Seeing the world like Babasaheb did

Mooknayak the legendary Marathi fortnightly established by Babasaheb Ambedkar in 1920 presented its mandate in its very name as ldquothe leader of the voicelessrdquo In highlighting the issues of the oppressed castes it ushered in a new wave of anticaste politics and identity assertion But not everyone was a fan for example the nationalist newspaper Kesarimdashrun by Bal Gangadhar Tilakmdashrefused to publish an advertisement about the fortnightlyrsquos launchThis story is one among many brought to the fore by Dr BR Ambedkar Now amp Then a documentary born of eight years of labour by filmmaker and cultural critic Jyoti Nisha The film had its Asian premiere at the 2023 Dharamshala International Film FestivalIt flits between key moments from the past and pressing concerns of present timesmdashsuch as the 2016 Una flogging incident Rohith Vemularsquos death and the release of the crowdsourced list of sexual harassers in academia by Raya Sarkar Previously Nisha has contributed significantly to acclaimed projects like Neeraj Ghaywanrsquos Geeli Puchi By documenting these significant contemporary events she creates a new archive of Bahujan historyMidshoot with Jignesh Mevani in 2016 PicTwitterAt the heart of the 40yearoldrsquos cinematic vision is the belief that all people can tell and write their own storiesmdashthey donrsquot need others to ldquoIt felt like people from privileged communities were making films about usmdashwith good intentions or not There was a distortion or hijacking of my peoplersquos identities The gaze was defined by a saviour complex like the makers didnrsquot know us at all I couldnrsquot relate to it especially as someone who grew up in a household where we believed in rational thought and there was no shame around casterdquo says the filmmaker whose roots lie in Lucknow and whose father was the national president of the All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation BAMCEF To combat this hijacking of narratives Nisha devised the notion of ldquoBahujan spectatorshiprdquo ldquoan oppositional gaze and a political strategy of Bahujans to reject Brahmanical representation in cinema and mediardquoNisharsquos foregrounding in Ambedkarite thought may have begun in her parentsrsquo home but studying at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and travelling across the country expanded her understanding of caste ldquoGrowing up we learn many things passively Like the way your mother prepared chutneymdashyou recognise its taste and what goes into it if you lingered in the kitchen It was only later in life that I learnt to articulate what I knew as lived experience and think about it criticallyrdquo she explainsNisha chose Ambedkar as the documentaryrsquos focal point when she observed that Indiarsquos rightwing political parties were appropriating him in 2014 Another observation was that there are very few films on him ldquoHow can popular culture claim to authentically represent caste if they havenrsquot told the story of events like the Mahad Satyagraha or Manusmriti Dahan Diwas Ambedkar and Gandhi were active during overlapping periods of time but are they equally representedrdquo she asks adding that Jabbar Patel and Anand Patwardhan are the only directors who come to mind for their depictions of Ambedkarrsquos life and workInterviews with personalities like Bezwada Wilson the national convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan are punctuated by Sunil Abhiman Awacharrsquos animated blackandwhite sketches employed to explain history and mythology One sequence explains the DronacharyaEklavya relationship from the Mahabharata the thumb the student paid as gurudakshina to the teacher who refused to train him because of his tribal rootsldquoSunilrsquos own aesthetic contributes to what I want to say through the documentary He isnrsquot a trained artist Hersquos from the community and he evokes subversion through his artrdquo Nisha shares If therersquos any frame that embodies the tenor and mood of Dr BR Ambedkar Now amp Then it is this one Having paid the price of his secondhand training Sunil and Nisharsquos Eklvavya cheekily holds up his palmmdashdisplaying one finger that is severed and another that flips both Dronacharya and the viewer off