 This film is about Chandidas, a legendary 15th-C. Bengali Vaishnavite poet whose biography remains obscure but was an influence on the better documented Chaitanya (1486-1533), a school teacher who promoted the Vaishnavite ideology in Bengal, mostly through hymns about the Radha-Krishna legend. The film stressed the poet s teachings through the love story between Chandidas (Bannerjee) and a low-caste washerwoman, Rami (Umasashi). The conventional villain of the saint film genre, who represents the established order threatened by the outsider s revolutionary influence on common people, is the rapacious upper-caste merchant Bijoynarayan. When Rami rejects his advances, he persuades the high priest to insist that Chandidas must repent or be punished for associating with a low-caste woman. Chandidas agrees to repent but when he sees the injuries Rami has suffered at the hands of the merchant s goons, he rejects institutionalized religion in favour of the higher Vaishnavite call for a more democratic god and leaves the village with Rami.