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Portrayal of Dalit Women in Literature and Films

Om Prakash Valmiki states in his autobiography, Joothan- "Times have changed. But there is

something somewhere that continues to irk. I have asked many scholars to tell me why Savarnas

[caste Hindus] hate Dalits and Shudras so much? The Hindus who worship trees and plants,

beasts and birds, why are they so intolerant of Dalits? Today caste remains a pre-eminent factor

in social life. As long as people don’t know that you are a Dalit, things are fine. The moment

they find out your caste, everything changes. The whispers slash your veins like knives. Poverty,

illiteracy, broken lives, the pain of standing outside the door, how would the civilized Savarna

Hindus know it?

Why is my caste my only identity? Many friends hint at the loudness and arrogance of my

writings. They insinuate that I have imprisoned myself in a narrow circle. They say that literary

expression should be focused on the universal; a writer ought not to limit himself to a narrow,

confined terrain of life. That is, my being Dalit and arriving at a point of view according to my

environment and my socioeconomic situation is being arrogant. Because in their eyes, I am only

an SC, the one who stands outside the door.[3]"

Although the caste system as an institution was abolished in 1950, the legacy of stratified

systems based on labor and discourses of supremacy has continued in the society. Moreover, the

caste system’s official negation has not erased the system from the cultural ethos of India. The

caste system in India is not unique with respect to its hierarchical structure because hierarchies of

different kinds define several other cultures. However, as D.R. SarDesai notes in India: The

Definitive History, what is indeed unique about the caste system is its “persistence through a
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couple of millennia” (103). To understand the caste system, one must note the following terms:

“varna,” “endogamy,” “pollution” and “purity” and “untouchability.” During the Vedic times,

the four ‘varnas’ (literally meaning “color”) were supposed to have originated from the four parts

of the Cosmic Man: the priestly class, Brahmans (from the mouth), the warrior class, Kshatriyas

(from the arms), the business class, Vaishyas ( from the thighs or loins), and the menial class,

Shudras (from the feet). People could change their identities by changing their professions. Over

time, however, the divisions became more rigid and one’s birth became the sole determinant of

one’s identity. The first three ‘varnas’ were supposed to designate the light-skinned Aryan origin

while the fourth and last one would imply the darker-skinned Dravidian origin. SarDesai asserts

that such color codes were never actually practiced and does not hold true today. However, the

privilege of the first three ‘varnas’ was determined if not by their skin color but by their right to

perform certain rituals of consecration and to “study Vedic lore” (105). The Brahmans developed

their own rituals of purity and maintained their superiority among the castes. They had access to

the religious texts and scriptures and interpreted them for the rest of the society. Thus, the caste

system is also known as being governed by the Brahmanical ideology.

SarDesai refutes the argument that only a division of labor with no “moral judgment on the

superiority of one over the other” determined the caste system; in fact, this ‘varna’ system

created a “hierarchy where a whole class (the first three varnas) looked down on the other,...the

Sudras and all four on the untouchables” (105). Endogamy helped to maintain this social order

and the notion of purity observed by Brahmans was guarded strictly by forbidding exogamy.

Untouchability is not mentioned in the Vedic literature and nor is it supported by the creation-

myth of the Cosmic Man. SarDesai notes that the “heinous practice of untouchability crystallized
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around the second century CE” (107) and has continued through many millennia. Because these

people were outside the four-fold ‘varna’ system, they were called ‘outcastes.’ They were

responsible for disposing of dead bodies and working with carcasses of animals and their hides

for leather, for cleaning the toilets, for keeping the neighborhoods germ and disease free.

Ironically, the outcastes received the title of ‘untouchables’ because they touched and dealt with

the filth and pollution of the entire society. Social interaction with upper castes, including eating

together, sitting next to each other, going to the temple or school, or living in the same

neighborhoods, was prohibited owing to fear of pollution.

