Key Points
Maharaj, a Hindi film being streamed on Netflix, depicts the deception of regulation camouflaged as reform, which keeps the status quo (patriarchy) intact..
Maharaj, a Hindi film being streamed on Netflix, fictionalises a Gujarati docu-novel by Saurabh Shah that carries the same name..
Both semi-fictions are constructed from existing documentary accounts and evidence of the now-famous Maharaj Libel Case of 1862 and the real-life story of the social reformer Karsandas (also spelt Karsondas) Mulji (Mulji is his fathers name and not surname)..
In the Karsondas Mulji centenary volume, Karsondas Mulji: A Biographical Study, editor-author BN Motiwala writes about the Vaishnava-Shaiva sectarian strife over some ritual, prologuing the Maharaj Libel Case in Bombay (now Mumbai, of course)..
At the end of the film, as if they were an epilogue, documentary images of the real Karsandas Mulji, Dadabhai Naoroji, Bhau Daji Lad and others, as well the newspapers Rast Goftar (Truth Seeker), Satya Prakash (Light of Truth) and the buildings of the Supreme Court of Bombay, come to us as only a limping patchwork, failing to save the films necessary historicity..
