it at every turn.
Her presence is most politically clear in the scene of her sister’s wedding. Sudha invites Chandan to attend, and the ceremony is conducted in a Buddhist and Ambedkarite manner. There are images of the Buddha and Dr B. R. Ambedkar, and the overall tone is modest and serious, rather than extravagant in the way of many Hindu weddings. There is no priest from an upper caste, no ritual that demands submission to Brahmanical authority.
This choice reflects a real practice among many Ambedkarite families, where conversion to Buddhism and the adoption of new rituals are used to reject caste hierarchy. Ghaywan does not explain this in dialogue. He simply allows the viewer to see it. For Sudha and her family, this is not a dramatic break. It is their normal. Through this scene, the film places Ambedkar and Buddhism firmly inside everyday Dalit life.
At the same time, the film does not suggest that Sudha is free of constraint. She functions as a steady moral and emotional centre, yet the narrative does not fully enter her inner life, her professional aspirations beyond marriage, or her negotiations with caste and gender in public space. This relative restraint may be read in relation to Neeraj Ghaywan’s earlier work, particularly Geeli Pucchi (Ajeeb Dastaans, 2021), where he placed a Dalit woman at the centre and examined caste, labour, desire, and sexuality with sharp focus. In Homebound, Ghaywan turns consciously towards a different axis, foregrounding Dalit–Muslim male friendship and structural vulnerability, having already articulated, with force and detail, the everyday discrimination and ethical compromises faced by Dalit women in his previous work.
Phool, Chandan’s mother, played by Harshika Parmar, brings another dimension. She works alongside her husband as a labourer, and her body carries the marks of physical work. She is not sentimentalised. She is practical, quiet, and steady. Her love is enacted through food, small gestures of care, and willingness to take on extra work.
When she secures a job as a cook in a school, it appears as a small yet meaningful gain. The job promises stable income, a less harsh working environment, and a degree of recognition. That promise is very quickly broken. Parents from privileged caste backgrounds discover that a woman from an “untouchable” community is cooking for their children. Instead of questioning their prejudice, they direct their anger at the school. They treat Phool’s hands as polluting. Feeding their children becomes, in their eyes, a violation of religious purity.
The scene of her removal is abrupt and unsettling. There is no physical assault, yet the verbal treatment is sharp and humiliating, leaving her feeling unwanted and pushed out of place. Her job is withdrawn, and she is made to understand, clearly and forcefully, that this space is not meant for her. The message is unambiguous: her labour is tolerated only while her caste remains unseen. Once it becomes known, her presence in a setting shaped by ideas of purity, food, and children becomes unacceptable to those who claim superiority. In doing so, the film connects this moment to a longer history of Dalit exclusion from shared food, water, and everyday social life.
Vaishali, played by Shalini Vatsa, shows how gender and caste shape choices around education and labour. She works as a carer in a school and brings home a regular income. At the same time, we learn that she had to leave her own studies because the family could not afford to send both children ahead. The decision was simple in one sense: invest in the son, who is assumed to have better chances in the job market, and expect the daughter to contribute through immediate work.
Vaishali understands this arrangement plainly. She carries no illusions about fairness, but she also does not lash out without thought. When Chandan complains about his struggle as a Dalit man trying to move up, she reframes the situation. The real pressure, she points out, falls on those who have little choice. They must work, eat, and pay for Chandan’s dreams. He is the one with some space to choose. That space comes with responsibility towards the very people whose labour holds him up.
Through Sudha, Phool and Vaishali, Homebound shows how Dalit women stand at the meeting point of caste, gender and class. They face external discrimination from upper castes, and internal expectations within their own families. They hold the household together, take up jobs that are often poorly paid and respected, and give up their own educational possibilities so that their brothers and sons might have a chance to step into a different world. Ghaywan does not frame them as martyrs. He presents them as people who understand exactly what is happening, who speak when necessary, and who continue to move forward in the conditions they have.
At the centre of Homebound is the friendship between Chandan and Shoaib. Their bond offers a space of honesty that is largely absent from the other areas of their lives. With each other, they can admit fear, shame, exhaustion and hope without having to wear a mask.
Importantly, the film does not pretend that their experiences are identical. They come from different communities and face different forms of hostility. Chandan lives with the shadow of caste wherever he goes. Shoaib deals with suspicion tied to his religion and to national politics. They do not flatten these differences. They talk about them. They sometimes misunderstand each other. They question each other’s advantages.
Early on, Shoaib cannot fully grasp why Chandan refuses to use reservation. From his position, it looks like Chandan is giving up a clear opportunity in the name of misplaced pride. Chandan, in turn, cannot always grasp the depth of humiliation Shoaib faces in the office, because on the surface Shoaib at least has a job. These gaps in understanding are real, and the film allows them to remain.