Any breach of the above mentioned codes of social interaction could result in polluting the upper

castes, according to the Brahmanical order. Thus the untouchables were relegated to the outskirts

of society and were denied access to education, temples, employment beyond their ancestral,

often unhygienic, professions, and public social interactions in market places. In order to

preserve the purity of the Brahmins, endogamy as a rule cemented the system that would prevent

inter-marriage between the castes and maintain the caste purity of the Brahmans. Partha

Chatterjee sums up in his The Nation and Its Fragments: caste “is the biological reproduction of

the human species through procreation within endogamous caste groups that ensures the

permanence of ascribed marks of caste purity or pollution” (194).

Rashida Manjoo states in her UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, “The reality

of Dalit women and girls is one of exclusion and marginalisation … They are often victims of

civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights violations, including sexual abuse and

violence. They are often displaced; pushed into forced and/or bonded labour, prostitution and
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trafficking.” Dalit women often go through multiple discrimination trapped in highly patriarchal

societies. The severe discrimination they face from being both a Dalit and a woman, makes them

a key target of violence and systematically denies them choices and freedoms in all spheres of

life. This endemic intersection of gender-and-caste discrimination is the outcome of severely

imbalanced social, economic and political power equations. The very combination of gender and

caste makes Dalit women vulnerable to violence and discrimination, including rape.

Dalit women suffer from severe limitations in access to justice and there is widespread impunity

in cases where the perpetrator is a member of a dominant caste, above the Dalits in the caste

system. Dalit women are therefore considered easy targets for sexual violence and other crimes,

because the perpetrators almost always get away with it. For example, in India, studies show that

the conviction rate for rapes against Dalit women is under 2% compared to a conviction rate of

25% in rape cases against all women in India. Sanctioned impunity on behalf of the offenders is

a major problem. Police often neglect or deny the Dalit women of their right to seek legal and

judicial aid. In many cases, the judiciary fails to enforce the laws that protect Dalit women from

discrimination. Caste and gender discrimination in the delivery of education health care, water,

sanitation and other basic services are also major obstacles for Dalit women severely impacting

on their welfare and opportunities. This discrimination has been documented repeatedly by UN

agencies and major international human rights and development NGOS.

Dalit women often work in modern slavery and are targets for trafficking. They are often used as

debt slaves in brick kilns, garment industries and agriculture. 98% of those forced into the

dehumanising work of manual scavenging, removing human waste by hand, are also Dalit
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women. Dalit women may also be born into temple prostitution as ‘Devadasis’ (sex slaves) in

India or be branded prostitutes in Nepal due to their caste status. Dalit are recognized as the

‘Others’ in the societies. I aim to examine how the ‘Other’ women negotiate their identities

inside and outside their groups in the context of sexism within patriarchal society. The historical

subjugation of peoples based on their race and caste assume a further paradigm of gender

discrimination when the women struggle for identity and respect not only against the

supremacists who have historically exploited them sexually but also against the men of their own

groups who often fail to acknowledge their rights and contributions in the struggle against

oppression. Moreover, economic issues have also informed the struggles of underprivileged

women and have divided Dalit feminists from upper caste and urban feminists in India. Dalit

women, in a society infested with caste and gender, not only face the caste issues but they also

fail to place themselves on a similar plane with other women. Since there are no shared problems

or fears and they do not seem to have a caste to be bothered about.

In Fields of Protest: Women’s Movements in India, Raka Ray, while exploring the parallel but

different types of women’s movements in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Bombay (now Mumbai),

notes that one major critique of women’s movements in India refers to their elitism. Ray highly

critiques some Dalit scholars who are currently involved with questions of Dalit identity and

politics in India:

Dalit ideologues like Katti Padma Rao, Gopal Guru and Gaddar seem to be less sensitive to the

internal patriarchy of Dalit communities. They maintain that all women are Dalits...[But]

different bodies are ascribed different cultural meanings. Not all bodies possess even identities.

