My Mirror column:
The release of Dhadak is a good time to look back at one of Hindi cinema’s first cross-caste romances.
I haven’t watched Dhadak yet. But Sairat is a masterpiece, and though Karan Johar’s new production is officially an adaptation of Nagaraj Manjule’s Marathi original, Dhadak isn’t likely to be anything like it.
The brilliance of Sairat was to take one of Indian cinema’s most generic themes — young love disapproved of by society — and underpin that deeply familiar screen trope with the lived reality of caste hierarchy. The effect was electric.
Why does simply making caste visible have such power within the popular cinema format? Because caste has long been missing from our screen romances. Star-crossed lovers in our movies often come from different class or economic backgrounds, different regions or languages, even different religions — but to speak of their different castes is extremely rare.
But in the week of Dhadak’s release, it seems worth asking: was this sanitised filmic past as inevitable as it seems? On July 7, 1936, a film called Acchut Kanya had its premiere at Roxy Talkies in what was then Bombay. It ran there for 19 successive weeks. According to the Indian Cinematograph Yearbook of 1938, it also had a record run of 37 successive weeks in Paradise Talkies in Calcutta, and was among the nine big box office hits of the year. Directed by the German Franz Osten and produced byHimanshu Rai , the film dealt with the ill-fated love between an ‘untouchable’ girl and a Brahmin boy. The roles were played by Devika Rani — already a massive star — and Ashok Kumar , then a newbie.
Written by Niranjan Pal, the son of nationalist leader Bipin Chandra Pal and chief scenarist ofBombay Talkies , Acchut Kanya unfolds in flashback. A rich couple’s car is forced to stop at a railway faatak by a guard who staunchly refuses a bribe. Intrigued by a little shrine next to the crossing, the rich housewife emerges from her car and asks an old man who lives there to tell her more about the young woman thus deified. 1936 was still early for cinema in the subcontinent, and one imagines Pal used the figure of the storyteller as a device to draw in neo-film-literate audiences. “Listen, then,” says the old man. “I will draw aside the screen over the past.” And so begins the story of she who was “janam se achhut, lekin karm se devi”.
Despite that “lekin”, the scenario was socially radical. Yet, Acchut Kanya is very much an Indian tale. So the romance begins not with a meeting between two atomised individuals, but in the fortuitous encounter that bonded their families. In many ways that is the crux of the film: the unlikely connection that develops between a Brahmin named Mohanlal and aDalit called Dukhiya, after the latter saves Mohanlal’s life. Seeing the upper caste man bitten by a snake, Dukhiya sucks the poison out of his leg. When Mohanlal opens his eyes, Dukhiya’s first words are an apology for having touched him. The scene showcases the ludicrousness of the purity-pollution idea. But the act also has a sense of intimacy, and lends itself to metaphor: the Dalit man draws the poison out of the upper caste man — forever.
Mohanlal and Dukhiya become friends for life, a relationship that threatens the status quo and is perceived as bizarre. At one point, faced with a police inquiry into the mob violence that set Mohanlal’s house on fire, the mob’s ringleader — one Babulal Vaid — says Mohanlal did it himself. “Are you saying Mohanlal is mad?” demands the daroga. “Totally mad,” says Babulal, deadpan. “If he weren’t mad, would a Brahmin sell groceries? Would he set aside the company of us upper caste folk to make friends with an acchut?”
But while allowances may be made for affection, marriage across the caste gap is unthinkable, even for the mad. As is choosing one’s own marital partner. So when Mohan’s son Pratap and Dukhiya’s daughter Kasturi reach marriageable age, the fathers broach the topic only to agree wistfully on its impossibility. The children try their luck, mildly. In one rather sweet bit of banter between father and daughter, Kasturi urges Dukhiya, “Why don’t you choose Pratap for me? Don’t you like Pratap?”
But Dukhiya cannot possibly choose Pratap. So Pratap suffers his fate quietly, marrying a girl called Meera, but growing slowly more despondent as he fails to get Kasturi off his mind. “Bhagwan, tumne mujhe bhi acchut kyun na banaya? (God, why didn’t you make me an untouchable, too?)” he says once. Later, when Kasturi’s wedding is being fixed, Devika Rani says meditatively to Mohan, “Ladki ka toh janam hi byaahe jaane ke liye hota hai (A girl is only born to be married off).” “Par kiske saath? (But with whom?),” presses Mohan, as if it’s a riddle. Kasturi’s reply is instant: “Apni jaat wale ke saath, aur kiske saath? (With someone of her own caste, who else?)”
