The trailer of Jolly LLB 3 sparked curiosity, which intensified after watching the film. The image of poet Muktibodh in the trailer created a stir. The question arose: What is the politics of this picture? A farmer is shown flipping through pages, and on one is a well-placed picture of Muktibodh. A sense of respect arose, along with the question of what Muktibodh’s image signifies in the film. What was the director-writer Subhash Kapoor’s intention? The biggest question was why such a prominent and realistic Hindi poet would be included in a film that was promoted as a comedy. Why Muktibodh in a film where Akshay Kumar and Arshad Warsi are creating a ruckus as lawyers?
However, along with the judge, played by Saurabh Shukla, there were other elements that added a layer of seriousness. The film showed Seema Biswas embracing her deceased husband’s statue, a definition of awareness about the weak versus the strong, a debate between farmers and industrialists, the judge’s lightheartedness in court, and some of Muktibodh’s famous lines, like ‘One must take all the risks of expression…’ or ‘What is your politics, partner?’ This made me eager to watch the political film wrapped in the sweetness of Subhash Kapoor’s comedy. I wanted to know the director’s politics and what the writer wanted to say.
In Hindi literature, Muktibodh is known for his depiction of life’s ups and downs. He is considered the most realistic and progressive poet of Hindi. He declared in the sixties, ‘The moon’s face is crooked.’ This was like holding a mirror to the moon, a slap in the face for those who created countless romantic tales in the shadow of the moon. Generations were fascinated by their vocabulary. But Muktibodh was the only poet who brought the moon down to rough ground. He wrote, ‘The crooked-faced moon’s trickery, the mysterious shadows of the moon… Oh, moonlight is also very mischievous…’
Muktiibodh wrote that ‘Now one must take all the risks of expression, break the monasteries and forts…’ Muktibodh’s writings were indeed a proclamation of light against darkness. And when we watch Jolly LLB 3, we realize that the fungi haven’t yet settled on that proclamation. At a time when definitions, standards, pride, land, and sky are changing their colors, and virtual new dawns are crowing – in this film court, Judge Saurabh Shukla talks about both ‘paper’ and ‘spirit’. He says, ‘Some things are about ‘spirit’, but in this country, most orders are given based on ‘paper’. This means that the understanding of ‘paper’ develops from ‘spirit’, and that’s what is shown in this film. True justice is possible only when there is ‘spirit’ with ‘paper’.
If this ‘spirit’ had been shown earlier, the farmer Raja Ram Solanki’s land in Parsaul village would not have been grabbed in the ‘Bikaner to Boston’ development project, nor would the farmer have lost his life. The farmer, who initially claims, ‘My land, my will,’ then gets trapped in debt, loses his land, and begs the Tehsildar, saying, ‘My son died for the country.’ But when darkness surrounds him, he pushes himself into that darkness, takes a dive into death. In this sequence of defeat and turmoil, some pictures and sounds also shake the heart.
The farmer flips through some pages. Lines are written on the screen. A collage of some documents and cutouts is created. In this collage, the image of poet Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh emerges on a cutout. The familiar style of holding a bidi and taking a puff. This picture has been a treasure of Hindi literature for years. It is said that his works had gained fame in his lifetime, but no collection was published during his lifetime. But as time passed, his popularity in the writing-reading world increased at the same pace. Evaluations and research were done. Now, in 2025, the same Muktibodh is seen on the screen of mainstream Hindi cinema, so the meaning against ‘monasteries’ and ‘forts’ can be understood. The entire credit goes to the director-writer Subhash Kapoor.
Now the lines that are heard in the background during the suicide of the helpless farmer, like a poem.
My roof kept leaking still
I prayed for rain
From my grandfather to my great-grandfather
From my father to my grandfather
And the inheritance I received from my father
I wanted to give the same to my son
Wanted to give a little land
And a handful of seeds so that
Everyone’s hunger could be quenched
That’s why I believed
In all their words
In the sentiments expressed in the speech
I kept watching, mesmerized
Their heads rising towards the sky
And they pulled the ground from under my feet
I was proud to be an Annadata (grain giver)
This was my crime that
I was a farmer.
‘Our land, our will’
Although during this time, it is nowhere written on the screen whose poem this is. But Muktibodh is present in the collage of the sequence. And he appears throughout the screen. The writer of the film or Muktibodh literature scholars can say whether these lines are of Muktibodh or not. But there is no doubt that during this time, the scene of the film became heart-wrenching for any person. The film begins with a disclaimer that its story is inspired by the incident of Bhatta Parsaul village of Uttar Pradesh in 2011. It has been changed to the backdrop of Rajasthan in the film. However, the name of the village has been kept as Parsaul.
The one-liner summary of the film is – ‘Our land, our will.’ Here, industrialist Haribhai Khetan (Gajraj Rao) does all sorts of tricks to vacate the village for the Bikaner to Boston project. The local administration, local MLA, and economists are also in his grip. And when the farmer Raja Ram Solanki took the ‘risks’ of his will and rights against their power, the ‘monasteries’ and ‘forts’ started shaking. Akshay Kumar and Arshad Warsi, who play two lawyers who are jolly, uneducated, unemployed, and quarrel with each other, also have a change of heart after knowing the pain of the farmer’s widow and they also unite to take ‘risks’ against injustice. On the other hand, the judge, who is troubled by both the Jollies and wants to make his desolate life a garden, takes the ‘risk’ of listening to the ‘spirit’ from the ‘paper’.