Not all Dalit bodies are one, not all female bodies are one. They interact with each other being
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caught in a complex web of intersecting identities. Dalit men, even those identified with the

movement, do not want to see Dalit Women as intellectuals. M.Swathy Margaret talks about this

issue in her article Dalit Feminism- “You are a Dalit body, a Dalit female body. Why can’t I

possess it. Why can’t I just come near you. It is threatening. This happens at a very physical

level. To prevent this, one of the strategies that I use, is to stay with upper-caste women as Dalit

men will not dare do express and behave in the same manner with them. In such a situation who

am I closer to? The Dalit men, or the upper-caste women? Neither.”

Ashwini Deshpande in his work, The Grammar of Caste states that in India, as early as the

eighth century, the Bhakti movement witnessed the articulation of women from Tamil Nadu, a

state in southern India, who began resisting patriarchy and caste-based discrimination. They laid

the path for later Bhakti activists in the north by actively engaging in “the rejection or

questioning of patriarchy, the caste code, and constraints on sexuality.” Although such resistance

did not have a long-lasting effect, it nonetheless founded a “fundamental critique of the Aryan

philosophy (encoded in Manusmriti) that was at the root of the subordination of women and

Dalits” (Deshpande 342). Thus, as Deshpande observes, feminist consciousness was not a

Western concept that the British brought to India or what USA has exported to South Asia in

recent times. Unfortunately, many urban upper class and upper caste women embrace the

concept of feminism as a Western one while themselves becoming “mouthpieces of conservative

forces” and, in turn, suppress Dalit women and their crises (343).

While noting that historically women have always organized from within larger social

movements, Raka Ray observes that during the nineteenth century, quite similar to that in the

USA, along with social reformers like Raja Rammohan Roy and Jyotiba Phule, women
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like Swarnakumari Devi, Abala Bose, Pandita Ramabai and Ramabai Ranade, among others,

“campaigned for women’s education and for a better life for widows” (36). Just as the abolition

movement in USA in the mid-nineteenth century allowed the space for some women

abolitionists and suffragists, like Lydia Maria Child and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, among others,

to demand equal voting rights, the social reform movements in India also allowed women some

space amidst the male-controlled movements. However, while the suffragists in USA were

ultimately more concerned about white women’s voting rights, the Indian women social

reformers were also largely “upper-caste” (Ray 36). Nevertheless, these movements opened

avenues for women activists who eventually furthered important agendas. In her study of the

women’s movements in Kolkata and Mumbai, Ray also notes the active engagement of upper

caste and upper class women in the national movement for independence which, she repeats,

tended to be confined to the elites of society. Thus, although some Dalit lower-class women, like

Jyotiba Phule’s wife, played an important role in the shared struggle of gaining rights for the

then untouchable women in the late nineteenth century, the Dalit feminist movement is today

important but very young. Such elitism in the feminist movement in India makes the Subaltern

Studies Group’s rereading of Indian historiography pertinent.

The awakening of Dalit awareness of selfhood may be traced to the Marathi literature of 1970s in

India. “The established literature of India is Hindu literature. But it is Dalit literature, which has

the revolutionary power to accept new science and technology and bring about a total

transformation. ‘Dalit’ is the name for total revolution; it is revolution incarnate.”1 Especially

the autobiographies of Dalit writers are very popular in Marathi proving the truth that facts can

be stranger than fiction. The Dalit writings in Marathi like Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan (1985)

and Namdev Dhasal’s poetry influenced the writers of the neighboring states also like Karnataka,
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Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Nowadays Dalit literature has been gaining a pan-Indian

status. Daya Pawar’s Baluta, the first Dalit autobiography is followed by a number of others, like

Bama’s Karukku (Tamil), Siddhalingaiah’s Uru Keri (Kannada) and so on. Urmila Pawar’s

The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs belongs to the genre of autobiography,

which

is rarely practiced by Indians as compared to that of poetry and fiction. It problematizes the

major issues of class, caste and gender in the Indian context. It highlights the dual oppression or

double marginalization of the Dalit women on the basis of caste and gender. Apart from

recording a woman’s discovery of selfhood and constitution of her identity through her struggle

with poverty, caste barriers and patriarchy, it also offers a background picture of the Indian

(especially Maharashtrian) culture including inter-personal and inter-communal relations, clashes

and tolerances.

