Caste as a prism for pictures

I havenrsquot read better lines to explain caste as a poem by Akhil Katyal titled Poetic License excerpted thus One day when he was About ten or twelve He asked his mother ldquoWhat is my caste The mother got up In the middle of her supper ldquoBeta if you donrsquot know it by now It must be upperrdquoI paraphrase the above lines to director Neeraj Ghaywan interviewing him before a live audience in Varanasi soon after the screening of his film Homebound mdash to home in on caste as such a blind spot in urbane IndiaConsider Hindi cinema primarily an urban medium that over a century mdash you can count on your fingers top filmmakersfilms employing caste as conflict in their story while it remains so central to society hence Indian politicsTo further his case on casteblindness Ghaywan points to the popular series Panchayat ldquoItrsquos about a village where everyone in the entire village is from the upper caste Where is such a village Isnrsquot there a moral responsibility to represent correctlyldquoThe show is made by TVF Most of whom are exIIT students from towns like Banaras Theyrsquore very famous And have made 300400 shows mdash in not one of them will you find a character from the vanchit marginalised categoryrdquoMaybe yoursquoll find one two or few I donrsquot know Exceptions merely frame the ruleA still from the dramaGhaywanrsquos film Homebound headed as Indiarsquos entry to the Oscars is set in a North Indian village Its lead character Chandan Vishal Jethwa is a DalitScheduled Caste He carries on with Kumar for his last nameWhich is a casteneutral surname That for decades you wouldrsquove noticed even heroes in Bollywood both onscreen and offscreen had adoptedWhile casting his leads mdash Jethwa Ishaan Khatter mdash Ghaywan tells me he was clear ldquoYoursquore great actors but that doesnrsquot impress me Itrsquos not about linesaccentsldquoThere are countless Shoaibs Khatterrsquos character and Chandans that you hold a moral responsibility towards You have to become them through a lived experience and prove that yoursquore qualified for the jobrdquoFor reference Ghaywan handed his leads a copy each of BR Ambedkarrsquos Annihilation of CasteWhich is a searing seminal undelivered speech by Ambedkar on the unscientific senselessness of caste as a concept protecting privilege and oppression in itself I suspect nothing more moving and modernist on the subject has been written since 1936Ghaywan says actor Janhvi Kapoor mdash who plays Sudha Bharti Chandanrsquos girlfriend in Homebound mdash was particularly influenced by Ambedkarrsquos bookletItrsquos still one thing to acquaint Bombayborn stars quite another to reach a global audience with a complicated thought that as per Ambedkar is so separate from raceI notice for instance a character in Homebound mention ldquoKayasthardquo caste group that doesnrsquot as neatly fit into the fourfold varna system on the screen the subtitle reads BrahminOr for that matter Martin Scorsese championing Homebound onboard as executive producer with ldquolong notesrdquo at the scripting stage and looking over the edit as wellDid Ghaywan gift Scorsese a copy of Annihilation of CasteldquoScorsese was aware of casterdquo Ghaywan says Also on the advice of producer Melita Toscan du Plantier he had written Scorsese a fourpage letter titled lsquoTo sir with loversquo on why he wants to make the film detailing his own life storyGhaywan 45 was a corporate cooliocoolie depending on context before he switched over to filmmaking at the behest of Anurag Kashyap the director he first made acquaintance with blogging on PassionForCinema popular website then for independent writing on filmsThe venue for our conversation that is Varanasi at the Jagran Film Festival is also for Ghaywan a homecoming of sortsHomebound 2025 is his second feature after Masaan 2015 wholly centred on Varanasi ldquoPeople just opened up their homes for us to shootrdquo Thatrsquos where Vicky Kaushal debuted as a character from DomDalit communityCall it lsquo812 complexrsquo after the Federico Fellini film for why it took Ghaywan a decade to make his next film ldquoI was struggling within myself to find the story that I can also ownrdquo he saysHe did put a lot of himself into the acclaimed short film Geeli Pucchi in the anthology Ajeeb Daastans or the episode The Heart Skipped a Beat in the series Made in Heaven where the Dalit protagonist is adamant on a Buddhist weddingFor inspiration Ghaywan says he turns foremost to Satyajit Ray for whom ldquoStoryrsquos supreme its politics must rank lowerrdquo You can sense this in the deeply engagingentertaining HomeboundThe first Dalit representation in popular Hindi cinema is probably Bombay Talkiesrsquo Achhut Kanya 1936 Devika Rani plays Dalit heroine to Ashok Kumarrsquos Brahmin heroItrsquos made clear verbatim by the girlrsquos character though that itrsquos obviously not a love story Itrsquos about friendship between their parentsGhaywan says ldquoWhile itrsquos changing Hindi films on caste usually come with a lsquosaviour complexrsquo Vanchit marginalised and pratalit oppressed remain just that an entity Who raises voice on their behalf Savarna uppercaste herordquoAlso ldquo25 per cent of Indiarsquos population is Dalit In the entire history of Hindi cinema Irsquom the first one to have accepted his Dalit identity The only onerdquo It says somethingMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper