The Interweaving of Caste in Indian Cinema

Poster of Sairat, a recent film to successfully depict the issues associated with casteism

“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to sleep.”

This Navajo proverb can be applied to both the creators of Indian cinema, as well as its audience, in regarding their acknowledgement of the misrepresented caste system.

Bollywood’s Need for Nationalism and Net Profit

While most of Bollywood has carefully maintained a distance from the topic of casteism, a few directors have defiantly come forth with stories built upon the firm foundation of the risky subject in the last few years. The movie, Article 15 starring Ayushmann Khurrana, stirred much controversy on social media as the entire film was centered around the investigation of the gang rape and murder of two Dalit girls. This movie left the audience shaken, as it isn’t often in Bollywood that the idea of equality promised in the Indian constitution is questioned amidst the continual existence of maltreatment of those in the lower levels of the caste system. Other Hindi films that initially intended to tackle the issue of caste, simply sold out for the purpose of making their film more commercially successful. A prime example would be Dhadak, which was released in 2018 and was “supposedly” the remake of the Marathi film Sairat (2016). The original film was a gem in all aspects: the actual acknowledgment of caste as the demise of a young couple, the innocence within the romantic relationship between the lead actors, and the spontaneity of the acting in general throughout the movie. Dhadak, however, served purely as a launchpad for Sri Devi’s daughter Janhvi Kapoor and screamed Dharma Productions in its slow-motion songs. Until those affected in the lower rungs of this system rise to the top to write and produce films, the audience will not be exposed to the truth of casteism.

Regional Cinema Overtakes

Pariyerum Perumal. Asuran. Kaala. Manusangada. Palasa 1978. Sairat. Kammatipaadam. Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam cinema, in particular, have done significantly better in addressing the existence of casteism and how it plays a role in one’s existence in society. And here’s the catch: many of them have been commercially successful as well. This shatters the false notion that the audience might be repulsed by shedding light on controversial topics such as caste.

The reason that films have a huge impact on our culture is because they either reflect our imagination or our reality. But when a country’s films do not accurately reflect the realities of its own citizens, the credibility of the storytellers and stories they tell plummets.