Subversion or Submission?: Critiquing Sujoy Ghosh’s Ahalya

Subversion or Submission?: Critiquing Sujoy Ghosh’s Ahalya
Camellia Kumar

Abstract

After controversy arose following the release of Ahalya (2015), amid allegations that it bears an uncanny resemblance to a Roald Dahl story, Sujoy Ghosh addressed the matter in a tweet stating that, “My film, as is evident, is an age-old myth, slightly adult in nature, adapted with a feminist twist….” Consistent with Sujoy Ghosh’s tweet, this paper retraces Ghosh’s 14-minute short film Ahalya to critically assess its status as a feminist reimagining of the original myth to investigate whether Ghosh’s adaptation truly reinterprets the patriarchal narrative under the guise of empowerment or actively subverts it. This revaluation of Ghosh’s purported feminist interpretation of the original myth is attempted through questions that ask if Ahalya is truly autonomous or if she is merely another woman inscribed within a male-authored narrative, enacting a form of rebellion restricted by a new type of confinement.