Mayank Shekhar: Can pop-cinema address caste?

The dazzling hazeleyed Devika Rani plays the untouchable girl in Acchut Kanya 1936mdashwidely considered the first film to directly address castediscrimination in Indian or at any rate Hindi cinemaYou might be aware Ashok Kumar mdash no he was not born a geriatric mdashplayed her young uppercaste loveinterest in the film produced by Himanshu Rais legendary Bombay Talkies studio written by the elite influential freedomfighter Bipin Chandra Pals son Niranjan directed by the German Franz Osten who probably had no clue about caste let alone Dalits Brahmins or untouchabilitySince everyones heard of but hardly seen the landmark Acchut Kanya it isnt exactly a romance in a real sense That would be too farout for 1936 It is essentially the story of the unconditional bond and close friendship between the girls Dalit father and the boys Brahmin dad whose life the Dalit man had once savedThis explains how their children grew up so close While the Brahmin mother is okay with her son mingling with the girl she takes strong objection to him eating food cooked by her Likewise the Brahmin father equally fond of the girl wishes the two children could wed theyd be perfect If only they belonged to the same casteThe young girl herself is resigned to the destiny of a kanya girl which is to get married Apne jaat wale ke saath aur kiske saath with someone from her own caste who else This is quite in line with Gandhi unlike Ambedkar who seemingly saw castesystem as very much a fact of Hindu life his issue being with the complete exclusion of Harijans or untouchables from the same social hierarchyThe Brahmin father in Acchut Kanya is an impossibly good nonviolent Gandhian willing to pardon his neighbours for burning down his house because he brought his ailing Dalit friend over to live with himWhy does everyone chiefly led by the local vaid doctor gang up for a smear campaign against this harmless Brahmin shopkeeper Because he prescribes modern quinine to cure malaria in the village rendering the traditional jadibooti as totally useless Oldguard is up in arms Subtext is complete What is so significant about Acchut Kanya That ever since popular Bombay cinema rarely if ever directly touched upon caste as a massive social conflict Its a common complaint with stray exceptions like Bimal Roys Sujata 1959 only proving the ruleDoes this obvious neglect have anything to do with the means of film production having been traditionally in the hands of the uppercaste Kapoors the most dominant surname in Bollywood for example are Punjabi Khatris or Khshatriyas at the top of Hindu varna Most others you survey appear similarly positionedTo be fair being from an uppercaste doesnt automatically make one casteist or casteblind but for the fact that caste may not be the foremost conflict in your own mind Discussions in a lot of such homes centre on whether quotas for jobscolleges further entrench caste rather than displace it In Indian cities rich children became most aware of their classmates surnames first with Mandal Commission 1990 which coincided with the rise of politics around Ram Mandir and Hindu supremacy The Maithil Brahmin Prakash Jhas Aarakshan 2011 looked at reservation with the Nawab Saif Ali Khan cast as a DalitNot sure if the film got too dull it didnt do well commercially which is just as well Caste with its sickening history complex backstory is an uncomfortable beast to confront It could interfere with popular entertainment which has been populated instead by heroes with the generic Kumar for both off and onscreen last names eulogising customs altogether uppercaste that one assumes as universalAlso with Mumbai the place of production being Indias only truly cosmopolitan city by definition a place where people dyed in caste at birth would merge for their individual castes to die for good could help people and therefore characters in stories avoid being defined by their casteidentity alone Like the Dalit governmentservant Newton 2017 perhapsThis is not true for the village But nobody makes films in a village What if the person from the village made films in the city Would they be able to ignore caste and its oppression Impossible What if she had the serious chops for mass entertainment song dance drama the works Thats precisely what happened with Nagraj Manjules Sairaat 2016 a massive eyeopener in terms of both the subject caste and its boxoffice earnings that uniquely united the sahib memsahib and maid across MaharashtraAnd I see people similarly waking up to several symbolisms and strong anticaste statements in Kaala by Pa Ranjith also a Dalit filmmaker from the village working out of Chennai with Rajnikanth no less being watched across India Some are terming the film revolutionary Yes its a new mainstream voice theyre right Think therell be moreMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and 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