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Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship

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Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship JYOTI NISHA Jyoti Nisha ([email protected]) is a writer, director, and producer. She directed well- known documentary film "B R Ambedkar—Now and Then." Vol. 55, Issue No. 20, 16 May, 2020 Bahujan spectatorship relates to an oppositional gaze and a political strategy of Bahujans to reject the Brahminical representation of caste and marginalised communities in Indian cinema. It is also an inverted methodology to document a different sociopolitical Bahujan experience of consuming popular cinema. “Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them.” (Narake et al 2003) This dual imagination of Indian nation, as B R Ambedkar forewarned, finds its manifestation even on the silver screen. India’s popular imagination of its colonial past has been that of a “haloed” history of Indian nationalism. Ambedkar has not been part of this popular imagination, and neither do the politics, history, and social movements of the marginalised. The assertion of the marginalised has hardly made it to the pre- and post-independence Indian cinema. Largely, the image of Indian nationalism in the popular imagination has been ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 that of M K Gandhi, and Ambedkar and his social justice movements against Brahmanism have been absent from the public conscience. This gaze of “othering,” silencing, and appropriating the existence of history, knowledge, and symbols of the marginalised communities have been tools employed by the upper-caste film-makers deliberately. Evidently in that process, they have not only capitalised on such discourses, but have also stripped the marginalised characters of their dignity and agency replicating the same hierarchical structures of caste on screen. Author, feminist, and social activist Bell Hooks (1992) talks about the “traumatic relationship” with “gaze,” and how the gaze informed black parenting and black spectatorship in the United States (US). Her understanding of gaze resonated with my social position, and I began looking through the marginalised history of Buddha, Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Periyar Ramasamy, and others. I have observed that the history documented by Eleanor Zelliot, Valerian Rodrigues, and political scientist Christopher Jaffrelot has been markedly different from the popular discourse sanctioned by the state. This article is a critical reading of the Indian cinema as an institution and a site of ideological production. An “ideological state apparatus” (ISA) is basically a certain number of realities which present themselves to an immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialised institutions, such as religion, education, family, legal system, political domain, trade union, and communications systems (press, radio, and television). Cultural ISAs specifically include literature, art, sports, and cinema. As ISAs are institutions of private domain, cinema functions predominantly by ideology and impacts people at a private level (Althusser: 16–18). Thus, Indian cinema’s trajectory of expression can be traced one way or another to the sociopolitical ideology of the Indian state. Indian film criticism has covered major sociopolitical themes of reform, including caste and communal representation, women’s identity and sexuality, as part of its analysis vis-à-vis film theory. The popular gaze, although touched upon caste from a periphery, the depth and reason to understand the “politics of caste” have been missing from the popular discourse. In its study of representation of the marginalised women on the screen, the popular discourse remains passive on the politics of caste and its intersection with gender. The question as regards the genesis of patriarchy and the political quest of a marginalised character on the silver screen remain unexplored. Drawing inspiration from Hooks’ “oppositional gaze,” the article explores Bollywood cinema from the lens of a spectator of marginalised communities, and analyses the trajectory and politics of caste and marginalised representations in them. Bahujan Spectatorship The marginalised in India are grouped under a wider Bahujan community. The term “Bahujan” comes from Buddha’s “Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhay” formulation, which literally translates as the interest and happiness of Bahujans. Kanshi Ram transformed ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Buddha’s philosophy into a material political identity of Bahujan, and unified Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes of India. In popular discourse, Bahujans are also addressed as Dalits. I am refraining from using the term “Dalit” because it defines itself for being “broken people.” I am using “Bahujan” because of its inclusive identity. For convenience, let’s call this gaze “marginalised (Bahujan) spectatorship.” So, is there really a Bahujan gaze through which Bahujans engage with the Indian cinema? Or, is there a Bahujan female gaze through which Bahujan women engage with the Indian cinema? What is their experience as spectators when they consume Indian cinema? The Emergence of Oppositional Consciousness Sandra Harding’s standpoint theory which provides us with a central argument that all knowledge is socially situated can help us analyse the popular gaze and Bahujan spectatorship in a critical way. Emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, standpoint theory is a feminist critical theory about relationship between the production of knowledge and practices of power. The theory has been presented as a way of empowering oppressed groups, of valuing their experiences, and of pointing towards a way to develop an “oppositional consciousness” as Patricia Collins (1989) observed. It insists that feminist concerns could not be restricted to, what are usually regarded as, only social and political issues but to concerns of knowledge, objectivity, rationality, and good scientific method. As a result, race, ethnicity-based, anti-imperial, queer, and social justice movements routinely produce standpoint themes (Harding 2004: 1–3). In that respect, standpoint methodology has become a guiding force behind exploring Bahujan spectatorship. In this analysis, we will be looking at the relation between production of knowledge and practices of power, the relationship between ideology and ideological state apparatuses in understanding the popular gaze of Indian cinema’s representation of the marginalised subjects and themes. It also looks at how political context further influences film production, and its consumption by Bahujans. This “oppositional consciousness” and the political strategy that Sandra suggested is what the marginalised in India have been invoking since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power in 2014. Leading this oppositional consciousness is Bahujan leadership from the start. It began with Rohith Vemula’s student movement and then mushroomed into Raya Sarkar’s ‘‘Me Too’’ movement, Rahul Sonpimple’s Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students’ Association (BAPSA) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Chandrashekhar Azad’s Bhim Army, Sanghapali Aruna’s ‘‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’’ assertion, among others. The common thread that runs through all the above instances is an Ambedkarite assertion and an “oppositional consciousness.” Ideological Convergence between Indian Cinema and ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 the State The birth of Indian cinema coincided with the nationalist struggle to overthrow the British colonial rule and the end of World War II. At that time, India was going through multiple transitions on social, political, economic, and cultural fronts. It was also the time when the nation was synonymous with the idea of Swaraj (self-rule), and Swaraj's primary image was that of Gandhi. “1930–50s saw cinema’s role in developing the cultural identity of India as a nation. Phalke viewed his attempts to establish an Indian film industry as a significant contribution to the ‘swadeshi’ movement, and therefore an integral element of the nationalist struggle.” (Bhaskar 1992: 52–53) Themes of identity, nation, nationhood, nationalism, and realism have been constantly invoked in the pre- and post-independence cinema to portray a monolithic Hindu aesthetic and state’s ideological position as the cultural identity of India. Films, like Mother India (1957), Naya Daur (1957), and many of Raj Kapoor’s films, such as Chalia (1960), Awaara (1951), Shree 420 (1955), have explored the above-mentioned themes in different combinations to bring to the fore of an individual’s relationship with the state. Given this background, it becomes imperative to understand whose imagination of nation does the gaze of popular Indian cinema refer to and still caters to. How and why the popular imagination of a nation is contrary to the experience of a person belonging to the Bahujan community, especially of their identity in real and reel life? How does the grammar of popular cinema and content have a direct bearing on the politics of representation for Bahujans, not only in reel, but in real life too? Whose gaze is that? In the post-independence cinema, realism has been invoked on various occasions. One can say realism has been a movement of sorts that gained currency in the mainstream Indian cinema. For instance, Indian cinema, inspired by the Victorian sensibilities, has attempted to reflect the sociopolitical themes of oppressive social conditions of the Indian society, such as caste
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