University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Becoming Dalit cinema

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Becoming Dalit cinema

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BECOMING DALIT CINEMA
by Devika Girish

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS (SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS)

December 2019

© Devika Girish 2019

Girish 2
Acknowledgements

I wouldn’t have been able to write this thesis without the generosity and guidance of three people: my
chair Diane Winston, who gifted me her rare combination of discipline and patience, and who helped
me discover new abilities and interests within myself by holding me to a higher standard than I thought
was possible; Tim Page, one of the kindest, most passionate professors I’ve ever known, whose
attention to detail helped ground me and whose excellent (and always quotable) advice helped keep me
afloat; and Sasha Anawalt, a fairy godmother to me from the moment I called her over a year ago to
enquire about the SJA program. I’ve never known anyone so full of energy, ideas, and passion as
Sasha. She cares more deeply about her students’ success and wellbeing than you’d think is humanly
possible.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Priya Jaikumar, who ultimately was unable to be on my
committee, but who inspired and guided my thesis throughout the year with her brilliant insights and
encouragement. Thank you, Priya, for showing me how to fold the personal into the political and
theoretical—with both empathy and intellectual rigor.

I am also very thankful to my peers at USC, with whom I spent many sleepless nights chipping away at
this thesis and other assignments. Thank you all for your extraordinary support and for always
inspiring me with your talent.

I owe everything to my parents, Girish and Meenakshi, and my brother, Nachiket. They’ve taught me
how to read, write, and be intellectually curious. They’ve challenged me in fruitful ways and supported
me unconditionally in my lowest moments. They’ve encouraged me to be intelligent and ambitious,
but more importantly, to be humble and kind.

Jonas Johnson, my partner in love, life, writing, and never-ending conversations: this thesis is as much
yours as it is mine. I’ve demanded more from you than is reasonable in writing it, and you’ve coaxed,
cajoled, critiqued, challenged, and caressed it into existence. Thank you for being the smartest person I
know.

Last, but certainly not the least, I am immensely grateful to my interviewees—the Dalit writers and
scholars and filmmakers and people who gave me many precious hours out of their days and trusted
me with their stories. Thank you all for the integrity and compassion you showed me. This is for you.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 2
Abstract 4
Chapter 1: Scenes from the DALIFF 5
Chapter 2: Globalizing the Dalit Struggle 1 3
Chapter 3: The Modern Workings of Caste 1 7
Chapter 4: Distributing a Dalit Film 2 1
Chapter 5: How to define Dalit Cinema? 2 7
Works Cited 3 2

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Abstract

The word “Dalit” literally means “broken” or “crushed.” It has been used since the 1920s to describe
the plight of the communities in India that were designated as “untouchable” by the Hindu varna
system, in which one’s profession and social position are determined by birth. Dalits have traditionally
been relegated to occupations considered menial and impure—like cleaning feces, tanning leather, or
working with dead animals—and subjected to a severe form of segregation. Although caste
discrimination was outlawed in the Indian constitution at the time of its drafting, Dalits are still among
the poorest, least educated groups in the country and they continue to suffer a high rate of violence.

These inequities of caste are reflected in (and reinforced by) India’s cinema, which so far has rarely
centered Dalits, whether on or behind the camera. But in the last few years, the unprecedented
commercial and critical success of a handful of Dalit filmmakers has kickstarted a wave of Indian
cinema by, for, and about Dalits. In February 2019, the first ever Dalit Film and Cultural Festival
(DALIFF) was organised in New York City. It announced to the world this new film genre: Dalit
cinema.

This thesis draws on interviews, observations, and reports from the DALIFF to trace the journey of this
new Dalit cinema — from filmmakers finding the inspiration and capital to make movies, to the
economic and social mechanics of distributing these films, to their impact on Dalit audiences. In doing
so, it attempts a portrait of the broader journey of Dalit empowerment in contemporary India.

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Chapter 1: Scenes from the DALIFF
In 1913, W.E.B. Du Bois’ historical pageant, “The Star of Ethiopia,” was mounted for the first time in
New York City to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The pageant
was a grand production, tracing the history of African Americans from prehistoric civilizations to their
lives in 19th century America. It was performed in three more cities over the next 12 years, involving
more than 1,000 actors and drawing an audience of almost 35, 000. Du Bois hoped, he wrote, to
educate African Americans about their own history and “to reveal the Negro to the white world as a
human, feeling thing.” (Du Bois 1915, 92).

Suraj Yengde first encountered details of the pageant two years ago in a class with Cornel West at
Harvard University. Yengde, 30, was born in a ghetto of Dalits — the so-called “untouchables” at the
bottom of India’s socio-religious caste hierarchy — in the central Indian city of Nanded. Like Du Bois,
who was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard, a number of firsts have defined
Yengde’s life. He was one of the first in his shantytown to finish graduate studies, the first Dalit ever
to earn a Ph.D. from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), and is
currently the first postdoctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability
at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

When Yengde read Du Bois’s words in West’s class, he was struck with inspiration. “I thought I could
do something similar,” he said, “and experience what Du Bois experienced, a century later.” (Yengde
2019). But instead of writing a historical pageant about Dalits, Yengde put a contemporary spin on Du
Bois’ vision: He created a film festival.
***

Yengde, like Du Bois, mounted his production in New York City.

On a chilly Saturday morning last February, the lobby of the Altschul Lecture Hall at Barnard College
bustled with activity. For the most part, the scene resembled an academic conference: men in crisp
suits and women in bright saris stood in clusters, chatting over cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and
Girish 6
flipping through the books displayed for sale on a long table. But one corner of the room sparkled with
the glamor of a film festival: a stretch of blue carpet lay in front of a tall blue banner with the letters
“D-A-L-I-F-F” emblazoned on it. To its right was a table lined with golden statuettes.

