Satyajit Ray: liberalism and its vicissitudes

Revivals of "The Apu Trilogy" and his other great films tend to bring out the usual platitudes about humanism in discussing Ray. But there is more to the story, Sengoopta asserts. "Most critics still do not appreciate to what extent Ray's work was rooted in a specifically Indian version of modernist, cosmopolitan liberalism that goes back at least to the nineteenth century," going on to explore that history, the filmmaker's embrace of prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and his subsequent break with Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, after she "suspended" democracy during India's emergency period of 1975-1977