In the Dirty Picture: Caste, Gender and Silk Smitha
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Savari adivasi bahujan and dalit women conversing http://www.dalitweb.org The 'dirt' in the Dirty Picture: Caste, Gender and Silk Smitha Jenny Rowena On first or second Saturday coming after the Hindu New Years Day (Gudhi padawa), the devadasis, who are mostly dalitbahujans, were openly sexually enjoyed in public, about hundred years ago. This is now replaced by another tradition called "Okali", which was in vogue till 1987. It is a festival like 'Rang Panchami'. The young boys from higher castes assemble around a pool of coloured water in front of town temple. Young devadasis in the town stand in front of them in a row, and each receives a sari, a choli and a flower garland. The coloured water is poured over the devadasis who appear virtually naked as the clothes given to them are very thin, scanty, delicate and transparent. The boys play with the bodies of devadasis as they like, doing everything just short of sexual intercourse. All assembled enjoy the scene. This happens in the name of god 'Bili Kallappa'. [Uttam Kamble, Sugawa, p. 81] Vasant Rajas describes another custom, called "Sidi attu" in town Madakeripura in Karnataka which was in vogue till 1987, when it was banned by the Govt. Here a devadasi is suspended [on a rope balanced on] a hook in her back on one end of a transverse rod placed on a vertical pole planted in ground, and rotated by a rope at the other end. She salutes the gathering, while her garments fly and all the naked lower part of her body is visible to all, for their amusement. This was supposed to bring prosperity to town, and the devadasi used to get a sari, a choli, a coconut and a betel nut, for which she thanked the gathering. [p. 27] Dr K Jamanadas's article, "Holi - A Festival to Commemorate Bahujan Burning," makes one thing very clear. Hindu religious traditions institutionalize the use and exploitation of Dalitbahujan women's bodies for the sexual pleasure and entertainment of men who are placed higher than them in the caste hierarchy. This works to legitimize various other violent forms of oppression such as rape, formal and informal workplace sexual exploitation and networks of prostitution, involving adivasi, bahujan and dalit women. All these firmly hold down the body of 1 / 9 Savari adivasi bahujan and dalit women conversing http://www.dalitweb.org the subaltern woman within a sexualized structure of abuse, violence and exploitation. In great contrast, the caste system approaches the upper caste woman's body in a totally different manner. It makes her body the adored and worshiped site of caste purity. The upper caste woman's body comes to be protected/controlled by father, husband and son (Manusmriti, IX, 3) under a caste Hindu morality, based on notions of chastity, virginity and docile femininity. As a consequence of such a caste/gender differentiation, the sexual energies which are made to be brooked with regard to the upper caste female body often gets unleashed onto the figure of the subaltern woman, who becomes the favored site of male sexual pleasure, violence, entertainment and release.[i ii] To legitimize this process, upper caste women are constantly imagined and represented as chaste and sexually controlled, in opposition to lower caste women who are repeatedly portrayed as sexually loose, hyper and 'immoral,' a process that starts right from the representation of Sita and Shoorpanaka in Ramayana. However, we never seem to remember this issue and its continuing presence in the making of the contemporary, when we deliberate about women and sexuality. This is especially so in the case of discussions around cinema where caste differences between women has been so powerfully institutionalized, through the representations of virginal women pitted against hypersexual, loose and sexually available women from different non-upper caste communities. But no one admits to this. Think of the recent success of The Dirty Picture. Trending on twitter, ringing at the box office; critically acclaimed, nationally awarded; the Vidya Balan wave of The Dirty Picture has only just died down. It brought us the tragic story of Silk Smitha, a highly successful vamp figure of South Indian cinema, who committed suicide at the age of 36, unable to face cinematic and personal/social betrayal. What stands out in the responses to this film is the way feminist academics and women media personalities heartily joined the celebrations around the film, after recording their reservations. For instance, the feminist film maker, Paromita Vohra, who finds that the film says nothing new about "sex, success and women," still sees a "feminist directness" in Vidya Balan's gaze, and praises the film for presenting a body that is "libidinal and avid and free." Feminist academicians from elite media departments in the country, such as Bindu Menon and Shilpa Phadke express similar opinions. They too are aware of the limitations of the film, yet they praise it for talking about "how actresses are treated in this male centric industry" (Menon) and for making a "case for sexual agency" and offering the "the possibility of seeing a particular kind of non- monogamous, in-your-face sex in cinema as something more than just 'obscene'"(Phadke).