The Nation’s Unfinished Business: Caste, Exile, and Postcolonial Betrayal in Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha

Grishma Trivedi

doi:10.5195/cinej.2026.1022

The Nation’s Unfinished Business: Caste, Exile, and Postcolonial Betrayal in Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha

Authors

Grishma Trivedi Independant Researcher https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5067-3820

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1022

Keywords:

Ritwik Ghatak, Subarnarekha, internal partition, caste, Partition cinema, melodrama, Dalit studies, film sound

Abstract

This article reads Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha (completed in 1962; released in 1965) as a critique of the caste boundaries reproduced within a refugee community after Partition. It develops the concept of internal partition to describe how Ishwar’s household grants Abhiram conditional belonging but rejects his marriage to Sita. Close readings of sound, landscape, institutional space, and the catastrophic recognition scene show how Ghatak’s melodrama makes the incomplete promise of postcolonial freedom perceptible. The interpretation draws on Partition and Dalit scholarship while acknowledging that Abhiram’s story remains mediated through bhadralok guilt. By keeping formal analysis close to caste and kinship, the essay explains how exclusion survives inside a community already marked by displacement.

References

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Published

2026-10-15

How to Cite

Trivedi, G. (2026). The Nation’s Unfinished Business: Caste, Exile, and Postcolonial Betrayal in Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 14(2), 730–746. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2026.1022

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Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2026): Fall

Section

Ritwik Ghatak: The Visionary of Cinema

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