Up a flight of stairs, in a large classroom, a film screening was winding down. As the lights went on
and the room filled up, Yengde—tall, with long, curly hair piled on top of his head in an
afro-tail—took to the podium.

“Good morning, everybody,” he said. “My name is Suraj. Welcome to the first Dalit Film and Cultural
Festival. Ever” (Yengde, “Inaugural Speech,” 2019).

As the audience broke into applause, Yengde continued: “This festival emphasizes the novelty and
creativity of Dalit art, Dalit life, and Dalit pride. It’s a place to celebrate our life, which is otherwise
subjected to torture and murder” (Ibid).

The word “Dalit” literally means “broken” or “crushed” (Rao 2009, 1). In the 1920s, social reformers
began to use the term to describe the plight of the communities designated as “untouchable” by the
Hindu varna system, in which one’s profession and social position are determined by birth (Ibid).
These communities have traditionally been relegated to occupations considered menial and impure —
like cleaning feces, tanning leather, or working with dead animals — and subjected to a severe form of
segregation.

When India achieved independence in 1947, the drafters of the Indian constitution outlawed
caste-based discrimination and instituted affirmative action in universities and government jobs for the
lower castes. But caste inequality and oppression still persist in India.

Dalits, who account for about 16% of India’s 1.4 billion people, are some of the poorest and least
educated social groups in the country (Express News Service 2013). In many regions, they are denied
basic rights such as attending regular schools or accessing public water supplies.

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They also continue to suffer a high rate of violence. Between 2007 and 2017, crimes against Dalits
increased by 66 percent and the rape of Dalit women doubled, according to the National Crime Record
Bureau. (Sengupta 2017).

“It is the responsibility of the broken person,” Yengde declared in his opening address at the DALIFF
(as the festival was stylized), “to recreate his own image and convey to the world his position on his
own terms” (Yengde, “Inaugural Speech,” 2019).

The festival spanned two days and two venues, shifting on Sunday to The New School in lower
Manhattan. It showcased 11 feature films, two shorts, two trailers, and a television series, alongside a
small gallery of works by Dalit visual artists.

The DALIFF offered an introduction to a burgeoning new Indian film genre: cinema made by and for
Dalits. But the journey it traced of this new Dalit cinema — from filmmakers finding the inspiration
and capital to make movies, to the economic and social mechanics of releasing these films, to their
impact on Dalit audiences — provided a glimpse into the broader journey of Dalit empowerment in
contemporary India. Like Du Bois’ storied pageant, the festival turned into much more than an artistic
event or performance: it was a jubilation, a history lesson, and, most importantly, a defiant cry of
protest against the daily indignities of Dalit life.

Yengde reminded the audience that although the festival was new, it drew from a long, rich, and
often-overlooked history of Dalit art and activism. He paid homage to PK Rosy, a Dalit actress who
was ostracized into obscurity after she played the role of an upper caste woman in one of the earliest
(and since lost) Indian feature films in 1930 (Pillai 2013). He also tipped his hat to jurist and reformer
B.R. Ambedkar, a pioneering leader of the Dalit movement and the author of the Indian constitution.

The latter’s shadow loomed especially large at the DALIFF, as it has in all matters of Dalit — and
indeed, Indian — politics in the last century. The festival was organized by members of the Dr.
Ambedkar International Mission (AIM), a global nonprofit dedicated to his cause, and the venues, too,
were chosen in his honor. Ambedkar received his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University —
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with which Barnard is affiliated — in 1927, becoming one of the first highly educated Dalits in Indian
history. His mentor and academic hero, John Dewey, was a founder of The New School.

“Educate, agitate, organize” Ambedkar’s popular slogan for Dalit empowerment was ubiquitous at the
DALIFF, seen on posters and stickers, heard in discussions, and quoted to me by several of the
festival’s organizers. (Keer 1954, 351).

It also seemed to encapsulate Yengde’s own life. In an interview during the festival, he told me that he
grew up in “Ambedkar Nagar” — one of the many ghettoes across India named after the Dalit leader.
He aspired to become a lawyer just like Ambedkar.

“Who else?” Yengde said. “I had no other inspiration or people to look up to. The people in my basti
[slum] were mostly uneducated or partially educated, many of them into criminal and gang violence,
prostitution” (Yengde, “Personal Interview,” 2019).

When he was a child, Yengde’s parents could barely ever afford tickets to the movies. It was only
when an upper caste classmate took him along to the cinema that he realized that watching movies was
a pastime for some people.

“It was an occasion for all of us,” he said. “The occasion had to be created” (Ibid).

Yengde first developed an academic interest in cinema in college, when he won an award at a local
conference for a paper on Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008). But it
took many more years before he saw himself or any aspect of his Dalit life represented on screen.

Like most professional and artistic fields in India, cinema, too, has historically been dominated by the
upper castes. Dalits are tokenized figures in Indian movies: They are mined for humor and pathos (as
in the case of “Kachra,” the disabled pariah in 2001’s Oscar-nominated Lagaan ), but rarely allowed
any structural representation, whether in front of or behind the camera.

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Only six of the 300 movies released in 2013 and 2014 by Bollywood, the country’s dominant,
Hindi-language film industry, featured lead characters from a backward caste, according to a study by
The Hindu (S. and Naig, 2015).

While Dalit issues have featured more prominently in independent and regional films, these have
mostly been helmed by upper caste filmmakers. In the 60s and 70s, internationally acclaimed directors
like Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy made films critiquing untouchability, while recent festival
prize-winners Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court (2014) and Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s Chauranga (2016) also
highlight caste oppression. But critics have argued that these films further the archetype of Dalits as
perpetual victims, normalizing images of suffering and violence (Wankhede 2017).

