The seventy-five-minute color documentary about a caste dilemma in rural India was shot by cameraman Apurba Kishore Bir in two weeks among villagers and edited by Shivdasani over a year.
This film is accompanied by music by Edgar Varèse and a commentary written by Vinay Shukla and spoken by Amrish Puri.
[2] Chhatrabhang is a Marxist critque of the Indian caste (and class) system, strong and immovable as a rock.
There is a recurrent shot of a labourer hammering and breaking apart a large rock as a symbol of changing social times.
This "partisan film"[9] ends with a portrait of Baba Saheb and headlines about the killiings of thousands of Harijans (low caste citizens) for having dared to draw water from wells belonging to the Brahmins.