Several Dalit writers and critics have called Dalit autobiographies ‘narratives of pain’. The plots

are often strung together by a series of painful events that are outcomes of caste discrimination.

In fact, the shared pain is what binds the community together. But far from being mere

expressions of victimhood, contemporary Dalit autobiographies have become tools of political

assertion. For contemporary Dalit writers, the real challenge lies in creating a fine balance

between the idea of inclusion and the necessity of resistance. I aim to analyze the

autobiographies of Dalit women, at the same time compare and contrast Dalit women’s stories

with those written by Non-Dalit writers. I shall also examine the male gaze through the male-

centric Dalit literature by famous writers as Premchand and Om Prakash Valmiki. As Urmila

Pawar, the author of The Weave of my Life, says about her novel, this is not her story but of every
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woman. "My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from

bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is

similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us." She further highlights in her

autobiography the consequent disabilities and disadvantages in life that came along with her

gender and caste. She had to suffer in economic, social and gender aspects:

We belonged to the Mahad-Rajaput belt, which forms the central region of the Konkan, and,

compared to the north-south belt, this region is quite backward. I was born in a backward

caste in a backward region, that too a girl! Since Father died when we were quite young, Aaye

had to be very thrifty to make ends meet. Basically, she was a born miser, really! There is a

saying in Marathi: imagine a monkey drinking wine, getting intoxicated, getting bitten by a

scorpion, and then a ghost casting its spell on him. The point is people’s traits intensify and

eventually cause havoc in their lives. Her case was similar. Therefore food was always scarce in

our house. (79)

The works I wish to analyze are from female dalit writers, Urmila Pawar’s autobiography The

Weave of my Life and Baby Kamble’s The Prisons we broke. Along with these works, I’ll also

examine the works of Non-Dalit writers, Premchand’s Sadgati and Mahashweta Devi’s Rudali

and their film adaptations. In her feminist text Rudali, Mahaswest Devi shows the zeal of a

subaltern woman to survive. She says: “Rudali is about... “how to survive” “bread and mouth.” It

is very important in my story. The whole system is exposed through this”. The protagonist of the

story Sanichari evolves from a voiceless subaltern to a voiced, empowered female who knows

how to snatch bread from the mouth of the exploiting devilish system. Hunger is the greatest
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concern among these low-caste ganju people. Anjum Katyal rightly says in her introduction to

her translation of Rudali: From Fiction to Performance. She states that,

“There is no doubt that the text does privilege class and community over women’s issues in

isolation. And yet it has a special significance when read as a feminist text. The common

accusation of those who privilege a cross class gender perspective to those who position gender

issues within those of class is that the woman’s position tends to get marginalized or elided over

in the ‘general’ interest of the class. Perhaps because Mahasweta Devi writes from a ‘class point

of view’ but is herself a woman, there is no sign of this in her text, not even through slippages. In

fact, her text shows us that gender and class need not be viewed as polarities; this one’s discourse

can be informed by class and simultaneously be gendered. One political stance need not rule out

the other.” (17)

Kamble paints the painful and pathetic condition of new mothers’ in her autobiography The

Prisons we broke as:

“Many new mothers had to go hungry. They would lie down, pining for a few morsels while

hunger gnawed their insides. Mostly women suffered this fate. Labour pains, mishandling by the

midwife wounds inflicted by onlookers’ nails, ever gnawing hunger, infected wounds with pus

oozing out, hot water baths, hot coals, profuse sweating – everything caused the new mothers’

condition to worsen and she would end up getting a burning fever.”(60)

