[Reader-list] Bollywood on caste

[anuradha mukherjee]

 This has another interesting criticism of Arundhati Roy's "social mores".
"Roy's hyper-sensitive Indian sexual mores dominated the larger debate on
caste," reads the article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/16/bollywood-india-caste-system How
Bollywood is starting to deal with India's caste system

Caste is a contentious issue in India, and one rarely commented on in
Bollywood films. But political change is on the way, and Indian cinema will
have to reflect that

   -
      - *Nirpal Dhaliwal* <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/nirpaldhaliwal>
      - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Thursday 16 December
      2010 22.30 GMT
      - Article
history<http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/16/bollywood-india-caste-system#history-link-box>

Caste is a contentious issue in India, but not a predictable one. In 2008,
I watched television footage of violent protests in Rajasthan, as rioters
clashed with the police in battles that cost dozens of lives. Their outrage
was driven by the government's refusal to categorise their caste as one of
the lowest. They were fighting to be relegated to a lower social rank. India
has the most comprehensive affirmative action programme in the world and
downgrading would have qualified the protestors for valuable quota schemes
in welfare, education and government jobs.

As with so much in India, caste is an ancient institution that pervades
everyday life, the mechanics of which remain a convoluted mystery. There was
a buzz in 2007, when a *dalit* (the caste formerly known as "untouchables")
was Bollywood <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/bollywood>'s first-ever lead
character in Eklavya: The Royal Guard, but the character was played by
Sanjay Dutt, a scion of one of India's leading film dynasties – his father
Sunil was a brahmin and his mother Nargis a descendant of a "tawaif", an
aristocratic courtesan. Despite there being more than 150 million dalits in
India, not one has made a major dent in Bollywood.

Still, Bollywood is one of the most campaigning and progressive forces in
Indian society. Stars such as Amitabh Bachchan are outspoken in their
opposition to casteism, and most major figures are associated with some
humanitarian activism. Preity Zinta, for instance, sponsors an entire school
of lower-caste girls.

However, discussing caste is hampered by official taboos. One cannot refer
to anyone as an "untouchable" in India, the term being analogous to "nigger"
in the west. But while "nigger" can be employed in western cinema to make a
social point, "untouchable" will be edited out by the censors there.

Its not surprising that India's cinema has been so reluctant to tackle it.
The first major attempt to deal with the subject was Achhut Kanya
(Untouchable Maiden) in 1936. Like most films that have dealt with caste
since, it framed the topic in a Romeo-and-Juliet tale of star-crossed
lovers, undone by the gossip and intolerance of their families and
surrounding community.

The brutal realities of caste, its violence and sustaining context of
superstition, ignorance and social neurosis have rarely been addressed
head-on. The 2006 Bollywood movie Omkara, again borrowing from Shakespeare,
remade Othello in the frontier regions of northern India, with a lower-caste
political gangster substituted for the Moorish general. The theme remains
that of a powerful outsider, paranoid about his status and manipulated
because of it, rather than the banal cruelties and thoughtless traditions
that blight everyday life across India.

India's own political correctness also stifles the debate. In the mid-90s,
the novelist Arundhati Roy vilified the makers of Bandit Queen, the most
realistic and politically challenging film ever made about caste. The
heroine was the real-life Phoolan Devi, whose gang-rape by the men of a
higher-caste village turned her into a mass-murdering vigilante. Roy
objected to Devi's sexual abuse being shown (albeit very inexplicitly) on
screen while Devi was alive – despite the fact that Devi had given her
express consent. Roy's hyper-sensitive Indian sexual mores dominated the
larger debate on caste.

"But gender and caste could not be separated," says Farrukh Dhondy, who
wrote the film. "The fact is that Devi was raped because she was lower caste
and those men thought they could get away with it. A woman's life in India
is very much defined by caste."

After 60 years of Indian democracy, lower castes have now established
themselves as powerful voting blocs, leading to the rise of Mayawati, the
first dalit woman to be elected to India's parliament and chief minister of
its largest state, Uttar Pradesh – one of the most powerful figures in the
country, able to make or break a government.

Dhondy is currently working on a treatment for her biopic. "I want to show
how she and her ancestry were treated and how, under democracy, she has
galvanised the dalit vote to become such a political phenomenon," he says.
"She is empowering them and radically transforming society."

Caste will become an even bigger issue in India as the historically
downtrodden consolidate themselves and take power from traditional elites.
Even the habitual timidity of Bollywood will have to change as it is forced
to address a subject it has previously kept to one side.