[iii] 2 / 9 Savari adivasi bahujan and dalit women conversing http://www.dalitweb.org In fact, with the support of the savarna feminists and media, this film has been able to generate a national consensus regarding its feminist possibilities. However, as in the case of all such national consensus, the issue of caste in the creation of the star persona of Silk Smitha remains lost or silenced. Indeed, there is a serious problem in a film attempting a loose bio-pic of a vamp figure like Silk Smitha without talking of the film culture, which systematically and clearly marks all vamps as belonging to non-upper caste communities. By doing this and succeeding in making it look like a feminist issue, the film not only silences the caste issues regarding Silk Smitha's life, it also allows the fair-skinned Tamil Brahmin, Vidya Balan, located within the Hindi film industry, to make use of the image of a dark-skinned South Indian actress.[iv] And by silencing the caste issue involved, it helps her build her upper caste female heroine self over the subaltern vamp hood of Silk Smitha. This article (in three parts) is a preliminary attempt at putting down a few points that would challenge this silence and provide a better understanding of Silk Smitha's life and image. In this part, I try to place Silk Smitha and The Dirty Picture within a larger understanding of caste, gender and sexuality using the Ambedkarite theorization of caste as founded on the maintenance of endogamy. In the next part, I extend this to a more elaborate discussion of Silk Smitha's vamp persona in South Indian cinema, using it to think more about the role of Vamps in the creation of the chaste, upper caste woman and its consequence for 'other' women. In the final section, I try to contrast this reading of caste, gender and sexuality in cinema with the given savarna feminist understanding of the same. This would be done to highlight the way feminist readings silence the caste/gender issue with regard to the varied political issues that affect subaltern women and to look for ways of moving out of this. Silk Smitha: The Dirty Secret Reshma or Silk, is a "dirty secret" as the film puts it and "a synonym for dirt in a sick society" according to a review of the film titled: 'A Feminist's Delight.'[v] What makes Silk 'dirty,' we are 3 / 9 Savari adivasi bahujan and dalit women conversing http://www.dalitweb.org told, is the hypocrisy of a society that cannot accept a woman like her "who enjoys sex and whose sexuality exudes power and freedom"[vi] She is ready to offer her body for a role in a film, she whips herself to exhibit a wild sensuality when she is offered a small appearance, and later she walks into the room of a sulking Super Star to seduce him so as to retain the heroine part she has managed to land. In short, as Shiv Viswanathan puts it, she is "free, sexual and female."[vii] The problem is with the narrow mindedness of men and society who enjoys and takes pleasure in such wild women but would not allow them any legitimacy beyond the surreptitious sexual space of the per-marital bedroom. All these sounds like such convincing feminist truths. But I beg to differ. Because, though it is true that Silk Smitha and her vampdom (as I shall show in more detail in the next part) did represent a sexually open female figure, such a figure finds space on the Indian screen so as to highlight the sexually controlled persona of the upper caste woman. This intermeshing of caste and gender escapes most feminist analysis of sexuality. 4 / 9 Savari adivasi bahujan and dalit women conversing http://www.dalitweb.org However, it is almost a hundred years since Ambedkar made important connections between caste and gender in his 1916 essay Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development.[viii ix] Here he argues that endogamy is the most important aspect of caste. As he puts it in the essay: Caste in India means an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy. Thus the conclusion is inevitable that Endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste, and if we succeed in showing how endogamy is maintained, we shall practically have proved the genesis and also the mechanism of Caste.