INTRO / HOOK
Indian cinema has always been willing to make films about love across a divide, provided the divide is money. Caste is the divide it has spent a century declining to name.
Sairat named it, and then made ₹110 crore.
MAIN STORY
Sairat released in 2016, written and directed by Nagraj Manjule. DNA India reported the film made on a budget of around ₹4 crore earning roughly ₹110 crore and becoming the highest-grossing Marathi film. Deccan Chronicle reported the film crossing ₹60 crore during its run, which at the time was itself unprecedented for Marathi cinema.
The Hollywood Reporter India included it in its 25 in 25 list, describing it as a gut-punch nobody saw coming.
The music by Ajay-Atul was recorded with the Sofia Symphony Orchestra, an unusual step for a Marathi film, and became a phenomenon in its own right.
The Caravan published an examination of the casteism evident in the backlash the film received, which is itself part of the film’s record.
BACKGROUND
Nagraj Manjule came to filmmaking from a Dalit background in rural Maharashtra, and his work has consistently placed caste at the centre rather than the periphery. His debut feature Fandry had already established that approach.
Marathi cinema has a long and serious tradition, and has produced significant work throughout, but it had never had a commercial breakout at this scale.
The film’s structure is deliberately disarming. For most of its running time it operates as a lush, funny, musically enormous romance, which is precisely what makes its final movement land the way it does.
That structural choice is why it reached an audience that a straightforwardly political film would not have.
WHAT WE KNOW
Established: Sairat released in 2016, written and directed by Nagraj Manjule; it was made on a budget reported at around ₹4 crore and grossed approximately ₹110 crore; it became the highest-grossing Marathi film; the music was by Ajay-Atul and recorded with a symphony orchestra; the film generated significant public reaction including documented casteist backlash.
Not established here: precise verified budget and gross figures, which are reported rather than audited, and the details of the film’s subsequent remakes in other languages.
WHY IT MATTERS
Commercially, Sairat proved that a regional Indian film with no stars, no spectacle and an uncompromising subject could reach a mass audience. That preceded and in some ways enabled the wider regional breakout of the following decade.
Culturally, it did something Indian popular cinema had largely refused to do. Caste is the organising structure of enormous parts of Indian social life and it has been near-invisible in mainstream Indian film, or present only as unnamed background.
Sairat made it the subject, in a film people queued for.
For Marathi cinema specifically, it demonstrated a ceiling far higher than the industry had assumed, and it is not a coincidence that India’s current Oscar entry is a Marathi film.
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
The backlash is part of the story and should not be tidied away. The Caravan’s analysis of the casteist response to the film documents a reaction that was, in its way, confirmation of the film’s argument.
The film has been remade in multiple Indian languages with varying degrees of fidelity to its politics, and the question of what survives a remake is a genuinely interesting one.
The simplest measure of significance is this: a decade on, Sairat is still the reference point when anyone discusses caste in Indian popular cinema, and there is still no obvious successor.
BENGALURU BAATH TAKE
What gets us about Sairat is the craft of the trap. Manjule spends two hours making you fall completely in love with a film, with a couple, with a song you will hum for a week, and then he shows you what the society in the background was always going to do. That is not a lecture. That is filmmaking. Ten years on, Indian cinema is much better at spectacle than it was and no better at this. If you want to know why a Marathi film is carrying India’s Oscar hopes this year, start here.
SOURCES & VERIFICATION
Verification status: CONFIRMED · Independent confirming sources: 5
- 1. DNA India — https://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/report-made-in-rs-4-crore-this-film-sairat-earned-rs-110-crore-highest-grossing-movie-its-climax-shocked-everyone-3088554
Confirms: Budget of around ₹4 crore, gross of approximately ₹110 crore, highest-grossing Marathi film status. - 2. Deccan Chronicle — https://www.deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/bollywood/180516/marathi-movie-sairat-earns-rs-60-crore.html
Confirms: Contemporaneous reporting of the film crossing ₹60 crore during its theatrical run. - 3. The Hollywood Reporter India — https://www.hollywoodreporterindia.com/features/insight/nagraj-manjules-sairat-was-a-gut-punch-that-no-one-saw-coming
Confirms: Critical assessment of the film’s impact in THR India’s 25 in 25 series. - 4. The Caravan — https://caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/wild-bias-casteism-backlash-sairat
Confirms: Documentation and analysis of the casteist backlash against the film. - 5. Wikipedia — Sairat — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sairat
Confirms: Compiled credits, music details and box office record.
IMAGE INFORMATION
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Date created / downloaded: 2026-09-20
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