What has changed in the last few years, giving impetus to the DALIFF, is the rise of the Dalit auteur.
Two young filmmakers, in particular, have helped push cinema about Dalits into the Indian
mainstream. They are Nagraj Manjule, a director from the western state of Maharashtra, and Pa
Ranjith, who hails from Tamil Nadu in south India.

Manjule burst onto the scene in 2014 with the semi-autobiographical “Fandry” (“Pig”), a rural, social
realist drama about a teenager from a pig-catching caste who is infatuated with an upper caste
classmate. As a Dalit story told from a Dalit point-of-view, “Fandry” was a rarity in Indian cinema,
and it won India’s prestigious National Film Award and a host of other festival prizes.

Manjule’s second feature “Sairat” (2016), a caste-inflected take on “Romeo and Juliet,” premiered at
the Berlin International Film Festival before becoming the highest-grossing Marathi-language film
ever, earning more than $13 million at the box office (Verma 2018).

Ranjith debuted with 2012’s Tamil-language romantic comedy “Attakathi” and acquired critical and
commercial acclaim for his political thrillers, “Madras” (2014) and “Kabali” (2016).

But Kaala” (“Black”), his 2018 action blockbuster, has been hailed as a milestone for Dalit cinema: It
features India’s biggest superstar, Rajnikanth, as the leader of a Dalit slum who is fighting to save its
land from being seized by politicians and corporate developers.
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Yengde said that he could see his own story in these films — sometimes in details as minor as the food
the characters eat on screen. For instance, unlike upper-caste Hindus, most Dalits eat meat.

“I always have difficulty [seeing] vegetarian food and [finding] me in that scene. It just doesn’t fit. We
are pure beef-eaters and that is our cuisine,” Yendge said (Yengde, “Personal Interview,” 2019).

“There’s a political interest right now and we have seen an eruption of films. We have Manjule,
Ranjith, amazing newcomers in the field. What we're trying to do is create space [for them],” he said.
(Ibid.)

Ranjith and Manjule were both guests at the DALIFF, along with Bollywood actress and former Miss
India Niharika Singh.

Speaking at a welcome panel following Yengde’s opening remarks, Singh said, “If you want to talk
about sad things, just google ‘Dalit.’ But let’s talk about happiness today” (Singh 2019).

Her words seemed to capture the spirit of the festival. The films screened at the DALIFF dealt with the
hard-hitting realities of Dalit life in India: poverty, honor killings, abuse. “We Have Not Come Here
To Die,” a documentary, explored the aftermath of the 2016 suicide of Dalit Ph.D. scholar Rohith
Vemula, who had been harassed by right-wing student groups and the school administration. Another
film titled “Kakkoos,” or “Shit,” depicted the daily lives (and frequent deaths) of “manual
scavengers”—sanitation workers, mostly from Dalit communities, who hand clean septic tanks and
toilets all over India.

And yet, the overriding mood at the DALIFF was one of joy and hope. People had traveled from all
over the East Coast and even California and Canada to attend the festival and they greeted each other
with “Jai Bhim” or “Hail Bhim”—a greeting that derives from Ambedkar’s middle name, Bhimrao.
There was a palpable sense of excitement at the opportunity to mingle with celebrities like Ranjith and
Manjule, who milled about entourage-free and gamely chatted with fans.

Girish 11
I asked a trio of young AIM members, who introduced themselves simply as Ashish, Anup, and Jeet, if
they believed that movies could bring about change. They nodded enthusiastically.

“The ABC of India is Astrology, Bollywood, and Cricket,” said Ashish. “Everyone goes to see movies.
Movies can change culture, they can change thought processes” (Ashish 2019).

For Anup, events like the DALIFF are important reminders of the accomplishments made by Dalits in
spite of the community’s ongoing struggle against discrimination.

“There’s so much despair in India right now, but also so much hope,” he said. “This is a chance for us
to show the hope” (Anup 2019).

Elsewhere, I met Neeraj Ganvir, a 25-year-old software engineer and theatre actor, as he was emerging
from a screening. He had been in the U.S. for two years and he was hoping to network with other
Dalits in New York’s arts community.

Ganvir had just watched “Papilio Buddha,” a 2013 feature by Malayali filmmaker Jayan Cherian,
which tells the story of a group of landless, displaced Dalits who take to Ambedkarism and Buddhism
as they rise in rebellion against the authorities. The film was censored in India due to its graphic
depiction of the atrocities inflicted on Dalits by the police and its scathing critique of Gandhi’s failure
to stand up for Dalits (The Hindu 2013).

“I thought the movie was very real,” Ganvir told me. “It conveyed the truth” (Ganvir 2019).

“Indians are hypocritical: they label activists as instigators, facts as provocations. But when you put
reality in the imaginary world of the movie, people connect to it. It brings people closer” (Ibid).

Ganvir hoped that the DALIFF, a high-profile event held at two top universities in the U.S., would
open doors for Dalit activists in India.

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“If Dalits can do this in New York, then Indians will look forward to [similar] events in India,” he said.
“It gives us a ray of hope” (Ibid).

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Chapter 2: Globalizing the Dalit Struggle
But why was the first-ever DALIFF held in New York City, on the other side of the globe from India?

My conversations with the festival’s organizers suggested that the reasons were both pragmatic and
historical. The support of Barnard College and The New School, as well as the availability of the
filmmakers, had helped determine the location—and the fact that Ambedkar had spent his formative
years and developed his most influential ideas in New York added a layer of metaphorical significance.
Just across the street from the festival venue, in the Lehman Library at Columbia’s School of
International and Public Affairs, is a bust commemorating Ambedkar. Some miles southeast, in the
Little India neighborhood of Jersey City, one can even stroll through “Ambedkar Avenue” (Rath
2019).

But the decision to hold the DALIFF in the United States is also part of a growing effort by Yengde
and other members of the AIM to bring Dalit activism in conversation with other social justice
movements around the world, especially those of Black and indigenous peoples.

