Basanti Chong (Kharaksha Sarath) as a powerful young woman who gives up her husband and returns to serve him for a time. Her time as a widow is brutal, and her final act, killing a few dozen people, is heartbreaking.

In this case, the director’s goal may seem less about the story and more about an effort to be inclusive and take into account society’s concerns.

But many are unhappy with the decision to use real actors, and the script has been criticized, particularly in the last 25 years for stereotyping the Dalits.

It’s true that some people find the casteist subtext to be distasteful (and some do believe that many of the women and their family members who are massacred are in fact Dalits). But it’s also true that there are many who find that story’s impact on the lives of ordinary society to be disturbing. Many have complained that this is the same film that was shown at the United Nations.

But what if it was the other way around? What if “Kill the Messenger Mani Ratnam” wasn’t used at all?

The movie is a cautionary tale: It tells the story of a young girl named Mani Ratnam who, while in her 60s, has just returned to her village from a husband she has abandoned. That marriage had ended in a brief quarrel over a man who wasn’t allowed to come near the woman who had abandoned him, because he was a cow or donkey handler.

Mani becomes desperate when her husband, Jassim, moves in with her and starts to teach her about being an elder. At that time, she seems like a kind, young woman who enjoys nature and art and social gatherings. Her husband is not. But Jassim is a good man.

After a few years, Ratnam returns to the village. Jassim has gotten a few women who have been living separately, and they help him teach them how to behave in a community that doesn’t have the rules that can keep out outsiders. Eventually these women bring many of their daughters into the community, and the rest of the women become devout members.

But a local boy who has a son who has been living with Jassim begins to bully the boy’s daughter, who has become a member of the community. Soon other men in the village start to follow those boys.

With their husbands