Any love that challenged that social decree was ill-fated. As Kasturi puts it, “Bhaag se kisi ko chhutkara nahi.” Caste still remains an irrefutable fact of our lives — and we do not choose it. But 80 years later, fate has a few more challengers.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, 22 July 2018.
The release of Dhadak is a good time to look back at one of Hindi cinema’s first cross-caste romances.
I haven’t watched Dhadak yet. But Sairat is a masterpiece, and though Karan Johar’s new production is officially an adaptation of Nagaraj Manjule’s Marathi original, Dhadak isn’t likely to be anything like it.
The brilliance of Sairat was to take one of Indian cinema’s most generic themes — young love disapproved of by society — and underpin that deeply familiar screen trope with the lived reality of caste hierarchy. The effect was electric.
Why does simply making caste visible have such power within the popular cinema format? Because caste has long been missing from our screen romances. Star-crossed lovers in our movies often come from different class or economic backgrounds, different regions or languages, even different religions — but to speak of their different castes is extremely rare.
But in the week of Dhadak’s release, it seems worth asking: was this sanitised filmic past as inevitable as it seems? On July 7, 1936, a film called Acchut Kanya had its premiere at Roxy Talkies in what was then Bombay. It ran there for 19 successive weeks. According to the Indian Cinematograph Yearbook of 1938, it also had a record run of 37 successive weeks in Paradise Talkies in Calcutta, and was among the nine big box office hits of the year. Directed by the German Franz Osten and produced by
Written by Niranjan Pal, the son of nationalist leader Bipin Chandra Pal and chief scenarist of
Despite that “lekin”, the scenario was socially radical. Yet, Acchut Kanya is very much an Indian tale. So the romance begins not with a meeting between two atomised individuals, but in the fortuitous encounter that bonded their families. In many ways that is the crux of the film: the unlikely connection that develops between a Brahmin named Mohanlal and a
Mohanlal and Dukhiya become friends for life, a relationship that threatens the status quo and is perceived as bizarre. At one point, faced with a police inquiry into the mob violence that set Mohanlal’s house on fire, the mob’s ringleader — one Babulal Vaid — says Mohanlal did it himself. “Are you saying Mohanlal is mad?” demands the daroga. “Totally mad,” says Babulal, deadpan. “If he weren’t mad, would a Brahmin sell groceries? Would he set aside the company of us upper caste folk to make friends with an acchut?”
But while allowances may be made for affection, marriage across the caste gap is unthinkable, even for the mad. As is choosing one’s own marital partner. So when Mohan’s son Pratap and Dukhiya’s daughter Kasturi reach marriageable age, the fathers broach the topic only to agree wistfully on its impossibility. The children try their luck, mildly. In one rather sweet bit of banter between father and daughter, Kasturi urges Dukhiya, “Why don’t you choose Pratap for me? Don’t you like Pratap?”
But Dukhiya cannot possibly choose Pratap. So Pratap suffers his fate quietly, marrying a girl called Meera, but growing slowly more despondent as he fails to get Kasturi off his mind. “Bhagwan, tumne mujhe bhi acchut kyun na banaya? (God, why didn’t you make me an untouchable, too?)” he says once. Later, when Kasturi’s wedding is being fixed, Devika Rani says meditatively to Mohan, “Ladki ka toh janam hi byaahe jaane ke liye hota hai (A girl is only born to be married off).” “Par kiske saath? (But with whom?),” presses Mohan, as if it’s a riddle. Kasturi’s reply is instant: “Apni jaat wale ke saath, aur kiske saath? (With someone of her own caste, who else?)”
Any love that challenged that social decree was ill-fated. As Kasturi puts it, “Bhaag se kisi ko chhutkara nahi.” Caste still remains an irrefutable fact of our lives — and we do not choose it. But 80 years later, fate has a few more challengers.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, 22 July 2018.
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