Yengde’s research at Harvard, on the critical relationship between Dalit and Black studies, derives
from a long, yet overlooked history of exchange between the two groups.

Notably, in the 1940s, Ambedkar wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois requesting a copy of the National Negro
Congress petition to the U.N., explaining that he had been a “student of the Negro problem,” and that
“[t]here is so much similarity between the position of the Untouchables in India and of the position of
the Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary” (Desai 2014). Du
Bois responded with a copy of the petition and said that he had "every sympathy with the
Untouchables of India” (Ibid.)

Martin Luther King Jr. also was moved and influenced by the anti-untouchability movement during his
trip to India in 1959 (King 1959). In turn, the Dalit Panther movement of the 1970s, started by young
Dalits in Mumbai, was modeled on the Black Panthers (Bhatia 2018).
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Yengde told me that the African-American scholars whom he met and got to know in the U.S. had
made a deep impression on him.

“One of the influences [for the DALIFF] comes from Black cinema,” he said. “When I came here, I
was hanging out with people like Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Khalil Gibran Muhammad.
These are not ordinary Black scholars; they are the Black scholars. You read them, follow their
discourse, most of them are on TV. I saw them, the way they lived their life. They lived in style,
fashion... I observed them” (Yengde 2019).

Others at the DALIFF also acknowledged this connection to African-American culture and activism.
During the festival inauguration, Ranjith said he admired the “cultural fight” of Black filmmakers and
that he was impressed by Ryan Coogler’s 2018 hit “Black Panther.”

Manjule told me that when “Fandry” first screened in America, African Americans in the audience
came up to him and said, “This is our story, too” (Manjule 2019).

For the attendees of the DALIFF, the festival presented another rare opportunity: a space to discuss the
struggles and experiences of the small, but growing Dalit diaspora in the States.

About 2.4 million Indians live in America, comprising one of the largest and fastest-growing
immigrant groups in the country (Zong and Batalava, 2017). However, according to a 2003 study, only
1.5 percent of Indians in the U.S. are Dalits or members of the lower castes. (Ray 2019).

Moreover, a 2017 survey, “Caste in the United States,” found that casteism follows Dalits even when
they immigrate to America. Of the 1200 U.S.-based Dalits who participated in the study, two-thirds
said they had faced workplace discrimination due to their caste, 41 percent said they had been
discriminated against in educational institutions, and a quarter of Dalits reported that they had suffered
physical assault (Paul 2018).

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Shashank Vaidya, a developer at Deloitte in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and a co-organizer of the
DALIFF, moved to the States 11 years ago. He told me that he notices a change in his Indian
co-workers’ attitudes toward him when they visit his home and see the portrait of Ambedkar he has on
his wall.

“They don’t say too much only because I have a high position in my company,” he said (Vaidya 2019).
But even then, he is often subjected to snide remarks and questions about caste.

Nevertheless, Vaidya is proud of his identity. “The word Dalit gives you representation. It’s powerful,”
he said (Vaidya 2019).

Narayana Swamy, a poet and engineer, had traveled from Philadelphia to attend the festival with his
wife, Vidya V. He has lived in the U.S. for 20 years.

“I identify as a social activist and I'm against the oppression of Dalits that has been going on in India,
particularly for the past four years or five years of Hindu fundamentalist rule,” he said. “Caste
annihilation is the only way to liberate India” (Swamy 2019).

As a poet, Swamy said he particularly enjoyed Manjule’s films, which often reference the verses of
great Dalit poets such as Chokhamela and Namdeo Dhasal. He also pointed out that the festival’s
opening film, “Pariyerum Perumal,” featured scenes from “Chindu”—a theatrical performance art
traditional to a Dalit caste in southern India that is rarely seen in the mainstream media.

“So far, upper castes have written about oppressed people or lower caste people — that's only
empathetic poetry,” said Swamy. “But the poetry or the literature coming from [members of] that caste
is actually empowered poetry. So I see this is as not just Dalit art, it's Dalit empowered art. It's just like
the subaltern speaking” (Ibid).

For Swamy, the DALIFF was especially important as an opportunity to make space for Dalit
representation in America, where Indian immigrant culture is dominated by upper caste Hindus.

Girish 16
“Right now, in the United States, all the Indian culture that is projected is mostly Brahminical, mostly
upper caste, and it comes from the rich societies back home in India,” he said. “But we need to make
an alternate statement. We need to say that even we can speak. Even we have our culture and we are
also Indian” (Ibid).

He pointed out, for example, that Indian events in the United States tend to begin with the Hindu
practice of lighting a lamp, followed by prayer.

“They forget the fact that there are many people from India who don't believe in all that. They're
Ambedkarites who believe in the Buddha, they're Christians, they're Muslims” (Ibid).

Swamy said that he hoped events like the DALIFF would become a regular routine for Dalits in
America.

“This is a great step forward in that direction. I can go tell my kids proudly that hey, we have
something different from what we have seen so far.” he said. “That’s what this [festival] is” (Ibid).

Girish 17
Chapter 3: The Modern Workings of Caste
The DALIFF opened on Saturday morning with the Tamil feature film Pariyerum Perumal (2018),
directed by young, first-time director Mari Selvaraj and produced by Ranjith’s production company,
Neelam Pictures. The film centers on a Dalit law student (with aspirations, like Yengde’s, to follow in
Ambedkar’s footsteps) who falls in love with his upper caste classmate and earns the wrath of her
family and their goons.

The most incisive scenes of the film come in its tragicomic first half, in which the protagonist, Pariyan,
struggles to follow lectures and fit in with his college peers because of his rural ways and lack of
English-language skills. When asked by a classmate how he had even managed to gain admission, he
reveals that he had aced all his subjects in high school except English, which he had never had the
privilege to be taught. The examiner, knowing his academic potential, had let him cheat on his English
test so he could get into college.

At the DALIFF, these scenes elicited both laughs and rousing applause. But for Ravikiran Shinde, 30,
they had a ring of a personal and uncomfortable truth. It depicted, he said, the modern and urban
reality of caste. “There is no untouchability in the film, if you see,” he said. “The form has changed.
It’s where you live, what you do” (Shinde 2019).

Shinde had flown into the DALIFF from Arizona, where he has lived for the last five years. But he
grew up in the small town of Solapur in Maharashtra in a Dalit family.

Unlike the protagonist of “Pariyerum Perumal,” Shinde has never experienced explicit caste
harassment or slurs. “My surname is very neutral,” he said (Ibid).

But the circumstances of his upbringing ensured that the realities of caste were always inescapable.
Shinde grew up in a government-built housing project named “Beghar Housing Society.” “Beghar” is
Hindi for “homeless.”

Girish 18
“So in the entire city of Solapur, if anyone asks where you live, you say ‘homeless,’” he said (Ibid).

Even within this housing complex there were layers; the upper caste residents lived close to the temple
on one side, while Shinde and his family lived right in front of the public toilets. “You didn't want to
open your door,” he said, “because you knew people were standing outside in the queue” (Ibid).

Caste continued to color Shinde’s life throughout school and college. His father could only afford to
send one of three kids to an English-medium Catholic school, so Shinde attended a free government
school for the marginalized castes and tribes, where, to Shinde’s surprise, he was amongst the most
well-off. “The definition of well-off was we had a black and white TV at home and the others had
nothing” (Ibid).

When Shinde was in 11th grade, he and his family moved to Mumbai after his father got a promotion
at his job. There, he enrolled in a new school, where his peers mocked his broken English and called
him a “gaon walla” (villager).

Unlike his colleagues, Shinde could not afford private coaching classes, but he managed to teach
himself enough English to emerge as one of the top students in his class. But he still couldn’t qualify
for India’s notoriously competitive public engineering schools without making use of affirmative
action quotas for Dalits.

His troubles didn’t end there. Because of his lower scores, he wasn’t eligible for the university dorms
or the mess hall. He ended up having to sleep on the floor of a room in an “Ambedkar Hostel,” which
provided subsidized accommodation for Dalit students.

Despite these hurdles, Shinde graduated college with distinction and now works at a tech company in
Arizona. “When people say that reservations are unjust, they don't consider all that happens in the
background,” he said (Ibid).

The injustices that he witnessed growing up inspired Shinde to foray into journalism. Since 2005, he
has written frequently on Dalit political issues for news sites like HuffPost India, The Hoot, and
Girish 19
NewsLaundry—a fact he doesn’t reveal to his Indian colleagues at work for fear of being alienated.
He also asked that the name of his employer be withheld from this article. “I live a completely double
life,” he said (Ibid).

Last December, Shinde published a widely-shared article in The Wire titled “Why Are Bollywood’s
Small-Town Heroes Always Upper Caste?” (Shinde 2018). The article critiqued the lack of Dalit and
other backward caste representation in the new trend of Bollywood films set in small-town,
non-metropolitan India.

Shinde pointed out, for instance, that the recent film “Zero” (starring Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh
Khan) gives its protagonist an upper caste surname even though it is set in Meerut—a North Indian
city with a Dalit mayor and one of the biggest Dalit populations in the country.

“When we do get to see Dalit or OBC characters, the story is most likely about an inter-caste issue,”
Shinde wrote. “When talking about ‘everyday’ families, however, films are written with the upper
castes in mind” (Ibid).

According to Shinde, the main reason behind this lack of representation is that Dalits don’t have access
to the capital required to produce films. Per the 2011 census, nearly half of India’s poor come from
Dalit and marginalized tribe communities (Ghildiyal 2011).

“So if you’re a producer in the industry, you’re more likely to be upper caste” he said. “And if you are
upper caste and you are living a certain life, then you do not know anything else” (Shinde 2019).

The other barrier, Shinde added, is the belief that Dalit stories only attract Dalit audiences. “The
moment you put Dalits in the film, they fear that they’re limiting themselves only to Dalits — that [the
film] it is not going to get acceptance across the metro or wherever their money lies” (Ibid).

But the math doesn’t add up, he argued. “The interesting fact about Indian society is that only 15
percent is upper caste. 85 percent of moviegoers are from other lower caste communities” (Ibid).

Girish 20
“What I'm saying is that there is value in putting investment there, too,” he said. “And that is precisely
what this film festival is about” (Ibid).

Girish 21
Chapter 4: Distributing a Dalit Film

Nagraj Manjule’s career suggests that Shinde might be onto something. Manjule’s “Fandry” and
“Sairat” were both massive box office hits—the former made 70 million rupees ($970, 000) on a
budget of 17.5 million rupees ($246, 000), while the latter broke records, becoming the first Marathi
film ever to gross more than a billion rupees ($147 million) (ANI 2016).

“Fandry” was executive produced by National Award-winning Dalit filmmaker Nishant Bombarde,
who at the time was a producer at Zee Studios, one of the major production and distribution companies
in India.

During an interview in Mumbai last December, Bombarde told me that when he and his boss Nikhil
Sane, the former business head for Marathi films at Zee, saw Manjule’s film at an industry screening,
they immediately knew they wanted to distribute it. But the question they asked each other was: how
do we sell this?

“I said, I don’t know how we are going to justify the revenue side of this. How are we going to make
money out of this film? This doesn’t seem plausible,” Bombarde said. “Who is going to watch a film
about caste in theaters? This was actually a Dalit film. Before that, it had always been more the upper
caste idea of a Dalit film” (Bombarde 2019).

