Caste as a prism for pictures

Director Neeraj Ghaywan at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival, where his film, Homebound, had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section. PIC/GETTY IMAGES

I haven't read better lines to explain caste as a poem by Akhil Katyal, titled Poetic License, excerpted thus: One day, when he was / About ten or twelve / He asked his mother / "What is my caste?... The mother got up / In the middle of her supper / "Beta, if you don't know it by now / It must be upper."

I paraphrase the above lines to director Neeraj Ghaywan, interviewing him before a live audience in Varanasi, soon after the screening of his film, Homebound - to home in on caste as such a blind spot in urbane India.

Consider Hindi cinema, primarily an urban medium that, over a century - you can count on your fingers, top filmmakers/films employing caste as conflict in their story, while it remains so central to society, hence Indian politics.

To further his case on caste-blindness, Ghaywan points to the popular series, Panchayat: "It's about a village, where everyone, in the entire village, is from the upper caste. Where is such a village? Isn't there a moral responsibility to represent correctly?

"The show is made by TVF. Most of whom are ex-IIT students [from towns like Banaras]. They're very famous. And have made 300-400 shows - in not one of them, will you find a [character from the] vanchit (marginalised) category."

Maybe you'll find one, two, or few, I don't know. Exceptions merely frame the rule.

A still from the drama

Ghaywan's film, Homebound, headed as India's entry to the Oscars, is set in a North Indian village. Its lead character, Chandan (Vishal Jethwa) is a Dalit/Scheduled Caste. He carries on with Kumar for his last name.
Which is a caste-neutral surname. That, for decades, you would've noticed, even heroes in Bollywood, both onscreen and offscreen, had adopted.

While casting his leads - Jethwa, Ishaan Khatter - Ghaywan tells me, he was clear: "You're great actors, but that doesn't impress me. It's not about lines/accents.

"There are countless Shoaibs (Khatter's character), and Chandans, that you hold a moral responsibility towards. You have to become them, through a lived experience, and prove that you're qualified [for the job]."

For reference, Ghaywan handed his leads a copy each of BR Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste.

Which is a searing, seminal, undelivered speech by Ambedkar, on the unscientific senselessness of caste as a concept protecting privilege and oppression in itself. I suspect nothing more moving and modernist on the subject has been written since 1936!

Ghaywan says actor Janhvi Kapoor - who plays Sudha Bharti, Chandan's girlfriend in Homebound - was particularly influenced by Ambedkar's booklet.

It's still one thing to acquaint Bombay-born stars; quite another to reach a global audience with a complicated thought that, as per Ambedkar, is so separate from race.

I notice, for instance, a character in Homebound mention, "Kayastha" (caste group that doesn't as neatly fit into the four-fold varna system), on the screen; the subtitle reads: Brahmin.

Or, for that matter, Martin Scorsese championing Homebound, onboard as executive producer, with "long notes" at the scripting stage, and looking over the edit as well.

Did Ghaywan gift Scorsese a copy of Annihilation of Caste?

"Scorsese was aware [of caste]," Ghaywan says. Also, on the advice of producer Melita Toscan du Plantier, he had written Scorsese a four-page letter, titled, ‘To sir, with love', on why he wants to make the film, detailing his own life story.

Ghaywan, 45, was a corporate coolio/coolie (depending on context), before he switched over to filmmaking, at the behest of Anurag Kashyap, the director he first made acquaintance with, blogging on PassionForCinema, popular website then, for independent writing on films.

The venue for our conversation, that is, Varanasi (at the Jagran Film Festival), is also for Ghaywan, a homecoming of sorts.

Homebound (2025) is his second feature, after Masaan (2015), wholly centred on Varanasi: "People just opened up their homes for us to shoot." That's where Vicky Kaushal debuted as a character from Dom/Dalit community.

Call it ‘81/2 complex', after the Federico Fellini film, for why it took Ghaywan a decade to make his next film? "I was struggling within myself, to find the story, that I can also own," he says.

He did put a lot of himself into the acclaimed short film, Geeli Pucchi (in the anthology, Ajeeb Daastans), or the episode, The Heart Skipped a Beat, in the series, Made in Heaven (where the Dalit protagonist is adamant on a Buddhist wedding).

For inspiration, Ghaywan says he turns foremost to Satyajit Ray for whom, "Story's supreme; its politics must rank lower." You can sense this in the deeply engaging/entertaining Homebound.

The first Dalit representation in popular Hindi cinema is probably Bombay Talkies' Achhut Kanya (1936). Devika Rani plays Dalit heroine to Ashok Kumar's Brahmin hero.

It's made clear, verbatim, by the girl's character, though, that it's obviously not a love story! It's about friendship between their parents.

Ghaywan says, "While it's changing, Hindi films on caste usually come with a ‘saviour complex'. Vanchit (marginalised) and pratalit (oppressed) remain, just that: an entity. Who raises voice, on their behalf? Savarna [upper-caste hero]."

Also, "25 per cent of India's population is Dalit. In the entire history of Hindi cinema, I'm the first one to have accepted his Dalit identity. The only one!" It says something.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.