What Shyam Benegal’s Hari-Bhari Gets Right About Women’s Right To Their Bodies

Hari-Bhari (2000)| Photo Courtesy: National Film Development Corporation of India

The opening credits of Hari-Bhari flash with a ditty—“Main kitti baar bola na ji ujla kapda pehno nakko”—playing in the background in Shabana Azmi’s voice. It is the same song the actress hummed as Rukmini Bai, the canny brothel madam in Benegal’s Mandi (1983), several years ago. The lines further go, “Tu sada sabas pari rahe, godi hari bhari rahe,” indicating the inspiration behind the title of this social drama that discusses family planning and women’s right to their own bodies. Produced by NFDC and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Hari-Bhari revolves around the impact of fertility on Indian women. It’s narrated through the stories of its five heroines—Hasina, Ghazala, Najma, Afsana, and Salma—who make up three generations of lower middle-class Muslim women living in a joint family in rural Uttar Pradesh.

Ghazala (Azmi) is thrown out of the house by her abusive husband, who also chides her for her inability to give him a male heir. Along with her teenage daughter Salma (Rajeshwari Sachdev), she seeks shelter at her mother’s place. The old, ailing mother Hasina (Surekha Sikri) lives with her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandkids. Her pregnant older daughter-in-law Najma (Alka Trivedi) is struggling with the daily grind and deteriorating health; successive pregnancies have left her frail and irritable. Afsana (Nandita Das), the bickering younger daughter-in-law, believes in the solemn duty to bear children. Contrasting her is Salma, the youngest daughter in the house, who aspires to get educated and become self-sufficient.

Benegal’s cinema, part of the Indian New Wave, is known for putting the nation’s socio-political concerns under the scanner. While Nishant (1975) rankled at the cruelty of the feudal system, Kalyug (1981) observed the moral corruption of the corporate world, and the director’s last feature, Well Done Abba! (2009), was a satire on populist government schemes. In Hari-Bhari, Benegal examines the influence of societal conditioning and ingrained patriarchy on women’s psyche and how it affects their traditional roles and relationships with other women. There’s judgment and resentment as there is support and empathy. The film evaluates this inherent dichotomy with a peculiar conflict: When asked if a woman has rights over her body, the answer from each of them differs.

A young, educated Afsana enjoys material luxuries of the modern world, like a colour TV and costly cosmetic creams, but frowns upon modern contraceptives. She calls them ungodly and declares her husband a sinner after finding out about his vasectomy. Najma, on the other hand, struggling with postpartum depression, equates herself to the family’s buffalo—her existence is reduced to feeding the brood and bearing babies. When another one of her newborns dies, the grief-stricken woman decides to get her tubes tied. Ghazala, a victim of domestic violence and marital rape, is almost relieved to have broken free from her brutish husband’s clutches. “Kisi doosre ki marzi ka ghulam ban’ne se toh achcha hai ki insaan akele hi rahe,” she asserts. A dignified Hasina speaks of an era when a girl’s choice didn’t matter. As a teenager, she was forced to give up her love and marry her older widowed brother-in-law. Turns out things hadn’t changed much for women when her granddaughter Salma was asked to quit school to get married as well.

Hari-Bhari also draws attention to the perilous ignorance about women’s reproductive health. There’s a scene where Ghazala is surprised to learn from her gyneacologist that it’s the father’s genes that determine the sex of a baby and another where an anemic Salma is convinced that she is pregnant because of an irregular period. But what hits the hardest is the severely ill Hasina discovering that the reason for her cervical cancer is her teenage pregnancies. The elderly lady’s fate is a rude awakening for the family—Ghazala in particular—who, upon realising the horrors of underage marriage, ensures that Salma doesn’t suffer the same fate.

In a sense, Hari-Bhari is disguised as a vehicle to push the government’s message of the importance of family planning. Yet it is to Benegal’s credit that his vision is never limited by that diktat. The director manages to weave multiple women’s issues, like education, financial identity, and religious dogma, skillfully into a narrative that underlines the quotidian struggles of an average village household. The modest settings combined with local dialect and colours lend to the film’s authenticity.

Yet the film’s biggest triumph lies in what it manages to get right about women’s autonomy. A slate of recent films centred around women’s issues, like Padman (2018) and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017), have ended up looking like glorified public service cinema with a male saviour complex. Hari-Bhari’s prowess lies in the fact that Benegal and his frequent screenwriter, Shama Zaidi, took a straightforward public service message and built a compelling story about women—seen through and experienced by its female players. It may not figure among Benegal’s cinematic best, but Hari-Bhari’s distinct voice around women’s autonomy and thoughtful handling of female relationships deserves recognition.

 The piece was first published in Arré.