Drawing on Manjule’s own life growing up in a village in Maharashtra, “Fandry” paints a stark picture
of Dalit life in modern-day rural India. Protagonist Jabya and his family are the only untouchables in
their village and they live in a crumbling shack at its outskirts. Jabya is eager to attend school and
socialize with his classmates, but he is forced to perform menial tasks by the upper caste villagers—
carrying heavy lamps during the local festival, serving tea during council meetings, and catching and
killing the wild pigs that run amok through the village.

Girish 22
“Fandry” was lauded by critics for its lyrical, yet realist direction, as well as its bold critique of upper
caste Hindu beliefs and politics—which felt especially timely in 2014, when Narendra Modi’s Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won the Indian elections with a historic mandate.

One scene in the film highlights the absurdity of a woman’s attempt to purify her daughter with cow
urine after she accidentally comes in contact with a pig. In another scene, Jabya and his family are
taunted by his classmates as they chase a pig through the village, when the national anthem starts
playing at the nearby school, forcing everyone to stand at attention.

“We believe in the tokenism of standing up, but what are we doing to uplift the citizens who are beset
with ugly, caste-based prejudices?” Manjule said to The Hindu when asked about the scene. (Manjule
qtd in Joshi 2015).

But it’s the final shot of the film that caused much discussion. After a prolonged sequence in which
Jabya is harassed by his classmates, he finally hits back with a stone aimed straight at the
camera—implicating the film’s viewers in his condemnation of casteism.

“We knew that this wasn’t a film that would have an instantly successful Friday opening,” Bombarde
said. “We knew that the person who goes to the movies to see Ranveer and Deepika [two of the most
popular Bollywood stars] was not going to see ‘Fandry’ and say, ‘oh, what a film!’” (Bombarde 2019).

Bombarde and his team at Zee came up with a distribution strategy tailored to the film. They planned a
limited release, targeting cities within Maharashtra that had an established tradition of Dalit literature
and theater and therefore a more politically aware audience. They also approached certain progressive
literary and cultural figures in the industry to vouch for the film.

“We knew that if viewers felt even a little bit of what we felt when we saw the film, we’re good.
Because on Monday, those people would talk about it on social media and in their social circles,” he
said (Bombarde 2019).

Girish 23
That’s exactly what happened. The film’s fame spread by word of mouth and Facebook posts. A week
later, they had to release it in more theatres to meet the demand. “That never happens for a so-called
‘offbeat’ film,” Bombarde said (Bombarde 2019).

Manjule’s follow-up, “Sairat,” tells a more familiar story of star-crossed lovers — but it ends on an
even darker political note than “Fandry.” The protagonists are murdered in the type of “honor killing”
that frequently makes headlines in India.

Bombarde said that although the success of “Fandry” had ensured an audience for “Sairat,” he and his
team were careful not to talk about the film’s second half in the lead up to its release. Instead, they
added songs to Manjule’s script and focused their marketing campaign on the film’s soundtrack, for
which they recruited the popular Marathi duo, Ajay-Atul.

In an interview at the DALIFF, Manjule told me that he doesn’t consider himself a political filmmaker.
“I am just expressing my thoughts. I’m telling the truth. But I’m a part of this world and that makes
what I say political” (Manjule 2019).

He acknowledged, however, that his films have sparked an important conversation.

“My job is to say something, and I want to say it because it is otherwise never discussed,” he said. “I
wonder, if I hadn’t made ‘Fandry,’ then who would have made such a film? Who would have brought
up this subject?” (Ibid).

Manjule said that after the release of “Fandry,” many people from the Kaikadi caste, to which
protagonist Jabya belongs, came up to him and said that they had never imagined they would see a film
made about their community and their suffering.

Neither had Manjule thought, growing up, that he would see ever films about his life experiences —
which is why he decided to make them himself.

Girish 24
“In 2008, when I made [my debut short] Pistulya , my inspiration was that no one else was saying what
I wanted to say. So I should say it. Thus my life is my inspiration,” he told me (Ibid).

Manjule’s films are heavily autobiographical, but they also draw from a wide variety of Dalit cultural
and historical figures. In both “Fandry” and “Sairat,” he pays homage to 17th-century warrior king
Chattrapati Sivaji Maharaj and 19th-century social reformers Jotirao and Savitribai Phule. The
predominant influence in his films, however, is Ambedkar.

Nowhere at the DALIFF was Ambedkar’s motto—”educate, agitate, organize”—articulated with more
clarity and force than in Manjule’s two short films, which focus on the ways in which the inequities of
caste and class become barriers to education for Dalit youth.

The 10-minute “Pistulya,” which Manjule made with a video camera for his film school thesis, follows
the struggles of a young boy who is forced into petty crime just to pay for his school books and
uniform.

“An Essay of the Rain,” which premiered at the DALIFF, is Manjule’s most recent film. It depicts a
day in the life of yet another Dalit boy, who is unable to finish his homework—an essay on the
monsoons—because, ironically, he spends the entire day helping his mother save their hut from being
washed away in the torrential rains. The film ends with a poignant shot of the boy standing outside the
classroom as punishment for not completing the assignment and gazing at the rain. At the DALIFF, the
film received a standing ovation.

“In Marathi, we have a proverb,” said Manjule. “In the Brahmin’s home, they write; in the Dalit’s
home they sing” (Ibid).

Manjule’s films expose the structural realities that cause such disparities, but they also celebrate the
rich tradition of Dalit music, art and poetry. A recurring motif in his films is the reference to Dalit
Marathi poets like Namdeo Dhasal, Keshavsut, and Chokhamela. In “Fandry,” a teacher quotes one of
the latter’s poems to a high school class: “Chokha is untouchable but his feelings are not” (Manjule
2014).
Girish 25

“Everyone thinks Dalits don’t exist, there are no Dalit filmmakers, there’s no Dalit talent. That the job
of Dalits is manual labor, cleaning gutters, catching pigs, building houses… all the dirty jobs, difficult
jobs,” Manjule said (Manjule 2019).