Yet their friendship holds because both of them know what it is like to be treated as less than, even when the contexts differ. They share rooms, meals and stories. They criticise each other, but they also support one another in moments of crisis. The relationship is built not on a romantic idea of perfect solidarity, but on shared risk and shared care.
In a political climate where communities are often set up against one another, and where Dalit–Muslim alliances are sometimes discussed only in abstract terms, Homebound presents a very grounded version of such a bond. It does not claim that friendship solves structural issues. It shows that friendship can offer shelter in a world that treats certain lives as disposable.
The move to the cloth mill in Gujarat takes the film from scenes of aspiration and small domestic spaces into a harsh industrial setting. Chandan and Shoaib become part of a vast army of migrant workers who keep factories running, who live in cramped rooms, and who have little security of any kind. The factory is not romanticised. It is a place where time is owned by somebody else, where bodies are used up slowly.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrives, the state’s response turns this difficult existence into a deadly one. The sudden announcement of the nationwide lockdown gives workers little chance to plan. Wages stop. Employers withdraw support. With transport shut down, the only way to return home is to walk long distances on highways that were never meant for pedestrians.
Homebound does not recreate every horror of that period, but it conveys the mood clearly. Hunger, thirst and exhaustion become part of daily life for those on the road. News cameras move on quickly to other topics. Government officials talk about the success of the lockdown, not about those who have been abandoned.
In this setting, the earlier questions of caste and religious identity do not disappear. They become part of the calculation of risk in a new way. When the police stop Chandan and Shoaib during their attempt to go home and begin to beat them, their bodies are not seen as citizens in crisis. They are seen as people who are out of place, who must be pushed back into obedience.
Once Shoaib’s Muslim identity is noticed, the violence becomes more charged. The police response is not only about enforcing lockdown rules. It becomes a performance of authority over those who are already marked as suspect. Chandan, observing this, makes his own calculation and chooses to hide his caste identity. He knows that to be identified as Dalit in that scene might bring not protection, but a more severe form of humiliation.
This part of the film connects the personal stories of the two friends back to the larger question of how the Indian state sees its poor. Migrant workers are not treated as citizens with rights and histories. They are treated as bodies that can be moved, stopped, beaten and forgotten. The fact that they are the ones who built the cities they are forced to leave does not count for much.
Throughout Homebound, Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s presence is steady. He appears in framed photographs, in books, and in the rituals chosen by Dalit families. He is not brought in only for speeches or quotations. He is there as part of the texture of daily life. For many Dalits/Bahujans, Ambedkar is not a remote figure from history. He is a guide and a source of courage. Ghaywan understands this, and he allows that reality to form the background of several key scenes.
In visual terms, the film avoids flashy techniques. The camera is patient, the editing measured, the performances controlled. There are no big speeches that explain everything. Viewers are asked to pay attention to who is standing where, who speaks first, who stays silent, and whose voice carries weight in a room. This restraint gives space for the political implications of each scene to settle gradually.
It is also important that Homebound comes through a banner like Dharma, which has long been associated with highly glossy mainstream cinema. For such a production house to back a film that centres Dalit and Muslim lives, and that pays attention to migrant worker suffering, signals at least some willingness within commercial Hindi cinema to engage with uncomfortable realities. Combined with support from someone of Martin Scorsese’s stature and selection as India’s Oscar nomination, the film carries a presence beyond regular festival circulation.
Homebound asks a set of questions that are simple to state and difficult to face. What does home mean to a Dalit man who is afraid to name his caste in public? What does home mean to a Muslim man who is told, through jokes and paperwork, that he does not fully belong? What does home mean to Dalit women who hold families together through labour and sacrifice, and who are still treated as polluting when they cook for other people’s children?
The film does not offer clear answers. It does not pretend that friendship can erase history, or that individual success can cancel structural injustice. What it does offer is recognition. It refuses the idea that these lives are marginal. It insists that they are central to any honest picture of India today.
Through Chandan, Shoaib, Sudha, Phool and Vaishali, Neeraj Ghaywan crafts a work that listens to those who are usually talked over. He brings their anxieties, humour, love and anger into view without turning them into symbols alone. The result is a film that lingers in the mind not because of spectacle, but because of the clarity with which it looks at how people are forced to live when the promises of equality remain unevenly honoured.
Kudos to Neeraj Ghaywan, and to the artists and workers around him, for making Homebound possible. This is a film that deserves close attention, engagement, and recall. Credit is also due to Dharma Productions for backing such work; sustained support for films of this kind remains necessary if meaningful cinema is to continue.
- Dr Vikrant Kishore is an academic, filmmaker, journalist and a photographer. He has authored and edited books on Indian cinema, celebrity culture, and intangible cultural heritage.
You can also join our WhatsApp group to get premium and selected news of The Mooknayak on WhatsApp. Click here to join the WhatsApp group.