Dalits: The true ‘Blacks’ of Bollywood?
The TLDR: When Chadwick Boseman died, it triggered a great conversation around race and Hollywood. We used the opportunity to turn the mirror on Bollywood—which is quick to condemn racism in America but does very little about its own far more blatant bigotry. The first part of this series looked at Boseman’s legacy and Bollywood’s repellent anti-Blackness. In this concluding part, we turn our attention to the Hindi film industry’s treatment of Dalits—whose cinematic history most closely mirrors that of Black Americans in Hollywood.
Does racism equal casteism?
In her latest book, Isabel Wilkerson argues the Blacks are ‘American Untouchables’—and that race is best understood as a manifestation of a caste system, where Whites operate as Brahmins:
“The hierarchy of caste… is about power—which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources—which groups are seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them and who does not. It is about respect, authority and assumptions of competence—who is accorded these and who is not.
It embeds into our bones an unconscious ranking of human characteristics and sets forth the rules, expectations and stereotypes that have been used to justify brutalities against entire groups within our species. In the American caste system, the signal of rank is what we call race, the division of humans on the basis of their appearance. In America, race is the primary tool and the visible decoy for caste.”
Does casteism equal racism? As in, does the reverse hold true as well? No, not really, if you consider the very different roots and history of a racial and caste-based hierarchy. Yes, if you view caste oppression as the violent enslavement of an entire group of people. Consider Wilkerson’s description of American slavery:
"The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to convene an owner's debts or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil."
All of the above applies exactly to the experience of Dalits—except for the use of the past tense. To this date, Dalits are “regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people” who own them.
But sticking to the subject at hand, does caste operate in the Indian film industry exactly the same way as race? Yes, it does in Bollywood, but not in other parts of the country.
The visible Dalit
In Hollywood, Black characters have long been designated side-kicks, victims or villains—with the White man/woman taking centre-stage. Yes, it’s changing, but only in recent years (and not fast enough. See: John Boyega). Dalit characters in Bollywood, however, have suffered a far ignominious fate. Here’s a quick history (detailed here):
The early years: In the early days—and filled with reformist zeal—Hindi films were more conscientious about tackling the issue of “untouchability.” Be it Achhut Kanya (1936)—which was the first film on the subject—or Sujata (1959), the movies cast upper caste men as saviours of lower caste women (through love and marriage).
The ‘art movie’ era: brought us brilliant filmmakers like Shyam Benegal whose trilogy—Ankur, Manthan and Nishant—turned the lens on Dalit women, specifically their sexual and economic exploitation by upper caste men. But even great directors had their incurable blind spots, as Dilip Mandal notes:
“Even under the lens of filmmakers whose work revolved around socio-political conditions, which came to be known as the new wave or parallel cinema, the Dalit protagonists continued to play a subjugated role (Damul, 1985); or were portrayed as impaired, alcoholic and poor who toiled for their upper caste landlords (Ankur, 1974). The latter, a Shyam Benegal film, which won three National Film awards including the best feature, is still regarded as one of the greatest art films of Indian cinema. Everyone seems to love a gullible, meek, disempowered Dalit!”
But new Bollywood fares far worse in comparison—with Dalit characters almost disappearing from the big screen.
The invisible Dalit
The numbers: In 2015, The Hindu analysed 300 Bollywood movies released in 2013 and 2014. It found that only six had lead characters who were Dalit. In comparison, in Tamil movies, eight of the 26 top-grossing movies had backward caste lead characters.
An upper caste universe: In Bollywood, Dalits play minor—and mostly comic or negative—roles. As Ravikiran Shinde notes, the heroes and the storylines have remained incurably upper caste—even when the focus shifts from big cities to small towns:
“Whether it’s NRIs living abroad, middle class families of metropolitan India or the alternate movies of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Bollywood has mostly showcased the stories of Savarnas alone… One may think that at least in movies based in small towns, Bollywood would have shown more OBC and Dalit characters, who together outnumber the Savarna Hindu population by nearly a 4:1 ratio. However, that is not the case. Primary characters are rarely called Yadav, Paswan, Jatav, Kushwaha, Mourya or Rajbhar; heroes are mostly named Sharma, Trivedi, Shukla, Dubey or Pandey.”
Bollywood is so averse to showing a Dalit in a leading role that it deliberately changed a Marathi blockbuster (‘Sairat’) about an intercaste love story into an upper caste romance (‘Dhadak’).
The ‘caste-conscious’ movie: Dalits only make an appearance in plotlines that explicitly deal with caste. And in these cases, Bollywood has three tested methods of dealing with backward caste characters.
- One: make the upper caste man the hero. Example: ‘Article 15’
- Two: hastily brush past the Dalit identity of the hero. Example: ‘Newton’
- Three: choose a safely upper class/caste star to play a Dalit. Example: Saif Ali Khan in ‘Aarakshan’.
The most telling case is that of ‘Paatal Lok’—where its most prominent resident, the hapless Hathiram, is obviously Dalit but never ever labelled as one. As The Wire notes: “[T]here is no plausible explanation why Delhi’s Paatal Lok has all the marginalised communities in the city, except the Dalits who have been relegated to the margins for millennia.”
Not our problem: When challenged on their choices, Bollywood directors offer astonishingly patronising responses. For example, this is what Anubhav Sinha had to say about ‘Article 15’:
“In an ideal world, Dalits should have enough to defend their causes. But they have been made helpless. There’s no water to drink. There’s no food to eat. In that kind of a society where Dalits are systematically oppressed, it would have been too Bollywood to have a Dalit hero. It would have been unbelievable.”
Never mind that in reality, it is Dalits who have led the fight for their own emancipation.
The bottomline: Dalit characters are missing on the big screen because Dalits themselves are missing in Bollywood. Almost all its leading actors and directors are upper caste or, at best, upper class Muslims—unlike the Marathi, Malayalam and Tamil industry. As one film journalist bluntly puts it: “You need a Dalit to make a realistic Dalit movie. Bollywood doesn’t have it. It is as simple as that.”
Reading list
- The Print offers a good overview of Bollywood’s Dalit problem.
- The Wire has two very good pieces by Shinde. One: Why Bollywood’s small town heroes are always upper caste. Two: The missed opportunity in ‘Paatal Lok’.
- The Hindu looks at ‘Dhadak’ and Bollywood’s fear of Dalit love.
- MyNation offers an interesting comparison between Hindi and other film industries.
- If you want to get a sense of the casteist language used for Dalit actors and directors in Bollywood, check out this video round up.
- The National focuses on the glaring absence of a Dalit superstar in Bollywood.
- For useful background on Bollywood’s history: this chapter from ‘Cinematic Narrative: The Construction of Dalit Identity in Bollywood’.