“But the arts have been a part of our culture for a long time. They probably arose as a way of finding
moments of relief or entertainment in a life of hard labor” (Ibid).

According to Manjule, the reason filmmakers like him are rare isn’t because Dalits lack the artistic
abilities; it’s because they lack the resources needed to make films. “It’s similar to how it is for farmers
— they grow the crops, but someone else makes the profit” (Ibid).

It’s also hard to be openly Dalit in the industry, he said. “In our current world, Dalits are scared that
people might not accept us. If we reveal our identity, we might have to face hatred” (Ibid).

Manjule said, however, that he himself has never faced any discrimination in the industry. “Everyone’s
been really supportive,” he said (Ibid). In fact, Manjule’s next project is a big budget drama starring
legendary Bollywood actor Amitabh Bacchan.

But Caravan Magazine reported in June 2016 that the success of “Sairat” had generated a casteist
backlash against Manjule in the inner circles of the Marathi film industry. In private WhatsApp
messages and on film sets, established members of the industry had ridiculed Manjule and his actors
for their village origins and rural dialects. Others complained that “Sairat” was undeserving of its
accolades and that Zee Studios had “sold” Manjule’s background in a manner “no less than
prostitution” (Thakur 2016).

Bombarde told me that he had not personally encountered these reactions, but he was unsurprised by
the report. “What is phenomenal about Nagraj is that it’s a Dalit person making a film on Dalit culture,
taking 80% of the crew as Dalit people, going to the Berlin Film Festival, winning the National Award,
and at the same time doing amazing figures at the box office. I don’t think that went down well with a
lot of people” (Bombarde 2019).
Girish 26

Indeed, “Sairat” was such a massive hit that it was remade into a Bollywood film in 2019 — but with
an upper caste director, starring two young upper caste actors belonging to famous Bollywood
dynasties, and with the caste angle completely removed from the story.

When I asked him about the remake, Manjule simply said, “I don’t have an opinion because it is not
my film” (Manjule 2019).

Girish 27
Chapter 5: How to define Dalit Cinema?

Along with Manjule and Ranjith, there is a third young Dalit director who has achieved mainstream
success in India: Neeraj Ghaywan.

Ghaywan was not present at the DALIFF, although his first (and only) feature film, “Masaan” (“Fly
Away Solo” in English) was one of the highlights of the festival. It tells the interlinked stories of two
young, working-class people in the holy city of Varanasi. One is a college teacher who is extorted by
the police after they catch her having sex with a friend in a hotel; the other is a man from the “Dom”
community — a Dalit caste whose members are traditionally tasked with cremating the dead on the
banks of the Ganges — who begins a romance with an upper caste college-mate.

“Masaan” won two prizes at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and it also won the National Award in
India. But at the time, it was not publicly known that Ghaywan is a Dalit.

Ghaywan “came out” on Twitter in 2018, in response to a tweet by another filmmaker, Vivek
Agnihotri. Agnihotri tweeted that he had spotted a “Dalit leader’s grandson” in the business class
section of a flight while he, an upper caste man, was seated in economy. “But who is the upper caste in
today’s scenario?” he asked (Agnihotri 2018).

“I am a Dalit,” wrote Ghaywan in response (Ghaywan 2018). He then listed all the accolades his film
had won, and added, “All without using my Dalit identity” (Ibid).

Similarly, Singh’s caste identity was also not widely known until last year, when she wrote an open
letter about the #MeToo movement on Twitter, revealing her experiences as a Dalit woman in
Bollywood (Menon 2018).

Ghaywan’s and Singh’s cases demonstrate an issue that complicates the attempt to define Dalit cinema
on the basis of the identity of its makers. Despite comparisons with race, caste is not a visible or
Girish 28
physiological identity. There’s often no way to tell if someone’s a Dalit unless they reveal it
themselves—and many prefer not to, fearing discrimination.

Surnames are some of the most common indicators of a person’s caste, but they vary widely from
region to region. Like Shinde, several attendees at the DALIFF told me that people often didn’t
recognize them as Dalits because their family names were common to both upper and lower castes.

Many young Dalit filmmakers also choose to not use their surnames so as to avoid being associated
with a caste. In fact, the website of the DALIFF listed all its organizers with their first name and an
initial. (Dalit Film and Cultural Festival 2019).

Matters are further complicated by the fact that the word “Dalit”—and its legal counterpart,
“Scheduled Castes”—is an umbrella term for a vast number of geographically dispersed and
heterogenous groups that were subjected to untouchability under the varna system. (Dirks 2004, 24).
The Dalit community encompasses several different cultures, ethnicities, and political
affiliations—which means that it is difficult to arrive at a consensual definition of what Dalit cinema,
or even Dalit identity, looks like.

This was demonstrated forcefully during a festival panel, “Dalit Cinema: Art of the Century.” Each of
the panelists—Manjule, Ranjith, Singh, and Cherian—hailed from a different region in India and spoke
a different language, requiring multiple translators to facilitate the conversation.

In the midst of the commotion that ensued, Yengde, who was moderating the conversation, gestured
cheerfully toward the panelists and said, “This is the galaxy and diversity of Dalits” (Yengde, “Dalit
Cinema: Art of the Century,” 2019).

“They speak differently, but their vision is one. Their upbringing is similar. They have a common
affinity” (Ibid).

But the audience Q&A that followed the panel revealed further differences within the Dalit community
regarding the representation of caste.
Girish 29

When Ranjith described himself as a “pure Ambedkarite” filmmaker, an audience member objected,
asking, “What about Periyar?”

Periyar was a politician and social activist who started the seminal “Self-Respect Movement” among
Dalits in Tamil Nadu in the 1920s. He is one of the many regional leaders who were deeply influential
in the Dalit politics of their state but do not enjoy the same pan-Indian legacy as Ambedkar.

