The Subject Of Caste In Bollywood
Caste is a contentious issue, but not a predictable one. In India, caste is an ancient institution that pervades everyday life, the mechanics of which remain a convoluted mystery. There was a buzz in 2007, when a Dalit (the caste formerly known as "untouchables") was Bollywood's first-ever lead character in Eklavya: The Royal Guard, but the character was played by Sanjay Dutt, a scion of one of India's leading film dynasties – his father Sunil was a brahmin and his mother Nargis a descendant of a "tawaif", an aristocratic courtesan. Despite there being more than 150 million Dalits in India, not one has made a major dent in Bollywood.
Still, Bollywood is one of the most campaigning and progressive forces in Indian society. Stars such as Amitabh Bachchan are outspoken in their opposition to casteism, and most major figures are associated with some humanitarian activism. Preity Zinta, for instance, sponsors an entire school of lower-caste girls. However, discussing caste is hampered by official taboos. One cannot refer to anyone as an "untouchable" in India, the term being analogous to "nigger" in the west. But while "nigger" can be employed in western cinema to make a social point, "untouchable" will be edited out by the censors there. The first major attempt to deal with the subject was Achhut Kanya (Untouchable Maiden) in 1936. Like most films that have dealt with caste since, it framed the topic in a Romeo-and-Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers, undone by the gossip and intolerance of their families and surrounding community. The brutal realities of caste, its violence and sustaining context of superstition, ignorance and social neurosis have rarely been addressed head-on.
The 2006 Bollywood movie Omkara, again borrowing from Shakespeare, remade Othello in the frontier regions of northern India, with a lower-caste political gangster substituted for the Moorish general. The theme remains that of a powerful outsider, paranoid about his status and manipulated because of it, rather than the banal cruelties and thoughtless traditions that blight everyday life across India. India's own political correctness also stifles the debate. In the mid-90s, the novelist Arundhati Roy vilified the makers of Bandit Queen, the most realistic and politically challenging film ever made about caste. The heroine was the real-life Phoolan Devi, whose gang-rape by the men of a higher-caste village turned her into a mass-murdering vigilante. Roy objected to Devi's sexual abuse being shown (albeit very inexplicitly) on screen while Devi was alive – despite the fact that Devi had given her express consent. Roy's hyper-sensitive Indian sexual mores dominated the larger debate on caste. "But gender and caste could not be separated," says Farrukh Dhondy, who wrote the film. "The fact is that Devi was raped because she was lower caste and those men thought they could get away with it.
A woman's life in India is very much defined by caste. " After 60 years of Indian democracy, lower castes have now established themselves as powerful voting blocs,leading to the rise of Mayawati, the first dalit woman to be elected to India's parliament and chief minister of its largest state, Uttar Pradesh – one of the most powerful figures in the country, able to make or break a government. Dhondy is currently working on a treatment for her biopic. "I want to show how she and her ancestry were treated and how, under democracy, she has galvanised the dalit vote to become such a political phenomenon," he says. "She is empowering them and radically transforming society. " Caste will become an even bigger issue in India as the historically downtrodden consolidate themselves and take power from traditional elites. Even the habitual timidity of Bollywood will have to change as it is forced to address a subject it has previously kept to one side.