Kamble says that the Mahar women lives were limited to and bound by all domestic chores and

they never had the provision of self-hygiene and self-care. Besides they were considered just as

child procreating machines. “A mahar woman would continue to give birth till she reached

menopause” (82). They were the worst victims of patriarchy, caste consciousness, gender
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proclivity and domestic violence. Kamble describe the pathetic situation of the Mahar women

who are supposed to behave like slaves in presence of their upper caste Brahmans and are even

instructed by their own men as to how to be at the beck and call of the upper caste hindus and

take them as their masters. A sense of threat was instilled in them with regard to these upper

caste sections of the community. But for their hardships, and laborious work for their masters,

they earned curses and abuses as remuneration. Generations after generations, the Mahars served

their masters very obediently. However the upper caste community threw abuses at the Mahars,

if they did not fall at the feet of their masters, or if they did not give the way to their masters

when the masters came across in their way. They had to cover themselves fully if they saw any

man from the higher casts coming down the road, when he came close, they had to say’ the

humble Mahar women fall at your feet master’. This was like a chant, which they had to repeat

innumerable times, even to a small child if it belonged to a higher caste. (52)

Nagraj Manjule, a well-known film Director, said in an interview with The Wire that “casteism is

rooted in the story-telling that is represented on the screen in Indian cinema.” He said the films

usually depict antagonists as Dalits. Responding to an audience member’s question on how to

end casteism, Manjule commented that humanism is an apt answer to all forms of discrimination.

The popular rhetoric that cinema is the mirror of contemporary society which depicts the

dominant changes taking place in the societal milieu is an untenable claim. Especially when it is

judged in the background of postmodern socio-economic and political spectrums, which have

democratised the forms of knowledge and have argued that the realities are fragmented,

subjectively oriented and distinct from each other; Bollywood cinema remained dominated by

upper-caste normativity. The growing socio-political struggles of the socially marginalised

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groups during the 1970s and 1980s to claim their legitimate rights in public spaces have not

become a narrative even in a single mainstream film.

The Bollywood films are superficial attempts to mystify the socio-political realities. The

marvellous fictional narratives are distantly separated from the quotidian complexities of the

average person. It cunningly avoids itself from indulging in the hard questions of social reality

and in most of the cases imposes a structured narrative meant to address the emotive and

psychological concerns of the Hindu social elites. Hindi films are written, directed and produced

by a dominant set of people that celebrate the tastes and values of upper class-caste sensitivities.

Even the film critics, historians and scholars have studied cinema as an art aloof from the rugged

conflicting social realities. The experiences of caste discrimination and exclusion have a

negligible presence in the narratives of the Bollywood cinema. The ‘parallel/new wave cinema’,

on the other hand, showed some efforts in bringing the lower caste subjectivity on the silver

screen. The social questions of feudal exploitation, caste violence and Dalit repression gathered

remarkable momentum. In this realm, however, even the ‘realistic cinema’, which is celebrated

for its actual narratives and commitment towards presenting a naked truth to the audience,

contented mainly in showcasing the superficial populist stereo-types of the marginalised lives

and hardly entered into the core debate of social realities. The Dalits are presented as submissive

animate selves, degraded and destitute with almost no hope for a better future.

The post-liberalization period since the 1990s witnessed that the filmmakers mostly endorse

simple market ethics by locating sensationalism and entertainment as the ideal vehicle to reach

their targeted audience. Hence, they have distanced themselves from their social responsibilities

as an artist and crafted a cinema genre having a wider global appeal. Hindi cinema was termed as
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the quasi-mirror image of Hollywood and it happily adopted the new nomenclature as

Bollywood. (Rajadhyakshay, 2003) The heavy investment in the exhibition industry brought the

niche ‘multiplex culture’ and thus marginalised the single-screen business. Films were

specifically made to cater to the tastes and sensitivities of the upper middle class audiences, who

have the capacity to spend three times more than the average filmgoer. (Deshpande, 2001) Hindi

films, which earlier used to respond to the ‘desires and concerns’ of the average Indians, now

categorically mean to propose a specific kind of surreal taste of the escapist nature.

In the contemporary cinema, it seems that the possibility of experiments has increased; however

its commercial logic still governs the art form. Certain films must have improved on the

technical side of the artistic form, but their capacity to promote an artistically made film with an

equal commitment to portray social ills, is still a distant dream.