Later, a middle-aged woman from Toronto introduced herself as “Karuppi” (Tamil for
“dark-skinned”). She asked Ranjith, “You mostly cast light-skinned women in your mainstream films.
When are we going to reach the level where we cast dark-skinned, Dalit-looking women in Tamil
films?”

Ranjith responded that his aim was to challenge all stereotypes about Dalits — including the false idea
that all Dalits are dark-skinned. As an example, he pointed to Singh, who had spoken earlier about her
experience as a fair-skinned, conventionally attractive model who is often told that she doesn’t “look
Dalit.”

“Caste is not racial or economic,” said Singh. “It’s not about color, but birth” (Singh 2019).

What, then, does Dalit representation look like? I posed this question to Jayashree Kamble, one of the
co-organizers of the DALIFF. Kamble is an associate professor of English at LaGuardia Community
College in Queens, New York, where she writes about romance novels and contemporary Bollywood
cinema.

“The term [Dalit] itself has both its supporters and its detractors—as it should, because we are still
theorizing the concept,” she said. “It has only existed in the last hundred years or so, when people have
started to use it in a reclamatory fashion, but there are still folks who are not very comfortable with it”
(Kamble 2019).

Girish 30
“I think it’s just a part of a journey for the community to figure out what terminology might be most
empowering, what might be the most useful, in an activist sense,” she said (Kamble 2019).

For Kamble, Dalit cinema is not about the appearance or cultural accoutrements of the characters, but
about the experience of discrimination shared by all Dalits. “It’s any cinema that centers the experience
of that ancient, illogical disenfranchisement and structural violence that is visited upon a particular
community across South Asia” (Kamble 2019).

Kamble listed a number of factors that she believes define the new Dalit cinema: an emphasis on
education; empowered female characters; and the representation of Dalit spaces without any shame.
But according to her, the crucial marker of Dalit cinema is the narrative of resilience seen in films like
“Fandry” and “Kaala.”

“To be given a model for how you become resilient, or what the fight looks like, what reclaiming
dignity looks like. To know that it's okay to ask why the hell are you discriminating against me? And
not just put down your heads and say ‘this is my karma,’ which is what the problem of the previous
generations was” (Kamble 2019).

Kamble speculated that the recent rise in Dalit filmmakers was due to a confluence of factors,
including technological changes and the progress made in the Dalit community due to reservations in
education and jobs.

“We’re getting to the point where the third generation descendant of somebody who lived in poverty
and fear and suffered discrimination now has slightly more cultural capital because of the education
they've gotten, and we're slightly more removed from the death by a thousand cuts that most people
experienced in physical spaces a hundred years ago. And so that has given us a little more of a freer
vision to become artists” (Kamble 2019).

Kamble believes that the larger-than-life narratives will encourage more Dalits, both in the film
industry and otherwise, to be fearless about their identity.

Girish 31
“There's something I think inherently positive and useful just for the human ego understand that your
life is worth representing in a story,” she said. “I think it’s something very powerful to recognize that”
(Kamble 2019).

When I spoke with Yengde earlier during the festival, he said something similar.

“Had I gotten hold of cinema as an art at an early age,” he said wistfully, “I think my life would have
been different” (Yengde, “Personal Interview,” 2019).

For now, he’s doing everything he can to ensure that coming generations of Dalits can see themselves
and their lives reflected on screen and in Indian public culture. He hopes to make the DALIFF a
regular event, to write a book on Dalit cinema, and to eventually start a magazine devoted to Dalit arts
and culture.

“I have a plan,’ he said. “This is just the beginning” (Ibid).

Girish 32
Works Cited

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Anup. Interviewed by Devika Girish in New York, February 23, 2019.

Ashish. Interviewed by Devika Girish in New York, February 23, 2019.

Bhatia, Sidharth. “Interview: The Name Dalit Panthers Was Synonymous With Justice for the Poor.”
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Desai, Manan. “What B.R. Ambedkar Wrote to W.E.B. Du Bois.” Saada.org , April 22, 2014.
https://www.saada.org/tides/article/ambedkar-du-bois

Dubois, W.E.B. "The Star of Ethiopia.” The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races . 10.6 (1915): 91-94.

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Ghildiyal, Subodh. “SCs/STs form half of India's poor: Survey.” Times of India , April 12, 2011.
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Keer, Dhananjay. "Life and Mission of Dr. Ambedkar." (1954).

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Statement Upon Return from India.” Papers 5:142–143 , 18 March 1959.

Menon, Sandhya. Twitter Post. November 9, 2018, 7:02 AM.
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Girish 33
Paul, Sonia. “When Caste Discrimination Comes To The United States.” Code Switch: National Public
Radio , April 25, 2018.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/04/25/605030018/when-caste-discrimination-co
mes-to-the-united-states

Pillai, Meena T. “The daughters of P.K. Rosy,” The Hindu . March 7, 2013.
https://www.thehindu.com/features/cinema/the-daughters-of-pk-rosy/article4484922.ece

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Press, 2009.

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rticle7362298.ece

Sengupta, Rai. “2017 Timeline of Atrocities Against Dalits: UP, Rajasthan Top The List,” The Citizen ,
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Girish 34

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—————--- Inaugural Speech at the Dalit Film and Cultural Festival, February 23, 2019.

—————--- “Dalit Cinema: Art of the Century.” Panel discussion, Dalit Film and Cultural Festival,
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Asset Metadata

Creator Girish, Devika (author)

Core Title Becoming Dalit cinema

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 12/05/2019

Defense Date 12/04/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Bollywood,Caste,Dalits,film,film festival,Indian cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest,Social Justice

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Winston, Diane (committee chair), Anawalt, Sasha (committee member), Page, Tim (committee member)

Creator Email devikagir@gmail.com,dgirish@usc.edu

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