Plot

Using only a hammer and a chisel, a man spends twenty-two years carving a road through a treacherous mountain.

Dashrath Manjhi was a poor man from the lowest of the low castes, living in a remote village cut off from the world by a rocky mountain range. Life for him was a daily struggle for survival. He loved his wife, Phaguniya, beyond belief. One day, while climbing the mountain to bring him food, his wife slipped, fell and died. Overwhelmed by grief, Dashrath decided to carve out a path through the mountain, so that no one else would suffer his fate. For 22 years, all by himself, with just a hammer and a chisel, he hammered away at the rocks, till the path was carved out from the mountain.—Ketan Mehta

Dashrath Manjhi standing own a mountain curses it stating that he will break its ego and starts to break the mountain.The story takes back in late 50s when Dashrath returns to his village after seven years and finds that government passes a law that everyone is equal in the country and there are no untouchables in the celebration he meets Faguniya.When Dashrath and his father got to get his bride back who was married to him in childhood her father rejects,but Dashrath realizes that she is none other than Faguniya and will get her back at any cost.Dashrath elopes with Faguniya on the day of her marriage and both live happily after giving birth to a boy,while Faguniya is pregnant for second time she slips from the mountain while coming to give lunch to Dashrath.Dashrath rushes her to the hospital but she passes away due to delay in reaching the hospital as they had to cross 50km distance to reach the hospital.Devastated by death of Faguniya ,Dashrath decides to break the mountain and make a road in his village to get easy access to other places but many people think he is gone insane and one many can never break the mountain alone.—alex.mjacko@gmail.com

In the 1960s Dashrath Manjhi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) lived in a small village Gehlore near Gaya, Bihar, India with his family including his wife Phaguniya Devi (Radhika Apte). Ruab (Pankaj Tripathi) the landlord's son, wants to contest the next election & his dad is the powerful landlord of the village.

Alok Jha (Gaurav Dwivedi) is a journalist who is petitioning the government for the betterment of the Gehlore village, which is the most backward in independent India. The village is surrounded by a mountain, due to which the villagers have to trek 40 miles to reach the nearest town of Wazirgunj. Through the mountain, the town is only 4 miles away. Many people die while trying to cross the mountain.

Manjhi belongs to the Moosahar caste, who sustains by eating mice. Manjhi was married off in child age (for a dowry of 30 bottles of liquor and 5 pigs) by his father Magru (Ashraf Ul Haq), who owed a lot of money to the landlord, Mukhiyaji (Tigmanshu Dhulia). To pay his debts Magru agrees to sell Manjhi into bondage to Mukhiya, but Manjhi runs away to Dhanbad leaving his young bride behind. Majhi works in the coal mines in Dhanbad. He returns to his village in 1956 (7 years after he ran away).

This is also the year when Untouchability is abolished in India, but the upper castes are not willing to let go of their dominant status in society. Manjhi finds that Phagunia stays with her parents, who ask for Rs 200 to send her to Manjhi, else they have already arranged her marriage to a boy who has a government job as peon in Gaya. Manjhi is instantly besotted with his young wife Phagunia. Phagunia also loves Manjhi, but her father is adamant to get her married. On the day of the wedding, Manjhi arrives with an ax and takes her away without paying any money.

Manjhi works at Ruab's brick kiln when one of his caste named Bhura falls into the open fire. Ruab does not allow for the fire to be extinguished to save the man, as that would ruin all the bricks. Jhumru demands compensation for the dead man's wife, but Ruab dismisses him and vows to teach him a lesson.

Ruab finds Phagunia sexy and wants to have sex with her. Phagunia obviously loves Manjhi and resists Ruab. Manjhi & his friends beat up Ruab, but that night Ruab attacks with his full force, and when he doesn't find Phagunia, he takes away Lauki (Urmila Mahanta) the wife of one of Manjhi's friends Jhumru (Prashant Narayanan). Ruab and his gang sexually assault her & leave her for dead. In the middle of all this, Phagunia falls pregnant. Few months later she gives birth to a healthy baby boy.

There was a rocky mountain near his village that people either had to climb across or travel round to gain access to medical care at the nearest town Wazirgunj. One day Manjhi's wife fell while trying to cross the mountain. She dies, but she was pregnant a second time & the doctor is able to save Manjhi's daughter Rajkumaria. After this accident Manjhi decides to carve a road through the mountain. Majhi had concluded that the mountain was responsible for Phagunia's death and vows to tear it down. He sells the last of his livestock to purchase tools to dig through the mountain. Majhi starts his quest in 1960.

When he started hammering the hill people called him a lunatic but that only steeled his resolve further. Every morning Majhi reaches the mountain, greets it, and then starts to break down its stones. He doesn't leave when the whole village evacuates in face of a crippling drought.

He is about to die, when he finds a hidden cavern in the mountain that has food and water. The mountain had become Manjhi's friend & won't allow him to die. He is bitten by a cobra on his toe, so he is forced to amputate it himself using his own tools.

The villagers return after successful rains the following year. Manjhi's friend, whose wife was sexually assaulted, has become a Naxal and comes back to the village to hang Mukhiya. In the resulting police action, Manjhi's father & his friend are shot dead. During his struggle Indira Gandhi (Deepa Sahi) visits the district and Manjhi is able to meet her at her rally & request for a road to be built connecting Gehlore to the nearest town.

in 1975, Ruab becomes the new Mukhiya of the village, after the death of his father. He uses Manjhi's fame to get Rs 25 Lakhs sanctioned for the road. But ends up eating the money himself. Manjhi realizes that he has been cheated and confronts Ruab. When Ruab refuses to accept the corruption, Manjhi decides to travel to Delhi to complain. He is thrown out of a moving train as he doesn't have money to pay for a ticket. So, Manjhi decides to travel the 1300 Kms to Delhi on foot. Upon reaching the Parliament, he is sent back to Bihar by the security police.

He returns to see that his villagers have joined him in his quest, and he is no longer alone in breaking the mountain. But then Ruab gets Manjhi arrested on charges of selling the stone from the mountain, when he himself had done that. Journalist Alok Jha, who has regularly visited Manjhi over the years, rallies public support for Manjhi and gets him released from prison. Now even more people join his quest.

After 22 years of back-breaking labor, Manjhi carved a path 360 feet long, 25 feet deep in places and 30 feet wide. Manjhi died in 2007. The film's postscript states that 52 years after he started breaking the mountain, 30 years after he finished and 4 years after his death the government finally made a metaled road to Gehlore in 2011. He fought with the Indian government for the development of their village and for the availability of hospitals and road.