I plan to include both primary as well as secondary sources, concern materials collected from

Books, journals, newspaper articles and Bollywood feature films for the study. I shall also apply

textual analysis method to elaborate central theme, the textual method helps researcher to gather

information about those processes by which human beings conceive the world. Textual analysis

is useful for researchers working in cultural studies, media studies in mass communication. So

I’ll use books, contents available on social media, films, and journals as text and analyze their

contents. This method will also be applied to understand the content of different films produced

by Bollywood filmmakers which portray most important institution of Indian stratified society

that is caste.
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A major milestone in Indian culture, cinema embodies the creative spirit of the country. Allied to

society, Indian cinema is representative of the cacophony of voices, which constitute the nation.

Through its varied genres, (commercial, serious and middle) Indian cinema reflects and

represents the society from which it originates. Hindi cinema, communicating through the

national language, stakes claim to a pan-Indian outlook, promoting the hybrid sanskar of India

with its scores of conventions, customs and ways of living. In India, cinema renders a

kaleidoscopic view of the hierarchical social system, imaged forth through the gendered identity

of every individual. Movies reflecting the dominant ideology can hardly overlook the politics of

gender differentiation implicit within every socio-cultural sphere, inclusive of religion and caste.

In India, caste relations are further diversified along the lines of Purush-jati and Stree-

jati. Purush-jati and Stree-jati correspond to the respective gender under the influence of the

caste hierarchy. Caste and class posit men at a level higher than their counterparts in the social

hierarchy. This correlates to the marginalised status of those women exploited, by both

the Dalit men and the upper caste men and women alike. Hindi cinema has played a role, overtly

and covertly in sustaining and redefining the social constructs from time to time. Bimal

Roy's Sujata, Shyam Benegal's Ankur, Jagmohan Mundra’s Bawandar and Shekhar

Kapur's Bandit Queen, are the films I shall be analyzing for my research, these films have

explicitly dealt with Dalit woman's identity rooted in a caste-based society.

Movies like Rudaali (1993) by Kalpana Lajmi,[10] and Bawandar (2000) by Jagmohan Mundhra

are explicit representations of the doubly exploited feminine gender within the social and cultural

sphere of uneven power paradigms. While Lajmi's movie Rudaali is an adaptation of Mahasweta

Devi's short story, Rudaali, a real life episode in connection with the Bhanwari Devi gang rape
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case in Rajasthan is the basis for Mundhra's Bawandar. These movies are in keeping with the

hardships and problems of the two women protagonists within their restricted social spaces as

envisaged in the short story and the real incident. Bawandar and Rudaali, in line with the

original sources clearly highlight the caste- and class-based oppressions often meted out to

women.

The choice of movies for my paper centering on exploring the Dalit woman's predicament takes

into consideration certain common grounds. Both are contemporary in nature, rooted in the same

socio-political and cultural environment and have women as the lead protagonists- Bimal Roy’s

Sujata, Shyam Benegal’s Ankur, Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati, Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, Jag

Mundra’s Bawandar and Kalpana Lajmi’s Rudaali. In the two movies Rudaali and Bawandar,

the main protagonists Shanichari and Sanwari are representatives of the Dalit community. In

keeping with their Dalit identities, they 'adhere' to a culture of subjugation and resistance.

Shanichari and Sanwari, representatives of the subjugated sections of the society, brave all odds,

mustering the courage to revolt against oppression. Mehal Yadav in the Open Road Review

wrote about Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati that it reminds us “of the harsh, very harsh cruelties of the

caste system which is a reality that exists even today, a reality that we are not ready to face,

much less counter. Satyajit Ray deserves every bit of honor because each and every one of his

movies captures that very essence of reality. Premchand’s touch of sharp and incisive irony that

lies within a class-schismed society and its presentation on celluloid by Ray in stark images of

black and white cannot be forgotten.”

