Any filmmaker could have made The Chess Players. But only Satyajit Ray could have made it great. The film is set in 19th century India, a tumultuous period when the nation’s states were being slowly annexed and brought under the rule of the despotic British East India Company. The Chess Players is a fictional drama and satire, that takes place during this historic time.

The film owes its title to Mirza Sajjad Ali and his bosom friend Mir Roshan Ali (Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffery), two noblemen obsessed by chess. So passionate is their love for the game that important matters of state and life fall into neglect. Take for example Mirza’s wife (Farida Jalal), who is cheating on him: cooing with her lover in bed while the husband plays chess in the next room! The other friend’s wife (Shabana Azmi) is more sincere — frustrated by the lack of attention, she steals her husband’s chess pieces, only to discover that Mir has come up with a novel solution: using ubiquitous kitchen items such as salt shakers and lemons as alternatives.

The Chess Players uses the deft touch of comedy to underscore the fundamental problem of indifference among the Indian ruling classes during the British Raj. In the film, the ruler Wazed Ali Shah (Amjad Khan)  has delegated the affairs of Lucknow to his subordinates, so that he can be free to engage in poetry and enjoy the company of a “regiment of concubines.” When he learns of the British plan to annex his kingdom, a meeting of all government ministers is called: the king reprimands them for not doing enough to appease the colonial Empire. He then miserably asks them what’s wrong with loving only art and poetry. He is serious and absolutely sincere about this question!

In an earlier scene, while informing the King of Britain’s decision to remove the ruler from the throne, his Prime Minister had begun to cry. Ruler Wazed Ali Shah coddled his minister and friend with the assurance that art and poetry alone should move a man to tears, nothing else. And so we understand how he became King, and how this king does not possess the will or political savvy to keep his crown or his state’s sovereignty.

As the the chess-playing friends move their rooks and their knights and their bishops and pawns, the narrative cleverly parallels British General Outram’s own maneuvers  to acquire the last independent state in India. The Chess Players, a story seemingly about two friends and their obsession with a checkered board, becomes an indictment of a people’s apathy, and how that allowed for the British checkmate.