Imtiaz Ali helmed one of the best films of 2024, Amar Singh Chamkila, and in a recent chat at Expresso, where he shared the stage with Taapsee Pannu, Imtiaz addressed some of the criticism that the film received in terms of its caste representation. The movie, led by Diljit Dosanjh, had the actor playing the role of the slain Punjabi singer who belonged to a lower caste and many critics pointed out that Chamkila’s caste wasn’t properly addressed in the film. Imtiaz shared that he chose to tell this story this way because he “wanted the story to be free of something he (Chamkila) was not free of.”

“Was he unique because he was Dalit? If I stress on the fact again and again that he was a Dalit, am I doing service to the caste system per se? Am I trying to also put him in to box which had actually afflicted him? I wanted the story to be free of something he was not free of,” he said and added that there were many other musicians in Punjab at that time who were also Dalit. “What was the unique feature that brought me to make his story? That is what I focused on,” he said.

Imtiaz further explained, “So just by saying that he was a Dalit over and over again and emphasising how big that problem was in Punjab and still continues to be, is not the basis of my story and I am not doing service to the society by repeating that story.” The director insisted that for him “Chamkila is the love story between a musician and music, musical performance so I have treated it like that, that aspect would have gone out of the window.”

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He also shared that Chamkila also made joke about himself “which is a form of self repression”. “If I truly represented it, I would have to go there in that mentality. I didn’t want to take that journey. I know it has been criticised a little bit and I wanted to answer that question,” he said.

Imtiaz is yet to announce his next film after Amar Singh Chamkila.

HSBC presents Expresso in association with Taj Hotels was held at Taj Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad on July 5.

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