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Sujata by Bimal Roy is a sensitively directed film. The story is told in a series of deft, restrained

episodes never ever lapsing into self-pit.. Unlike P.C.Barua, whose Devdas Roy had

photographed before remaking the film himself, where a death or two would have seen the story

out of its tangled web, the director in Bimal Roy insisted that a marriage between the low-caste

Sujata and the highly educated and Brahmin Adhir is not only possible, but is necessary. There

are several references to Gandhi in the film. In one poignant scene, as they stand together along

Barrackpore’s Gandhi Ghat, Adhir tells Sujata that once, when out of the blue, some people

donated a sum of Rs 13,000 to Gandhi, when everyone was ready to reject him for having taken

in an untouchable girl within the Ahmedabad Ashram. Gandhi stood his ground and refused to

let the girl go away even when he knew that the very existence of the Ashram stood threatened

by his move. Sujata was a landmark film at that time about caste, in which the filmmaker looked

inward. Even as it revolves around an ‘untouchable’ woman, the story is not about her caste. It’s

about the caste of her adoptive family. The transformation is not in her, but in the acceptance that

the upper-caste family eventually extends to her – in keeping with the political philosophy of the

first decade of the republic.

While talking about Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen in an interview, Phoolan says ‘‘I was

discovering piece by painful piece how my world was put together: the power of men, the power

of privileged castes, power of might. I didn’t think of what I was doing as rebellion; it was only

means I had of getting justice . . . I was a woman who belonged to a lowly caste.’’ (154) Her

rebellion began when she was only 14-15 years of age after she had experienced inhuman

treatment and unbearable violence. In another of her interviews to media after she returned from

jail, Phoolan spoke about her pre-bandit life. She narrated that after her rape by several people—
 Bhati 17

from the ‘‘upper’’ caste, her own caste and those stationed at the police station, she was often

taunted by her village folks that she would always live in shame and disgrace for the rest of her

life. She told the interviewer that she had determined that she was not responsible for her own

plight and that she had been wronged. So, it was now her turn to take on these men. She

specifically mentions three scenes in the movie Bandit Queen which she found highly

objectionable and demanded deletion. One was the scene where Phoolan is paraded naked by the

rapists while the villagers sit and watch. The second and third were explicit rape scenes. She

argues forcefully: Mein Zinda bhaithi hoon; mere saath jo kuch bhi hua, iska matlab ye nahin

aap business karo!’’ (I am here sitting alive, whatever happened with me does not entitle

anybody to do business).8

To all appearances the portrayal of Dalits has been ‘theory down’, victimhood made the essence

of Dalit life. This is evidently a view from above since a Dalit would be aware of more aspects

of their experience—while someone from above would only take note of what their own class

has inflicted upon the Dalit. Most films about Dalits have come from upper-caste filmmakers and

one could cite a series of films where Dalit/Adivasi portrayals are patently unconvincing: Devika

Rani in Achhut Kanya, Shabana Azmi in Ankur, Smita Patil in Aakrosh, Nutan in Sujata; still,

there is more to it than unconvincing character portrayals. The tendency of Indian cinema to see

the Dalit experience only in terms of its relationship to caste society stems from Brahminical

ideology. Dalit communities (like all other communities) would have conflicts of their own and

also be rich in interpersonal relationships within, but this is not given expression to. A

comparison here would be the African-American experience in Hollywood films where people

from within the community are shown to transact with each other. Where African-Americans are
 Bhati 18

shown to wield some power (as in gangster films), Dalits are consistently shown to be powerless.

One supposes that a Dalit activist as in Court (2014), performing in an urban centre, would find

political patronage, which the film does not allow; its apparently Brahminical viewpoint is that

unrelieved victimhood is the essential condition of the Dalit.

It is difficult to recollect an Indian film in which diversity within Dalit communities is

acknowledged, so monolithic are they seen to be because of the gaze being consistently from the

top. Such essentialisation—although it may be the product of a ‘liberal’ outlook—is consistent

with Brahminism itself, which proceeded by essentialising the jatis as varna categories and

placing them within a hierarchy. The varna system was the result of classifying and hierarchising

various vocations—but it can be argued that any kind of vocation would be better placed than

that of ‘victim’ since the latter category is not even allowed to take pride in its work, the skills it

has developed doing whatever it has been doing.

 Bhati 19

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