Camera Obscura

Dalit films are inward-directed expressions of dissent, a chronicling of marginal lives with a searing sense of humiliation
Neerja Dasani Chennai

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi is obviously playing the Dalit card to save the scam-tainted Union Telecom Minister A Raja. In February, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar played the 'mahadalit' card at a 'mahadalit ekta' rally in Patna. Also in February, Nitin Gadkari, leader of the Hindutva-toting upper-caste BJP, played the Dalit card in Indore to counter the Dalit-Brahmin card that Rahul Gandhi played in UP. Meanwhile, elite analysts believe Mayawati has overplayed the Dalit card by placing all the bets on herself. Isn't it time to shuffle this pack of canards?

Dalit politics as conducted in the mainstream media (now interchangeable with PR, post paid-news) is all symbolism and no substance. This might explain the lack of outrage at the government's opposition to the inclusion of caste in the UN's 2009 draft principles and guidelines for the effective elimination of discrimination based on work and descent. The comprehensive framework - the first of its kind - could have led to the establishment of an international monitoring mechanism on caste discrimination.

Some might question the need for global guidelines, believing that we live in a peaceful post-caste world with the occasional cacophony of vote-bank politics. But a three-day documentary film festival in Chennai recently, Imaging Dalit Reality: Politics of Visual Representation, challenged such notions. 

In his inaugural address M Madhava Prasad, professor of cultural studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, pointed out that in their current nascent form, Dalit films are primarily inward-directed expressions of dissent, a chronicling of marginal lives with a searing sense of humiliation. What is needed now, according to him, is for a critical language of film-making to be developed - a Dalit perspective through which "everything in the world can be discussed". Perhaps a reason for the insulation is that to be outward-looking today means seeing either miles of empty rhetoric or row upon row of silent stone walls. For instance, not one of the English papers carried a single report on the festival, which, ironically, coincided with Republic Day. 

At the festival, the ruthlessness of this power structure was the sinister background score to each film. 

Of Inhuman Bondage, Gopal Menon's 2005 film on manual scavenging, showed women and children cleaning up the shit of 'Shining India', determined to salvage their soiled prides. After 17 years of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, there are still officially 6,76,000 people (unofficially around 13 lakh) engaged in this work. 

Nadantha Kathai, Pon Sudha's short film in Tamil, portrays the anguish of a child unable to understand the upper castes' 'ban' on footwear. Why is it that those who make the shoes are prohibited from wearing them? The question enrages him to the point of rebellion. In real life such assertions can lead to horrific consequences as the recent case of a young boy in Tamil Nadu, who was beaten up and forced to eat human excreta by the upper castes, clearly shows. The police took one week to file an FIR claiming that the boy had incited the upper-caste group.